What kinds of email marketing strategies should you implement in 2023?
As trends and techniques come and go and technology continues to consume more and more of our work life, the ways we reach out and connect with leads and customers cannot remain the same. Even the basic email isn’t what it once was.
Now it’s all about using emojis and attention-grabbing headlines and copy. The email body itself has to be well-designed with ‘snappy verbiage and great linkage.’
If it’s been a good while since you’ve reviewed your email marketing strategy, it’s for the benefit of your company to change that. Of course, figuring out new strategies can be a daunting, overwhelming task.
We get that.
You may need some inspiration to get started, and we’re here to deliver.
In this blog post, we share 10 examples of email marketing strategies that are proven to work:
- Interactivity
- Personalization
- Welcome emails
- Following up
- Winback emails
- Educational emails
- Abandoned cart emails
- Seasonality
- Loyalty reward programs
- Reviews
Table of Contents
10 Examples of Email Campaign Strategies
Let’s get right to the chase.
An email marketing strategy is a set of goals and procedures marketers and businesses use to capture leads, engage customers, enhance brand perception, and achieve marketing goals.
Here are 10 proven examples of email marketing strategies that work for all businesses. You don’t have to implement everything; just mix and match until you find the right recipe!
1. Interactivity
Interactivity should be part of any effective email marketing strategy.
If you’re only sending static emails to your leads and customers, your company is missing out on conversions. According to interactive content company SnapApp, when it comes to teaching your lead or customer about something, static content works only 70 percent of the time. On the other hand, interactive content imparts information efficiently 93 percent of the time — proving the importance of interactivity in content marketing.
You don’t have to go nuts with your interactivity, either. Take a look at this email from food brand Pret A Manger.
You can click any six drink flavors and fill your virtual cup with smoothie or frappe goodness. It’s so easy to visualize what your beverage will look like when it’s right in front of you in an email.
The link to change the mix is still live so that you can play around with Pret A Manger’s interactive content in real-time. That ought to get you inspired to create your interactive email campaign.
Read also: 13 Key Trends To Focus On In Your 2021 Marketing Strategy
2. Personalization
We’ve talked a lot about the benefits of email personalization for both your company and your customers. Whether you put the lead or customer’s name in the headline or address them specifically in the opening line [Hi, {first name}], that little bit of effort goes a long way.
Data from Campaign Monitor discovered that conversions go up by 10 percent and click-through rates by 14 percent when you send a personalized email — meaning personalization can improve email deliverability and can be a successful email marketing strategy.
Also, tailor-made and targeted emails show that you care about your customers, enhancing brand awareness and improving your customer’s engagement with your business.
This simple email from makeup brand Sephora is a great example of email personalization. It addresses the recipient, Allie, by name.
It doesn’t hurt that Sephora also compliments her and gives her a 20% off coupon.
Read also: 9 Proven B2B Email Marketing Best Practices for Beginners
3. Welcome Emails
Do you send welcome emails to your new leads?
Hopefully, the answer is yes.
According to a 2018 WordStream article, the humble welcome email can boost revenue by 320% compared to other promotional emails.
The welcome email is easy to send and effective, so what are you waiting for?
Welcome emails should be part of your email marketing strategy, and here are some excellent examples of welcome emails you might want to emulate if you need some inspiration.
As you can see, you have a few options with your welcome email. You can take the time to introduce your company and the benefits of using your products or services as IKEA did.
You can tell people what they’re in for, like the Birchbox or Target examples above. You can also mention first-purchase deals, giving the new customer a freebie or discount for signing up.
Read also: How To Write The Perfect Christmas Email [+ Fresh Subject Lines]
4. Following Up
It can be a bummer to send an email to a large group of leads to only hear back from — maybe — half of them. It happens every day to email marketers, and it’s not always their fault. Emails get accidentally sent to the spam filter, people change their email addresses, and hey, we marketers sometimes misspell someone’s email address.
And yes, sometimes people did see your email and are flat-out not interested.
The only way to sort matters out is with a follow-up email.
It can be scary to send an email after not hearing back, but it’s important to do so. To prepare for the likelihood of getting no response, write several email scripts. These should include the initial email, a follow-up, and even a second follow-up.
B2B marketing brand ZoomInfo shared some startling statistics about following up in the realm of sales. According to them, many salespeople are deterred after one ignored email, with almost half (44 percent) failing to follow up again.
Read also: B2B Email Marketing Examples From Billion Dollar Companies
Despite that, leads and potential customers want more from their companies.
ZoomInfo found that more than half of the people surveyed (75%) expected at least two follow-up phone calls, sometimes even four. A much smaller percentage of people (just 12%) were willing for companies to “try as many times as it takes to get a hold of them.”
That’s a little extreme, but the stats prove that you shouldn’t give up after one ignored email.
When you write your follow-up email script, don’t do it in such a way that you’re treating the lead like they ignored you intentionally. Have some faith and be persistent. Give them more means of reaching you, such as by phone. You can see what we mean in the example shown above.
Here’s a video explaining some of the best email marketing strategy secrets:
Read also: The 10 Best Opt-in Email Strategies (with Examples)
5. Winback Emails
Related to the follow-up email is the win-back email. By this point, you can assume whether your leads have an idle email account, an inactive primary account, an inactive secondary account, or if they’re just blowing you off.
According to Marketing Land, when they studied other companies and marketers like them, they discovered that 33 of 100 companies used win-back emails.
Up to 92% of these emails wound up in the respective inboxes of the intended recipients. The open rate was 12%, which, while not amazing, ain’t bad, either.
There’s even more positive news!
In their own win-back email campaign, Marketing Land discovered that most of those customers (45% of recipients) who got the first win-back message were willing to read further emails.
Even better is that 300 days later, a good chunk (25%) continued reading emails.
There are plenty of win-back examples out there. We’ll show you a few from Sephora, Netflix, and Bath & Body Works.
Like with any email, sweetening the deal with freebies, discounts, and coupons never hurts.
6. Educational Emails
Why did your leads subscribe to your email newsletter? Is it to get deals, or is it to learn something? If you’ve done your work, it’s both.
Educational emails can be incredibly valuable.
Sure, there are no coupons, but they give the reader something to chew on. They can help the reader be better at their own business or personal life, and who doesn’t want that?
Not only will readers come back to you again and again to learn more, but it’s beneficial for you, too.
Educational emails get to position your company as an authority in your niche.
Here’s what we mean.
This DIY company focused on pizza-making for their educational email. They provide several links, including making pizza dough, creating awesome pizza art (we see you, Iron-Man!), and even hacking your own pizza box.
These links may be to articles or videos, but you want to click them either way.
The more fun your educational content is, the more engaged your readers are bound to be.
Empower your marketing with the best strategies for maximum impact – learn more in our expert guide! 
Read also: Email Retargeting Blueprint For Your Business [+ Examples]
7. Abandoned Cart Emails
Earlier in this article, we touched upon leads intentionally or accidentally ignoring your emails. What you do in that case is follow up a few times and maybe send a win-back email.
If you win back your lead and they start shopping, what would you do if they stop just short of the checkout button? It’s time to roll out the abandoned cart email.
Email automation software Moosend says that a good chunk (45%) of those abandoned cart emails you send will be seen and even opened by the recipient. What’s more, the leads were also receptive to the message in the email, with most (50%) of them buying something.
Here are some abandoned cart email examples:
Adding a discount code like this may convince reluctant shoppers.
We wrote about Chubbies before, and we really like the wording of their abandoned cart email. It’s playful and makes it sound like the company is doing all the work for you just in the hopes that you’ll check out and complete the purchase.
Read also: 50 Actionable Email Marketing Tips to Engage Readers in 2021
8. Seasonality
Depending on your company’s type, you can theme your products to the holiday calendar.
A HubSpot SlideShare from 2015 found that most marketers are already prepared for holiday campaigns before Halloween (49% in all). That makes now the perfect time to get started with your seasonal emails.
Need some ideas? We’ve got you covered.
This Halloween email from restaurant Strada isn’t oversaturated with holiday goodness. There’s some orange, a “trick or treat” reference, and pumpkins are strewn about.
It’s simple, but it works.
The makeup brand Benefit, on the other hand, played up all the elements of St. Patrick’s Day. There are references to kissing, a leprechaun, a green hat, a pot of gold, and the mannequin is wearing a green polka-dotted dress.
Finally, there’s this Christmas email from retailer Curioos. There are Christmas trees in the background, so it screams seasonal, but it’s not over-the-top about it.
Read also: 17 Powerful Marketing Strategies To Grow Business Faster
9. Loyalty Reward Emails
If a customer sticks with you for a long time, they should get something out of it.
In fact, they may expect to.
So says Access Development, an organizational private discount network.
In their 2018 Customer Engagement & Loyalty Statistics Report, they found that, in the instance of mobile messaging from customers, wanted loyalty rewards points or coupons and other incentives.
Loyalty reward programs should be an integral part of your email marketing campaign.
This email from Chipotle is a customer loyalty reward email done right. The company has shown gratitude for using its services. Customer ‘Smiles Davis’ has earned 50 bonus points for trying out its delivery services.
While you don’t have to use the same content if that doesn’t fit your company’s brand voice, your email should have a similar copy telling your customers how much you value them.
Read also: 10 Best Trigger Email Marketing Campaigns (+ 5 Top Software)
10. Review Emails
Retailer Figleaves says they had more conversions (12.5% more) on their products after customers reviewed them. The more reviews, the better, it seemed, as conversions were sometimes as high as 83.9% of customers left more than 20 reviews.
We all know that reviews help sell our products and services, but how do we willingly get people to leave them?
By giving something back to your customers for their time and trouble, you too can see those kinds of conversions. Social media is an excellent channel to get reviews, especially from the younger generation. This will help you improve your social media marketing efforts by implementing the effective social media strategy.
Just look at how clothing brand Boden used reviews as part of their email marketing campaign.
The language in their copy is very gracious, such as the “big hearty thank you.”
Although there’s no coupon code in this example, all those who leave a review could win themselves account credit worth $1,000!
If you’re going this route, make it easy for your customers to review your products. The links to the clothes the customer recently bought are right at the end of the email in the above email.
They only have to click the “Review it now” button, and they’re off the to races.
Conclusion
Effective email marketing strategies like the ones we outlined above can generate more leads, create loyal customers, boost sales, and increase conversions.
Most of the email marketing campaign examples were simple to implement, so what are you waiting for?
There’s a catch, though.
Even though you can manually implement the email marketing campaign strategies mentioned in this blog post, we live in an era where everything is automated. So why do the repetitive, tedious tasks by yourself?
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software with integrated marketing automation can help you implement most of the strategies mentioned above.
That said, most CRM software can cost thousands of dollars every year, burning through your company’s marketing funds.
Fortunately, there’s an alternative: EngageBay.
EngageBay is an all-in-one marketing, sales, and customer support CRM software built for SMBs. The software offers tools for email personalization, a drag-and-drop email form builder, predesigned templates, smart email list segmentation, trigger emails, email template builder, marketing automation, advanced tracking and reporting, social media marketing, drip campaigns, broadcasts — the list goes on…
The best part?
Even the Pro plan costs under $80 a month — and you get unlimited contacts!
Sign up for a free version today and check out the fantastic tools for yourself. Our team can also guide you through the product for no cost at all!
👉Empower your email marketing with the best opt-in strategies for maximum impact – learn more in our expert guide! 💪
