The Most Important Considerations for Email Marketing Success in 2023

Let's Start With The Obvious: Open Rates Aren't Everything

When it comes to email marketing, open rates have traditionally been seen as an important metric to track. However, with changes to iOS, many experts now believe that open rates are more of a "vanity metric" and that the best way to measure engagement is by looking at click rates and orders generated from each email. That being said, it's important to note that click rates don't always necessarily correlate to revenue. To get a more complete picture of your email performance, it's also helpful to look at revenue percentage.

And you want to make sure your email list actually consists of real people. You can use tools like Email On Acid (https://www.emailonacid.com) to help verify that people on your list isn't full of bots.

Aside from that, at a macro-level, more and more Apple users are using the email masking feature on their mobile phones to protect their info. That could be affecting your open rates

Create The Right Cadence and Follow-Up

It's not uncommon for people to only open a small percentage of the emails they receive.

This means that even if your open rates are high, there's a good chance that a significant portion of your audience is still not seeing your emails. That's why it's important to have the right cadence and follow-up strategy in place. Reusing old emails that have had good engagement in the past is something to consider, as it can help increase the chances that your message will be seen and acted upon. I know it may seem counter-intuitive but in this case (not only with email) a small portion of any audience on any marketing channel will actually remember your content (if you're lucky).

So if an email has converted customers in the past and you haven't used it in 2 months, send it again and just remove those that have converted from the segmented list. Bam. Sometimes the old content ideas still work.

Always Keep An Eye On Delivery and Reputation

One of the key factors in the success of any email marketing campaign is ensuring that your emails are actually being delivered to your recipients.

To do this, it's important to properly warm up your sender delivery and sender reputation in the first 30 days of your campaign.

This means sending emails to your most engaged audiences and following the recommendations of your email service provider (such as MailChimp or Constant Contact) to make sure you have a good reputation with inbox providers.

Attention to Detail and Copywriting Skills Still Matter (Duh...right?)

Of course, no matter how well you follow best practices for email delivery and cadence, it won't matter if your emails aren't well-written and error-free.

That's why attention to detail and strong copywriting skills are two of the most important qualities to look for in an email marketing specialist. From subject lines and preview text to the copy in the email and links, everything needs to be QA'd to ensure that your content makes sense and is error-free.

Now...all of this info is just the basics of what marketers need to know about when it comes to email marketing. If you want to dive even deeper, Joe Portsmouth (email and retention marketing expert) has an awesome email marketing newsletter/swipe file you may want to check out.

You can find it here: Free Email Marketing Swipe File