No matter your industry or target demographic, where is the one place that nearly every consumer spends time each day? Email! With more than 4 billion daily users, email continues to serve as a critical line of communication between brands and consumers.
The post-pandemic continuation of work-from-home culture combined with the modern trend of online shopping has also led marketers to observe a 77% increase in email engagement over the past 12 months. Most consumers even have multiple accounts that they check several times a day. The question becomes, how can you slide into all those inboxes and actually drive revenue for your company?
Break Through the Inbox Clutter
Multiple marketing studies highlight the fact that email marketing in 2024 still delivers an ROI between $36-$42 for every $1 spent. While new platforms do crop up from time to time that can help contribute to your brand’s growth, email marketing has remained constant in its ability to reach consumers, cultivate relationships, and gain conversions. The problem is, it’s not nearly enough to show up in 4.2 billion inboxes worldwide and expect results – you need a proven method of breaking through the clutter and connecting with your audience.
As a time-tested marketing agency, (human)x generally doesn’t subscribe to the “if everyone else does it, you should do it too” mentality, but when the statistics lead the way, we would be foolish not to follow. So when we see current data showing that 38% of brands are increasing their email budget and 52% are holding steady, we recommend that our clients take note.
Is your brand searching for new ways to revitalize its existing email marketing, generate new campaigns, or simply prepare for a future of growth? To help you maximize your results, the (human)x team has compiled a list of key strategies. Follow these tips to make your email marketing as successful as it can possibly be.
- Make it personal.
Audience segmentation and dynamic content lead the way to creating personalized emails that resonate with consumers. Studies show that segmented emails drive 30% more opens and 50% more click-throughs than their unsegmented counterparts. Consider segmenting and customizing your email list by demographic, location, past shopping behaviors, or engagement levels.
You can even set up behavior-triggered emails, such as abandoned shopping cart reminders, which have been shown to convert three times more than other automated emails. Include targeted, personalized messages, taking into consideration everything from your subject line (grab that attention!) to custom product recommendations (show your audience you understand them!) to location-based events and sales.
Keep in mind that the most effective email subject lines will make users curious or excited to see what’s inside, and the most effective messaging shows your readers you have solutions to their problems. Combining these factors into extremely personalized messaging is known as dynamic content creation, and it is one surefire way of connecting with your audience via email.
- Make it automated.
Creative teams are already stretched thin keeping up with short- and long-term marketing trends, so make life easier by delegating components of your email marketing to automations. Creating personalized content can be time- and labor-intensive, but powerful new AI and online automation tools can help you efficiently achieve higher personalization, create dynamic content for your emails, and simplify the audience segmentation process. 
Automations can be game changers for your marketing team, offering everything from predictive analytics and automated content creation to smart segmentation. AI can allow you to create efficiencies without losing the human feel of your brand.
You may even already be familiar with popular AI-intensive platforms like Adobe Campaign, Mailchimp, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud – all of which can be integrated into your brand’s email marketing to drive better results.
- Make it fun.
No one wants to pause work to check their email and find…more work. Draw consumers to your email campaigns by adding an element of gamification and fun! Gamification within emails can drive loyalty, engagement, and positive brand sentiment while also providing marketers with valuable user data. 
People already grab their phones to pass the time while waiting in line for coffee, at the doctor’s office for an appointment, or to be seated at a restaurant. Why not capture their attention during these idle times by adding game-like elements to your emails? In fact, with 55% of global website traffic coming from mobile devices, you’d be hard-pressed not to try.
Quizzes, polls, challenges – the options are endless! – and you can even use the AI tools mentioned above to help personalize the content. Keep in mind that emails with multimedia elements, images, and videos tend to perform best. Gamified email marketing not only generates positive brand sentiment, but also can provide valuable insights about user preferences and behaviors.
Make it timely.
Even the most engaging, personalized email campaigns can fall flat if your audience isn’t online or primed to see them, so pay attention to the timing of your blasts. According to 2023 HubSpot research, Tuesdays are optimal email marketing days and Sundays are the worst.
To take this data a step further, statistics show that the majority of your audience will be online between 9am and 3pm EST. This correlates so closely with western business hours, it’s easy to see that communicating with your audience while they’re in “work mode” will likely yield the best results.
Start Your Human-Centric Email Marketing Automation Today
Whether you send out email newsletters, new product shoutouts, or promotional feature announcements, you need an effective way to break through the noise and stop your brand’s emails from being sent to junk email folders. According to a Salecycle survey, 50% of consumers make purchases directly driven by marketing emails at least once per month. Your brand could see those conversions or better if you put the tips mentioned above into action.
We do acknowledge that starting this process can be daunting, particularly if your marketing team is already swamped with other important projects, deadlines, planning, and metrics. Save yourself the headache and reach out to a trusted media agency partner who knows the quickest, easiest ways to generate email marketing returns for your business.
(human)x can transform your brand’s email marketing by applying all of the human-centric methods discussed in this article and tailoring them to your needs, goals, and budget. Our team of marketing experts deliver so much more than data-driven insights and analysis-driven campaign strategy: we specialize in facilitating emotional connections between your brand and your customers that positively influence your relationship with one another.
And don’t just take our word for it! Scroll through our recent work with nationwide brands like Admiral Nelson, John Frieda, and Armstrong World Industries to see how we revitalized their email marketing and advertising campaigns. Find your own brand-changing partner in (human)x and start seeing results today.
