Email marketing is one of the top priorities when it comes to reaching out to customers post-pandemic. Despite the fact that it is one of the oldest surviving digital marketing channels and it also happens to be the one with the highest ROI, navigating your way to your subscribers’ inbox can be challenging in the new normal. 

Be it your email templates for business or the creative side of your brand; everything needs to be in sync with the larger purpose and overall market conditions. To help you pick the pace and thrive in 2022, I have created a list of seven infallible drivers of email marketing success to help you stay ahead of the curve. 

#1 Make Double Opt-In As Standard For Your Email Marketing Operations

One of the things that I have preached innumerable times in my career as a guest author at various websites is the importance of using double opt-in for list building. Many marketers use single opt-in because it is naturally easier to build your email list that way, but it impacts your email list quality to a very large extent. 

If you use the double-opt-in method, you are bound to attract fewer subscribers, and this may not be very exciting for round table conversations. But it is high time that every email marketer adopts double opt-in as a standard. This is the single most important aspect of doing your email marketing efforts right and getting a higher ROI as opposed to wasting time with ‘pseudo leads.’

#2 Double Down Your Efforts On Subject Line Creation

Another area where you need to invest your time and effort on a priority basis is your subject lines and preview text. Remember, you can pour in your entire soul to create the most alluring email templates for business and the smartest of email automation workflows, but none of this works unless the subscriber clicks. 

Thus, you should invest in creating crisp, compelling subject lines and preview texts that resonate with the subscribers’ emotional goals as opposed to your financial goals.

#3 Focus On Creating Better Visuals For Your Emails

Undoubtedly, email is the best performing digital marketing channel despite the rise of social media networks, but this doesn’t mean that you do not need to take cognizance of what social media has to offer to your subscribers. 

You definitely need to create better visuals for your emails to match the user experience your subscribers are fond of. This may require you to experiment with different formats of rich multimedia and rethink the way you utilize them. 

#4 Pick The Best Email Templates With Advanced Features

It is high time that email marketers start choosing the best of the email templates and leverage advanced features like interactivity. The user experience of emails has been sluggish since the 2000s, while websites have evolved drastically over the two decades. 

With the advent of mobile-first digital experiences, it is necessary that your email templates keep up with user expectations. This may be the most challenging aspect for many brands, but this will also become the greatest differentiator as we move towards website-like functional emails. 

#5 Keep Personalization At The Core Of Your Email Strategy

While personalization is among the most common words in any email marketer’s book, it remains an underutilized area. Mostly, personalization is limited to the fields in ESP tools and following the standard approaches to build a 360-degree subscriber persona; it is necessary that we recognize the value of truly personalizing the user journey based on business goals and individual affinities. 

This could be as simple as figuring out which products to cross-sell during different times of the year to an individual with a particular age or as complicated as catering to their evolving content consumption preferences with limited access to their interactions, i.e. email click-throughs.

#6 Rethink Your Email Frequency + Segmentation Strategy Often

Every year, we bump into research pieces claiming the ideal email frequency for different industries. You must take them with a pinch of salt as they are generalizations of what works for an entire industry and not the exact key to your success. A new brand with a fresh mailing list will definitely have an ideal mailing frequency different from an established company. 

It would be best if you experiment with different mailing frequencies with respect to segmentation to see what works the best for your email strategy. Also, you must revisit your mailing frequency and segmentation strategy at regular intervals.

#7 Don’t Be Afraid Of Discarding Dormant Leads At All

Discarding dormant leads is equally important as generating new leads for your email efforts. A subscriber who isn’t simply interested in what you have to say or sell always creates delusions for your email marketing strategy. 

They click through your message accidentally, giving false indicators or simply lowering your deliverability rates by not engaging with your emails consistently for stretched periods. Make the point to create a proper dormant lead discarding roadmap and implement it as a core part of your email strategy. This will help you refine your email metrics and make far better decisions as a marketer as you go forward in 2022.

Wrap Up

In this article, we haven’t discussed groundbreaking email marketing innovations but debunked the standard operating procedures. Follow these seven email marketing best practices keeping in mind the very purpose they serve, and you’ll never be worried about low ROI again. 

Author: Kevin George is the head of marketing at Email Uplers, that specializes in crafting Professional Email Templates, PSD to Email conversion, and Mailchimp Templates. Kevin loves gadgets, bikes & jazz, and he breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on email marketing blog.