7 foolproof email optimization strategies for 2023

Data from Pathwire Research shows that 84 percent of users check their email at least once a day. It can be read on any device - desktops, tablets and smartphones or even smart TV and game consoles. Despite the growing popularity of real-time communication software, such as Slack and Zoom, the number of emails sent is not decreasing and by 2025 it is expected to reach 376.4 billion per day.

Email marketing strategies

Due to the enormous volume of this form of communication, email marketing is still one of the most important tools for modern digital marketer. Despite its rich history there are still new ways to increase the effectiveness of emails.

The most important strategies to achieve this goal include:

Optimizing open rate

Getting into the spam folder is a disaster from the point of view of an email marketer - even if unavoidable. However, if many mailings end up in the trash or are marked as spam, the snowball effect begins - subsequent emails are automatically classified as spam by popular email tools, and thus the domain is assessed as untrustworthy.

Open rate can be optimized using many techniques, the central element of which should be the user experience. The most important tools include:

• An encouraging and apt title
• An offer tailored to the recipient
• No technical problems
• Technologically refined message
• the neat layout on any device

Optimizing open rates is one of the basic tools for developing email marketing. This goal is supported not only by the techniques listed above - any action to improve the quality of sent materials maximizes the open rate.

Simplify and keep the context clear

The dissemination of the Internet and electronic communication has caused the modern recipient to be flooded with information. With statistically more than 120 emails per day reaching a single recipient, it is difficult for a marketer to break through the noise and get the message across.

This means that the message should be as concise as possible, simple, and without additional elements that could blur the message. An example is simplifying promotions and messages, ideally so that the recipient wants to open the email based on the title alone.

Regularly check the list and its length

In the era of extreme personalization, it is necessary to segment your contact list as thoroughly and as accurately as possible. Over time, each mailing list loses its initial structure - new users join, old ones leave, or gradually contacts become dead. Some people stop using their old emails, others change jobs, and the work emails they used for newsletters no longer exist.

Controlling the mailing list, it's cleaning, and segmentation is a lot of work, but it must be done to make the mailing campaigns as effective as possible.

List control should also mean a departure from the “more the better” paradigm in email communication. Even if sending thousands of e-mails seems satisfying and gives a sense of large-scale operation, it can prove to be deadly for efficiency, among others, through a poor open rate or a growing percentage of messages automatically ending up in the spam folder.

Opt-out optimization

The possibility of easily unsubscribing from the newsletter provided by the Regulation on the Protection of Personal Data (GDPR) means that making it difficult for users to delete their data or blocking the receipt of messages may result in serious penalties. However, from the point of view of marketers, easy unsubscribing from the list may mean that users will actually drop out, and the list of subscribers will gradually decrease.

In practice, however, making it difficult to unsubscribe from a mailing list significantly degrades the user experience. Attempts to convince him to stay among subscribers by throwing him in the way and providing the worst possible experience results in the user simply deleting emails without reading and reporting them as spam.

This means that counterintuitively, making it harder to unsubscribe from a newsletter is counterproductive and may do more harm than good from a marketing point of view.

Interactive emails

Traditionally, email marketing is not particularly interactive. However, more and more modern tools allow you to add more inviting and dynamic elements to your emails, such as videos, animations, and gifs.

It is such an effective tactic that it is used by the biggest brands, including Google and Nike.

AI tools

The year 2022 brought a real explosion of interest in the so-called generative AI, i.e. artificial intelligence used to create various types of content, for example, texts or pictures. Companies have at their disposal tools that support writing (Rytr, ChatGPT) and generating images (Midjourney, DALL-e). This means that even smaller companies that do not have a larger budget can reach for stunning visualizations and test dozens of text combinations.

The key is to be smart and reasonable when using AI. Despite its extraordinary capabilities, this technology has its limitations and as such must remain under human supervision.

Competition monitoring

The last and most important indication for 2023 is to focus on even more careful observation of the activities of the competition. Careful observation and spying on effective (or even interesting) activities on the part of other stores is the key to development.

A skillful search for inspiration in the activities of competing companies allows you to draw on the experience of other marketers and choose those pre-verified ideas for testing.

Summary

Email marketing remains one of the most important and effective tools for reaching customers, and email, despite its long history of use, remains one of the most important media of modern communication.

At the same time, companies compete intensively for attention and access to recipients by sending them thousands of messages. Breaking out this noise and breaking through to the user's consciousness is always a success.