Email is a standard tool in the marketer’s arsenal, but as inboxes increasingly groan under the weight of both legitimate email and spam, how do you make sure that your emails hit the spot?

In this article, we look at a few ways you can improve your email results that you might not have thought about.

1 – Encourage replies

Did you know that replies increase your deliverability? Providers like Gmail consider ‘do-not-reply’ addresses as a sign that you’re spamming, and use recipient engagement as a strong signal of whether to put your email into the inbox, or straight into the junk folder.

Sending your emails from noreply@yourcompany.com tells people that you’re not interested in hearing from them.  It’s not a great way to build relationships.  Email should be a two-way channel, so make sure that your email marketing is a dialogue and not a monologue!

2 – Make your emails as perfect as possible

People don’t spend long reading your emails. Eleven seconds on average, to be precise.  So you need to keep it short and keep it relevant.

A good reader can read fifty-five words in those eleven seconds and an average reader can only read thirty-seven words in the same time. Make every word count.

Don’t include anything that isn’t working.  Use heatmap reporting to gauge how much attention the links are getting. If you are seeing very low click volumes as you scroll down your email then consider chopping off the more boring parts at the bottom.

But don’t forget the basics of putting together an effective email either – you can read them here.

3 – Don’t measure open rates

Well not quite, but the number of unique clicks should be your primary metric. Open rates and click through rates are useful but they can be misleading, and the bottom line is that you want as many people as possible to visit your website.  Nobody converts directly from an email.

But don’t waste your time rearranging the content in your email to chase a few dozen clicks – focus your attention on whatever is your weakest element, which is often the subject line. Remember to only test one thing at a time.

4 – Segment by engagement

Mail less frequently to subscribers who are less engaged. Sending emails to people who never open them is a waste of time and harms your inbox placement.  If someone hasn’t opened any of your emails for several months, send them a monthly message instead of your weekly newsletter.

If someone hasn’t opened your emails in a year, put them into an automated re-engagement campaign and only send them your very best offers. If they respond, move them back into your engaged segment.

Don’t just automate your customer journey – use automation for your newsletters and promotions too.  If someone doesn’t engage for a while, move them into a different messaging stream.

5 – Automate and integrate

If you can automate your customer journey to trigger the right message, to the right person, at the right time, your results may improve dramatically.

Joining up your database and your email service provider is the best way to maximise the benefits of marketing automation, meaning that you can create automated comms like abandoned basket emails, browsing triggers, quotation follow-up emails, survey responses and more  – all informed and driven by your customers’ individual needs.

Your communications will be automatically triggered, personalised to the customer and this makes sure that you’re sending timely, relevant communications that people will be interested in.

Marketing automation is probably the biggest advantage you can have in terms of email marketing.  If you feel you could be doing more, contact us at performance@r-cubed.co.uk and we’ll be happy to help you drive up your incremental revenue and improve your email marketing results.

We promise we’ll read your email.