Navigating the Email Marketing Landscape

Mitch Tarr

There’s a reason for email marketing's staying power over the years

Since the 1970s, email marketing has demonstrated consistently strong ROI for businesses of all sizes. Despite being one of the older channels available to marketers, email has retained its stronghold in the advancing marketing industry even amongst younger audiences - with 68% of millennials claiming that promotional emails have influenced their purchase decisions in some way. 

68% of millennials claim that promotional emails have influenced their purchase decisions in some way. 

Reinforced by high acquisition and retention rates, there’s no doubt that email marketing is an incredibly effective way to grow your brand. That said, the landscape of email marketing has changed significantly in the last few years and continues to do so.

  • Email providers have developed sophisticated filtering features to identify spam based on sending behaviors (also known as reputation filtering).
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) has raised the bar for the level of personalization that consumers expect from emails.
  • An increasingly mobile global environment has changed the way people engage with email content.

The key to navigating this changing landscape is to do away with short-term email marketing tricks, opting instead for time-tested and proven email strategies that will continue to work for you.

Here are just a few:

1.  Testing

Getting the most out of your email marketing efforts requires a decent amount of testing and tweaking. You can hire a copywriter with a hefty per-letter pricing structure, or you can sit around a boardroom table and brainstorm all day long…but you won’t know which of your subject lines has the best pulling power until you run some basic tests.

I’m working with a client now, and we’re testing three different subject lines for each message we send out. Sometimes we’re testing a one-word change in the message (which can make a big difference), and sometimes we’re crafting three totally unique messages. The learning that comes from this exercise is really valuable to help you get a handle on what YOUR audience responds to.

If you want to lock down a solid email marketing strategy, you’re going to need data in order to make improvements. Try looking at heat maps to get some visual insight on how readers interact with your email design. Compare your email campaign performance with industry benchmarks.

Be wary when it comes to benchmarks, however. Expecting all of your campaigns to meet the “standard” 20% open rate is going to paint an inaccurate picture when it comes to segment-specific performance. Keep your benchmarks realistic and optimize incrementally to improve the overall effectiveness of your email marketing message.

2.  Focus on one key point

One common problem I see in a lot of emails that come through my inbox is what we call “buffet style” marketing. The notion behind this approach is that if you lay all of your cards out on the table, then it’s likely that someone might be interested.

The problem with “buffet-style” marketing is that it overlooks actual human behavior. A confused customer is more likely to get decision fatigue and reject your message (a.k.a. delete your email). Instead, keep it simple for your reader by sending emails with a single point and compelling reason to take action. This way, the only choice their brain has to make is YES or NO.

Let’s put it this way. Which invitation are you more likely to respond to:


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If you want to lock down a solid email marketing strategy, you’re going to need data in order to make improvements. Try looking at heat maps to get some visual insight on how readers interact with your email design. Compare your email campaign performance with industry benchmarks.

Be wary when it comes to benchmarks, however. Expecting all of your campaigns to meet the “standard” 20% open rate is going to paint an inaccurate picture when it comes to segment-specific performance. Keep your benchmarks realistic and optimize incrementally to improve the overall effectiveness of your email marketing message.

2.  Focus on one key point

One common problem I see in a lot of emails that come through my inbox is what we call “buffet style” marketing. The notion behind this approach is that if you lay all of your cards out on the table, then it’s likely that someone might be interested.

The problem with “buffet-style” marketing is that it overlooks actual human behavior. A confused customer is more likely to get decision fatigue and reject your message (a.k.a. delete your email). Instead, keep it simple for your reader by sending emails with a single point and compelling reason to take action. This way, the only choice their brain has to make is YES or NO.

Let’s put it this way. Which invitation are you more likely to respond to:

(A) Hey, let’s grab lunch. We can get sushi, tacos, cheeseburgers, Thai, BBQ, salad, poke, or Indian food. What do you want?

(B)  Wanna go out for sushi?  I know a great place.

Chances are you chose option B, because it gets you to a decision faster. A short series of YES decisions can quickly usher your reader towards a purchase.

3.  Keep it short

It’s not very often that you send an email out without caring what happens. Even in an informational message, I like to know which piece of information was the most valuable for my audience. The goal of most subject lines is to get your reader into the email message, and the goal of most email messages is to get your reader to take action.

It might be tempting to provide tons of context to your readers so that they can make an informed decision. But you’ll find that overwhelming readers with content isn’t the best way to evoke action from them - which is your goal to begin with, remember?

In email, time and space are at a premium. Most email service providers cut off subject lines in the preview, which is why 82% of Marketers send emails with subject lines of 60 characters or less.

82% of Marketers send emails with subject lines of 60 characters or less.

It’s also important to keep in mind that most people are viewing email content on their mobile devices, so you want to avoid giving them long blocks of text to read on a small screen. If you’re still not convinced, run a test! You’ll probably see what we’ve seen, which is that short will outperform long (despite what most copywriters might tell you).

4.  Segment your audience

Segmentation in email marketing seems like a given, but most businesses won’t do this. Which is a shame, given that 40% of consumers say that most promotions aren’t interesting to them and 37% delete most emails without even looking at them!

To segment your audience is to categorize your email list according to interests, purchase behavior, demographic information, or any other data point that is relevant for you. The idea is that tailoring your email messaging to each individual category will result in higher open and click rates.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you have a promotion to roll out. You could target a long-term customer and a newcomer with the same message. Or...

You could appeal to the long-term customer’s sense of brand loyalty by presenting the discount as a “Valued Customer Promotion”.

You could nurture loyalty in the early stages of your new customer relationship by presenting them with a “New Customer Discount”.

Same campaign > different audiences > different messages > better performance. It’s that simple.

In Summary...

If you’re zoned in on these four fundamental email marketing strategies, you’ll find yourself better positioned to navigate and evolve with the changing email marketing landscape. Still unsure if you’re doing it right? Feel free to reach out to us for a free email marketing audit. We’d love to help you find new ways to grow.

Mitch Tarr President ZinMarketing

About The Author

Mitch Tarr is the author of Email Marketing Mastery: Accelerate Your Business Using Email Marketing.