12 Best-Practice Tips for Successful Email Marketing 2024

Email marketing is one of the most profitable channels in online marketing. Unlike other marketing channels - double optin provided - your subscribers have consciously consented to receive emails about the latest products and offers, and are thus not surprised when an offer actually lands in the inbox.

If used correctly, email marketing is therefore the perfect tool to acquire new customers, retain existing ones and build a real relationship with your subscribers.

What is meant by email marketing?

Often, email marketing is equated with newsletter marketing, which is too short a leap. In addition to regular newsletter campaigns, email marketing also includes automated email campaigns. So emails that are sent to your subscribers based on a previous action or after a certain period of time.

Transactional emails such as order or shipping confirmation can also be broadly classified under email marketing. Although these do not have an advertising character (at least they should not), they still contribute to the customer relationship.

What goals are pursued with email marketing?

Your visitors usually need 7 to 12 contacts before they decide on a product or service. Especially in times when the costs for this are constantly rising in the paid channels (Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads...), the demand for a marketing instrument is increasing, with which not every advertising contact has to be paid for again.

And this is where email marketing (again) comes into play. Pronounced dead and "dusty", it is still the most important form of communication to get in touch with (potential) customers and stay in touch. And without incurring additional costs with each email.

Broad objectives pursued with email marketing:

Acquiring new customers

Especially new prospects need significantly more than one contact with your brand before they decide to make a purchase. The process from prospects to first-time buyers is therefore often accompanied by (automated) emails. Automated email flows coupled with action-driven newsletter campaigns help to slowly introduce your subscribers to you and your products and to encourage them to buy at the right moment, with the right offer.

Customer retention

Even in 2024, emails are still the easiest way to build a relationship with your customers. With regular emails (automated or manual) you ensure that your subscribers remember you and your products.

Increasing repurchase rate

Converting non-buyers to first-time buyers, first-time buyers to second-time buyers and second-time buyers to repeat buyers, thus increasing the average customer value, is another, if not THE overarching goal that email marketing can support. This can be done via regular newsletter campaigns with information on new releases, offers or special actions as well as via automated email campaigns to these customer groups.

Who is email marketing particularly suitable for?

Due to the low costs and high return on investment, email marketing is also suitable for shops and companies with a small email list.

Especially if you focus on building the email list and the most important email automations (welcome, shopping cart abandoner and first-time buyer flows) from the start, the costs for such a Email Marketing-Tool, like GetResponse can be recouped directly without much additional monthly effort. With most providers, you pay per subscriber, so costs only increase when the number of subscribers increases.

And when the number of subscribers increases, the revenue generated by an email often increases as well.

For shops and companies with a large list, email marketing is the ideal tool to strengthen the customer relationship and at the same time free yourself from the ever-increasing costs in the paid channels. Although new customers will continue to be won primarily via Facebook, Instagram and Co., email marketing can ensure that these become profitable via the second and third purchase.

What are the Email Marketing Best Practices for 2024?

Encourages a real exchange with your subscribers

Previously, email marketing primarily went in one direction: from the senders to the recipients. In 2024, this no longer has to be the case.

Originally invented as a means of communication between at least two people, email marketing can also be used today for a real exchange between you and your subscribers.

With small surveys, which then enrich the profile of your subscribers, over rating requests to open questions, which promote a direct answer to your mail, you not only build a real relationship with your recipients, but also collect important insights and data that you can then use for personalizing your campaigns and email automations.

Especially "personally" written mails have a great potential to strengthen the customer relationship. This doesn't mean that you should write an email to each of your subscribers, but simply that you should regularly switch between stylish emails with headers and footers and pure text emails. Used in the right places, they promote direct exchange with your potential customers and thus strengthen the relationship.

Example of a "personal" mail after shopping cart abandonment at Tastillery

Personalize your emails

The more relevant your emails are to your subscribers, the more likely they are to be opened, clicked or forwarded.

However, to make your emails relevant, it is no longer enough to simply send a general email to your entire distribution list. They need to be personalized. In addition to the "classics" such as using the name in the text and your subject lines, it is also primarily about personalized content and product recommendations.

Possible personalizations that you can use:

1. Contents that are only output based on certain profile information
   
   For example, customers who do not yet participate in your loyalty program regularly get a paragraph displayed that explains the benefits of the program, while customers who already participate see their points.
2. Personalized product recommendations based on past behavior in the shop
   
   With email marketing tools like Klaviyo or Brevo product recommendations can be made based on past visitor behavior. This gives you the opportunity to focus on exactly the products that are relevant for your subscribers.
   ⁠Personalized product information

1. Product recommendations only for certain target groups
   
   If you have collected information about which categories/products your subscribers are interested in, you can also control product recommendations according to this information.
   
   Classic example: Women's products are sent out to women and men's articles to men.
   
   The more you tailor the contents of the emails to the interests of your subscribers, the more relevant they become.

Segment your email list

Instead of always sending your emails to your entire distribution list, you should segment your list by interest, buyer status and interaction rate. This, alongside personalizing the emails, also makes them more relevant for the respective subscribers.

Useful segments you should at least have:

1. Engaged in the last 90 days
   
   These are all subscribers who have opened your emails, clicked or otherwise been active in your shop in the last 90 days. To avoid jeopardising your delivery rate here, most of your campaign emails go to this segment.
   
   If you see open rates above 40% and good click rates, you can extend the segment to the last 120 days. If you see poor interaction rates, you go back to 60 days until you see better figures again.
2. Unengaged in the last 90 days
   
   The opposite of your engaged segment are the subscribers who no longer interact with your emails. This means they neither open nor click them, nor have they visited your shop recently. These so-called "unengaged users" should you write to every 2-3 months or for special actions (sales, product launches) in the hope of getting them reactivated.
   
   As the opening and click rates of these subscribers are usually very low, you want to throw them into the mix only sporadically so as not to endanger your general deliverability. You do this every 2-3 months (depending on your sending interval) and in between only send to the subscribers who still react to you, your email reputation has enough time to recover.
3. Non-buyers
   These are all subscribers who have put themselves on your distribution list, but have not yet been convinced to make a purchase. Since it becomes more difficult with every week that passes to turn these subscribers into first-time buyers, you should think about special non-buyer campaigns and ask what information may still be needed or what concerns there may still be.
4. First-time buyers
   The hurdle from the first to the second purchase is not quite as high as the one from the non- to the first-time purchase, but you should also give your attention to this group. Especially in the aftermath of the purchase you have the opportunity to ask for valuable feedback and to initiate the second purchase through targeted campaigns.
5. Segmentation based on gender or past purchased products
   If your assortment is divided into women, men or children, it also makes sense to take this subdivision into account when sending your email campaigns and to form corresponding segments.
   
   The same principle can also be applied to your product categories. Here, too, segments can be delimited that make the content of future mails more relevant.
   
   For example, if you have a shop for animal feed needs and know from the order history that your subscribers have only ordered dog food in the past, you create a corresponding segment and ensure in the future that these subscribers do not receive any emails with cat food (unless they have signaled that they also have a cat).

These were now five examples for meaningful segmentation, with which you can adjust your contents even more precisely to the needs of your customers.

Do not only send sales emails

The interests and needs of your customers should always be in the foreground in every email. Instead of just writing an email because your campaign plan prescribes it, think about what value you can really deliver.

In addition to emails about the latest products and offers, references to blog articles, guides or video tutorials should not be missing. Also recipe ideas and/or tips for the correct application of your products or even personal stories about you or your team, can be gladly worked into the campaign plan.

These do not always have the highest conversion rates, but in the long term they contribute to the customer relationship and make subscribers become real fans of your brand.

For example, Ahead Nutrition regularly provides tips & tricks around the topic of self-optimization. These emails are also aimed at getting the recipients closer to the purchase, but they also deliver value in advance.

Example of an informative mail from Ahead Nutrition

Test your emails

Also in 2024, regularly test subject lines, offers, and content of your emails. Although you can't measure subject lines anymore based on the IOS 15 update (emails from IOS 15 users are automatically considered open and therefore distort your numbers), metrics like clicks and orders have been more meaningful in the past.

Topics that you can test for your target group, for example:

• SignUp layer with ...

- different incentives to get subscribers to join your list (such as a 10% voucher vs. free shipping as a thank you for signing up for the newsletter)

- Multi-Step forms (to test if your SignUp rate drops when you ask for more information at signups).

• Mails that are personally written by the founders or support staff vs. mails in the "classic" email design with header and footer.
• Subject lines with emojis vs. without or a personal address vs. a generally formulated subject (Attention, here, as mentioned before, do not just pay attention to the opening rate)
• Different shipping times to find out at what times of the day your target group prefers to be contacted
• When A/B testing, make sure to only change one element at a time, so you know later which of your ideas increased the click and conversion rate.

Optimize your emails for mobile devices

What has long been true in the shop is also true in the email area: mobile first.

Although most email editors still start with the desktop version, most of your subscribers open the mails on their mobile devices.

To find out what the share is for you, you can easily find out by looking under Acquisition > All Accesses > Channels in the Google Analytics for the device distribution (as a second dimension) via your email channel.

Analytics-Device-Distribution-Email-Traffic

If you see a high percentage of mobile traffic here, you also know that the emails were previously accessed on mobile.

To optimize your emails for mobile:

• Work in a single column, as two- or three-column layouts otherwise look quite cramped.
• Place the most important information directly at the beginning of your mails.
• Work with at least a font size of 14px, so that your emails are also easy to read on mobile devices.
• Place your buttons so that they are noticed and can also be clicked on a touchscreen.
• Use images sparingly and ensure that they are embedded in the email in the lowest possible resolution. Use tools like tinypng.com to reduce your images without loss of quality in file size.

Regularly clean your list

If the opening, click and conversion rates of your emails are consistently decreasing, this is usually an indication that they are no longer arriving in the recipients' inbox, but in the promotion or even spam folder.

The cause is often that emails have been sent to the entire distribution list for months on end and therefore also went to subscribers who have not interacted with the mails for a long time.

This means: if your emails are no longer opened, clicked or even marked as spam, the respective email providers also notice this and downgrade you as not particularly trustworthy.

In order not to endanger your general delivery rate, it is therefore advisable - in addition to the segmentation from point 3 - to regularly clean up the email list.

Measures that you should take for this:

• Always give your subscribers the possibility to unsubscribe from your newsletter with simple means. That means: unsubscribe links should be directly visible and not be hidden somewhere in the fine print. Better one more unsubscriber than "dead" email addresses that send the signal with every shipment that your emails are not relevant.
• Also segment all recipients who have not opened a mail from you within a defined period of time - depending on your sending interval - or clicked or otherwise interacted with your shop. Send them automatically one or two emails asking if there is still interest in your mails. If there is no reaction to this, then you take these subscribers off your email list.

Don't buy email addresses

Another tip to avoid ending up in the spam folder of your subscribers and one that explains itself: In 2024, you should - as tempting as it may sound - not buy email addresses. Although these may bring you short-term success, they have medium and long-term impacts on your general deliverability.

The more of the purchased addresses bounce (i.e., cannot be delivered because the email address is not or no longer available), unsubscribe or even mark you as spam, the more likely you are to be classified as untrustworthy and irrelevant by the respective email providers.

The result: Even with contacts who actually want to receive mails from you, your mails end up in the promotion or spam folder. Getting out of there again is a long process, which costs you significantly more turnover in the meantime than you previously earned with bought addresses.

Have a welcome track for new subscribers

Especially for smaller lists, it often doesn't pay to send a manual email campaign every week. The effort to create such a campaign is usually higher than the actual yield. It is all the more important to have emails in the background that go to the recipients automatically after signing up for the newsletter.

An email track that provides new subscribers with relevant content in the first days and weeks after signing up is therefore ideal for converting non-buyers into first-time buyers.

Automate your email campaigns

In addition to the welcome track, there are other behaviors that you can automatically respond to with your subscribers.

Abandoned shopping carts, a birthday email or even emails that complement the purchased products sensibly or where the buyers are reminded in time to resupply before the stock is used up, can be wonderfully automated and reach the recipients at exactly the right time.

The most important automations you should have:

• Welcome journey to turn non-buyers into first-time buyers.
• Shopping cart abandoner flow to recover abandoned shopping carts.
• Resupply reminder to remind in time of the reordering of consumables.
• Post-Purchase mails that strengthen the relationship to your customers and result in follow-up purchases.
• Requests for ratings or participation in surveys to gather valuable feedback.

Just because you should particularly focus on Email Automations, does not mean that you should only do so. Ideally, you should ensure a healthy mix of automated emails and campaigns.

Regularly give a new incentive to join your email list

Always the same banner, always the same discount coupon as an incentive to sign up for your newsletter, sounds uncreative throughout the year. The only promise you make with it is that your emails will be as boring as your ideas to win new subscribers.

Similar to the creatives in the paid area, you should therefore also regularly switch your newsletter banners. Even within the website visit.

For example, you could promise "regular tips & tricks directly to your email inbox" in the blog area, rather focus on product consulting on product detail pages and promote your discount coupon for signing up for the newsletter on all other pages. As different needs (purchase vs. consultation vs. knowledge building) are addressed here, no one is irritated that the invitation to sign up appears several times.

Celebrate the launch of new products

Announcing new products with just one email is a thing of the past. In 2024, it's about celebrating the launch of your products and getting more subscribers for your email list in the process.

Got Bag - the world's first backpack made from recycled ocean plastic - for example, regularly conducts a one-day drop action of their limited colors. Here, certain colors are available in the shop on just one day, which are exclusively announced via the newsletter distribution list.

Product launch

So if you want to be there, you have to put yourself on the distribution list.

Advantage of the whole thing? Everyone who has signed up for the action can also be provided with further information about the advantages of the products or the production process before the launch. This stirs up anticipation for the products even before the launch.

Which tools support the implementation of email marketing best practices?

In addition to the tips and strategies mentioned here, the be-all and end-all for successful email marketing is a professional tool, such as GetResponse with which you can design, manage and send your emails.

If you are currently looking for a tool or want to change your existing one, here are a few that you should consider.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is probably the most well-known newsletter tool for small and medium-sized businesses. In addition to classic email marketing, more and more email automations can be implemented.

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)

Brevo is the European Mailchimp alternative.

Compared to Mailchimp, Brevo has significantly fewer integrations, but still covers the most common shop systems.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a US-based marketing automation tool that specializes particularly in e-commerce companies. Here again, the most common shop systems can be integrated directly via the platform with just a few steps.

Compared to Mailchimp and Brevo, Klaviyo particularly convinces with better analysis and segmentation possibilities and sees itself not only as a pure newsletter tool.

There are also other providers, such as CleverReach , ActiveCampaign and Mailerlite, with which successful email marketing can be carried out. On our platform OMR Reviews you will find a comparison of Email Marketingtools.

Conclusion

Email marketing has the reputation of no longer being timely. With these 12 tips and the right tool, you can bring fresh air back into your distribution list, transform non-buyers into first-time buyers and bind existing customers to you.