The most efficient way to deliver high fidelity personalization in your daily email, and drive over 11x return on spend (works seamlessly with your existing email service provider).
Infinitely expand your brands photography with Curator™ AI. Generate new product photography that’s indistinguishable from the originals, and combines multiple products together.
Create, manage, deploy, and target an unlimited number of personalized messages. Deliver any of the messages from your pool through a single image URL and link embedded within email, SMS, mobile, or on your website.
Zembula connects with any enterprise data source. If you don’t see a specific data source here or have a custom data source, we will always connect it for free.
The most efficient way to deliver high fidelity personalization in your daily email, and drive over 11x return on spend (works seamlessly with your existing email service provider).
Infinitely expand your brands photography with Curator™ AI. Generate new product photography that’s indistinguishable from the originals, and combines multiple products together.
Create, manage, deploy, and target an unlimited number of personalized messages. Deliver any of the messages from your pool through a single image URL and link embedded within email, SMS, mobile, or on your website.
Integrations
Connect with 100+ integrations
Zembula connects with any enterprise data source. If you don’t see a specific data source here or have a custom data source, we will always connect it for free.
Email marketing is a critical part of your marketing strategy.
No news there, right?
But where people and brands struggle is getting beyond the basics of email marketing and into the next level stuff.
You know the email marketing tips and strategies that can help boost your open, click, and conversion rates.
That’s the good stuff that really makes a difference between a successful email and one that gets archived never to see the light of day again.
In this post, we want to give you some of those really actionable email marketing tips that help move you beyond the basics and help you see some real results.
Ready to dig in?
1. Understand your numbers
One of the best features of having so much data about customers at our fingertips today is it opens up a lot of opportunities to see where your readers are responding.
To benefit, know your numbers and what they mean. That way you can craft a strategy that impacts them in a positive way.
2. Always be testing
See email marketing tip #1. The advanced data you can get from your email service providers allows you to experiment with the content you send out.
Always test from the simple things like headlines to the more complex including offers, coupons, and even design style.
3. Send at the right time
When it comes to scheduling your emails to go out, don’t pick a time at random and call it a day. There have been many studies, including this one from CoSchedule, that have figured out the best days and times to reach your customers.
It might not seem like a big deal, but even a small lift in the number of people who see your emails can result in higher open and click rates. So why leave it to chance?
4. Include multiple call to actions
You know what you want your readers to do, right? But are you both telling them and giving them plenty of chances to actually follow through?
The standard marketing advice is to often include a nice shiny call to action button at the bottom of your email. But try featuring a number of different ways for your readers to click including images, buttons, and text links.
5. Think about your design
Of course, the copy of your email matters, but let’s face it, the look of your email should too. Having an email template design that is visually appealing, on brand, and jumps out to your reader can go a long way.
Don’t forget to make your designs mobile responsive too.
6. Get your readers involved
An easy and effective way to do that is through interactive content. Content that gets your readers to actively engage with tends to see higher click through rates. Plus, people love it.
Use scratch-its, smash-its, spin-its, and pull-its and other kinds of kinetic emails to engage your readers and get them to click. Seeing the bonuses and prizes they can get through interactive emails will plant a positive feeling in their brains that can only mean good things for your brand.
7. Send survey emails
All too often, brands aren’t creating multiple email campaigns. Remember, you can get a ton of information from your customers through your email, all you have to do is ask.
That’s where the survey email comes in. It’s one of the many types of emails you should be sending to your readers. This doesn’t have to be complicated, even 3-5 question 30 second surveys can provide you with tons of great information on the things that are going to matter to your readers. From there, you can craft emails that promote those messages.
8. Utilize white space
Have you ever opened the email app on your phone only to discover a giant wall of text staring at you? Yea, that’s not great.
Most people, when they see that, are going to close the app — or worse, delete the email. When about half of all emails are opened on mobile devices, you have to take that into account when writing copy. One way to do that is to make sure there is plenty of white space that invites the reader to keep scrolling.
9. Don’t forget about email capture forms
The actual emails are no doubt the biggest part of email marketing, but you also have to get people on your email list. That’s why your sign up forms should be a really important part of your overall email strategy too.
Figure out the best places to put these capture forms on your site. Use pop-ups and slide in forms to target readers, grab their attention, and entice them to get on your list with a great offer.
10. Segment your audience
This is one of the most common email marketing tips you’ll find but lots of brands still aren’t doing it. Segmenting your list has a ton of benefits for your brand:
Makes it easier to personalize content
You can run new tests and trials on specific segments
You can identify your 1,000 true fans and early adopters
Makes it easier to see where your readers are signing up
And so on.
Even if you have a small list, you can start segmenting and glean some great insights.
11. Reward loyalty
Loyal customers are a magical thing in business. But all too often marketers are spending most of their focus on finding new customers versus getting current customers to come back for more.
When you segment your list (see what we mean) to highlight your current customers, you can use your emails to give them special treats. Send them discounts, coupons, and special offers — and don’t forget to make those emails interactive!
12. Reactivate readers
It doesn’t matter how amazing you are at email marketing, there will be a point in the life of ever email list where a percentage of readers have fallen away. This happens for a number of reasons; they aren’t interested anymore, your emails might have gone to spam, they’ve just forgotten to click.
Use reactivation emails to get some of these unengaged readers back into the fray. You can use a coupon or discount or simply ask them if they want to be unsubscribed.
Plus, with a cleaner list, you’ll have more accurate stats too.
13. Give your copy a boost
It never hurts to review your email copy every few months. Sometimes, things get stale, or a joke that tied in with a particular pop culture event is now yesterday’s news.
Take this time to also really think about not only your messaging but how the people on your list are reading it too. Today, a much more casual and friendly approach is what is getting on people’s radars, if your emails feel a bit stuffy, now is a great time to tweak your copy and give it a refresh.
14. Use psychology
You don’t need a PhD in psychology to understand how to best use it in your email marketing. In fact, we’ve got a whole guide on it.
Understanding the basics behind the motivations of your readers and how to trigger responses can go a long way in getting some real results from your email list.
15. Set up your email calendar in advance
There are a few days every year where a perfectly themed email can land. We’re talking about New Year’s Day, the 4th of July, and Black Friday to name a few. But in your industry, there might be other days that you can send out a great email and grab your readers attention.
The last thing you want to do is scramble the night before a holiday email trying to come up with something clever. So make sure you put these dates in your calendar now to get a head start on coming up with a killer idea.
Final thoughts
These advanced email marketing tips should be enough to get you started in your next strategy meeting. As you move beyond the basics, think about what you can do to keep improving your emails and engaging your readers.
Liz Froment
Liz Froment is a content writer at Zembula. A graduate of University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Liz is a travel aficionado, Boston sports fan, and maple syrup connoisseur.
What Movable Ink Is Doing Wrong (and what Zembula gets right)
Being able to use your own data in email campaigns seems like it should be easy enough. However, those that have tried to do so know how hard it truly is to use the data you’ve worked so hard to collect.
Your data is probably spread out in multiple databases across your organization. You probably have an ESP, a CRM, a commerce platform, a loyalty management system, and many, many more. Being able to create highly personalized emails based on the data in these solutions is becoming more and more crucial to the success of all kinds of businesses.
The problem is getting all the data to be available and usable in your email campaigns. It is impossible to do this without the help of a solution. And for a while, Movable Ink was the best choice to get this done for you.
Movable Ink has helped many marketers create more personalized email campaigns. The problem of making it easy still remains. To use Movable Ink it takes a lot of time and manpower. Making changes to your email content is cumbersome and time-consuming.
This is where Zembula comes in. Zembula’s mission is to make email personalization easy!
Here are three ways Zembula helps marketers make the most of their data.
Our modular email approach:
Zembula Dimensions™ uses Smart Banners™ and Smart Blocks™ to house all the live image content within your email. This makes it easy for you to create live email content and swap it out after you hit send!
Here are some key benefits to our modular approach:
You will never need to touch your email HTML after you add it once.
Automation is easy and you can schedule content in our platform.
No more segmentation because our images update at the moment of open and are unique to each recipient.
We don’t use apps:
Our integrations are easy to set up. In fact, most of them are already there for you when you sign up. You can connect our platform to any data source or API. Because we don’t use apps, (hardcoded images that are inflexible and rigidly defined) our solution is flexible to fit your needs.
Here are some key benefits to our live images over apps:
No hard coding images.
Making changes is easy because our images are more flexible than apps.
Our editor is user-friendly and built with marketers in mind:
Ease of use is at the core of our business, so it only makes sense that our product would be, well, easy to use. Our platform is designed to be used by marketers. You don’t need our help (although we are certainly here for you if you want us) to create sophisticated email personalization. We put the power in your hands! Our editor allows you to drag and drop different data points into images and then design them how you see fit.
Here are some key benefits to our easy-to-use editor:
No coding necessary. Our platform generates a code snippet from your design. All you do is copy and paste.
Drag and drop your data into the image.
Total design control. You can use custom fonts, colors, icons, backgrounds, and more!
With email marketing evolving so quickly it can be hard to keep up with the latest and greatest. Email personalization is getting more complex and advanced. It can seem a bit daunting to keep up with your competitors, but Zembula is here to help!
Want to see how we do real-time email?
Cheyenne Miner
Director of Marketing
Cheyenne is the Director of Marketing at Zembula where she gets to collaborate and coordinate with a team of marketing masterminds. On the weekends, you can find her in the backcountry of the Pacific Northwest, or not, because they don’t have cell towers out there.
Why Using a Scratch-Off in Email is Your Best Bet in 2019
The battle over attention has been raging since, well, since forever. Technology and the incredible amount of content being created every day hasn’t helped in terms of getting people to focus.
That can be seen in the decline of email open and click-through rates. As of early 2018, Epsilon found that “email click rates in North America have failed to increase on a year-over-year basis for 18 consecutive quarters.”
Yikes.
So how to combat that?
Going all in on interactive content
One way is through interactive content. This type of content is sticky. It keeps bringing readers back to your site again and again.
Plus, interactive content works. In a poll from Litmus, creating interactive email experiences is one of the most commonly cited trends that marketers are focusing on — now and into the future.
It helps build brand loyalty with readers, it produces higher click through rates, and it gets people actively engaging in your stuff.
And that’s exactly what you need right now to combat lagging attention spans and content shock where you only have a few seconds to grab a reader.
Today, we’re going to look at one specific type of interactive content using scratch-off in emails. You’ll see why this is a really cool way to get readers invested in your brand.
Diving into scratch-off emails
First, the basics.
What is a scratch-off email?
If you’ve ever gotten a lottery style scratch card or needed to get the pin number off a gift card, then you’ll be familiar with the experience. Basically, you take your fingernail or a dime and scratch a box that has a thin layer of coating over it revealing a prize or number underneath.
Part of the reason why scratch-offs are so popular is that they tap into the psychology behind reveal marketing.
When you have one of those cards in your hand you’re curious, very few people are going to put it down because they don’t want to miss out on the prize. And the kinetic nature of physically having to perform an action to get a result makes you emotionally more attached to the process.
Now, take all of those same concepts and apply it to email marketing. With scratch-off emails you can.
How Scratch-It Emails Work
You’ve got the basics down, so let’s take a look at a scratch-it email in action.
Here’s what it would look like to your reader in their inbox.
Pretty cool, right?
This type of email is something that is going to catch the attention of a lot of readers. And you can use scratch-it style emails for all sorts of different interactive experiences including offers around discounts and savings, coupons, and even gifts.
Now here’s the fun part, actually scratching for a prize.When your email reader clicks and scratches away that first layer, a hidden message appears beneath, just like if it was on a scratch card in real life.
Check it out. The results are displayed right there. And, unlike with most lottery cards, you’re always going to be a winner when it comes to scratch-off emails!
With this type of email, you’re accomplishing a lot of tasks at once.
First, you’re grabbing the attention of readers right from their inbox. It’s hard to resist a fun or interesting email that really stands out in a sea of seeing the same stuff over and over.
Next, you’re encouraging your readers to get active. To get the full benefits of the email you are sending out they have to actively engage to get the results, even if they don’t end up acting on them. That starts building conditioning right from the very start.
Finally, scratch-it emails can help improve click through rates which can lead to more sales over the long term.
When you add all those up, these type of emails can really be a winning combination that your organization can deploy to your next email marketing campaign.
Putting it all together
Now that you’ve got a good handle on what scratch-off emails are and how they can benefit your brand, what are you waiting for? Give these a try and get people on your list excited to check their inbox.
Liz Froment
Liz Froment is a content writer at Zembula. A graduate of University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Liz is a travel aficionado, Boston sports fan, and maple syrup connoisseur.
