Katie Morley
Dec 13, 2023
Katie Morley
Dec 13, 2023
Over 333 billion emails are sent daily; it can often feel like they’ve all landed in our personal inbox.
Email marketing has become the default for brands worldwide. However, if you want to cut through the clutter (and spam folder), you need to ensure you’re not sending generic, bulk emails to everyone in your subscriber list.
In 2024, precision is key. It’s about delivering relevant and contextual content tailored to your audience’s unique needs and behaviors. This blog explores the evolving landscape of email marketing to learn what it is and why it’s important before breaking down the best practices that will define your success in 2024.
Email marketing 101
Email marketing best practices for 2024
2023’s best email marketing campaign examples
Email marketing best practices FAQ
Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that sends targeted emails to a specific audience. Even in 2024, it remains one of the most effective and direct ways to communicate with your customers. Email marketing encompasses a wide range of email formats, from promoting products and services to sending monthly newsletters and updates to building relationships and fostering customer loyalty with promos and offers.
Email marketing isn’t just about sending bulk generic emails, it’s about delivering personalized and relevant content to your audience. By understanding your subscribers’ preferences and behaviors, you can create campaigns that resonate and drive meaningful engagement to increase conversions and boost revenue.
Email marketing enables precise segmentation of your audience. A strong email marketing software will enable you to categorize subscribers based on demographics, preferences, or behavior so that you can tailor your messages to specific groups. This targeted approach ensures that recipients receive content relevant to their interests, increasing the likelihood of engagement.
Email offers the most advanced marketing channel analytics. Campaigns can generate a huge amount of data, offering you insights into crucial metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. This data allows businesses to measure the success of their campaigns, understand customer behavior, and make data-driven decisions to optimize future efforts.
Email marketing consistently delivers a high return on investment. The ability to reach a targeted audience with personalized content contributes to increased engagement and conversions. With proper planning and execution and an email automation software that alleviates time and effort for marketers, businesses can achieve substantial returns, making email marketing a valuable asset in their overall marketing strategy.
It’s 5X more expensive to acquire a new customer than retain a current one. Regular communication through email helps build and strengthen relationships with your audience. Providing valuable content, exclusive offers, and personalized recommendations fosters a sense of loyalty among subscribers, and engaged customers are more likely to remain loyal and advocate for your brand.
Email marketing platforms offer automation features that streamline processes and save time. Automated workflows for welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, and personalized content delivery ensure that your audience receives timely and relevant messages without constant manual intervention, contributing to ROI.
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“Insider’s email marketing capabilities exceeded all of our expectations. Not only does the platform offer the most comprehensive segmentation and targeting features, but it’s also incredibly intuitive. We’ve launched campaigns and workflows across multiple channels within a day when it used to take us months.”
- Marketing Director on G2
Don’t rush the decision if you’re considering an email marketing platform. Whether you choose a smaller SMB platform or a big enterprise player, ensure you’re ticking off the following steps as you get started.
Clearly articulate your objectives for email marketing. Whether it’s increasing sales, nurturing leads, or driving website traffic, having well-defined goals will guide your overall strategy and identify the type of email marketing platform you need.
A quality email list is the foundation of successful email marketing. Implement opt-in strategies on your website, social media, and other touchpoints to organically grow your subscriber base. Use omnichannel marketing features such as gamification, surveys, and polls to increase lead collection in line with relevant data protection regulations, such as GDPR.
Discover how world-leading beauty brand, Clarins increased lead collection by 45% with Insider.
Selecting the right email marketing software is crucial. Platforms like Insider place email at the heart of omnichannel customer journeys across 12+ channels and hundreds of integrations. From email automation to advanced analytics, evaluate platforms based on your needs and business goals.
Content is king in email marketing. Develop engaging and valuable content that speaks to your audience. Segment your subscribers based on behaviors, triggers, and attributes to ensure you always send the most relevant, contextual content. Whether it’s newsletters, promotional offers, or educational content, always ensure your emails align with your brand voice and resonate with your subscribers.
If you want to reach your audience, drive revenue, and achieve ROI with email marketing in 2024, you need to be aware of the following best practices:
In 2024, personalization needs to go beyond addressing your subscribers by their first name. Leverage customer data to provide tailored content, product recommendations, and offers based on individual preferences and behaviors.
Marketers can now:
Enhance engagement by incorporating interactive elements like quizzes, surveys, and clickable elements within emails. Interactive content captures attention and encourages recipients to actively participate, creating a more immersive experience.
Given the increasing use of mobile devices, ensure your emails are optimized for mobile viewing. Responsive design and concise, visually appealing content are crucial to delivering a seamless experience on smartphones and tablets. Some email platforms, such as Insider, offer a huge range of ready-made, customizable templates for every device so that you can launch mobile-first campaigns quickly.
4. AI-powered automation
The best email marketing platforms embrace AI to automate and personalize email campaigns. Use AI for predictive analytics, behavior-based triggers, A/B testing automation, and even content generation to ensure every email is relevant, contextual, and sent at the right time.
5. Privacy and transparency
With growing concerns about data privacy, prioritize transparency in your email marketing practices. When collecting leads, you should clearly communicate how to use customer data. Adequate to relevant regulations and offer easy opt-in/opt-out mechanisms to build trust with your audience. This varies from industry to industry, so check the extent of your compliance requirements carefully. If you deal with medical records, for example, using a secure healthcare eFax as part of your email marketing setup is a must. This matters for customer trust as much as it does for compliance.
6. Accessibility standards
Ensure your email content is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. Use descriptive alt text for images, employ readable fonts and colors, and structure your emails logically to enhance accessibility.
7. Segmentation refinement
Refine your audience segmentation strategies to deliver hyper-targeted content. Use advanced analytics and unify your omnichannel customer data in one platform to power more granular segments, enabling you to send highly relevant messages to specific audience subsets.
8. A/B testing
There is no underestimating the impact of A/B testing. As email marketing software becomes more and more advanced, its capabilities continue to expand. In 2024, brands should continuously conduct A/B testing to optimize email elements. Test subject lines, content variations, calls to action, and send times to identify what resonates best with your audience, and use these insights to refine your future campaigns.
Discover how two world-renowned retailers incorporated email marketing into their omnichannel journeys to boost CLTV, lead collection, and achieve up to 72X ROI.
NA-KD’s tech stack wasn’t keeping up with its rapid growth. Its data was in multiple platforms, unable to provide insights and power campaigns with 360-degree views. The platform turned to Insider to unify its customer data in its CDP, and power personalized omnichannel campaigns at scale across Email, Web Push, and SMS. Architect, Insider’s cross-channel campaign orchestration tool, enabled NA-KD to deliver a seamless customer experience, showcasing relevant products and content on the customers’ favorite channels. The data-driven, personalized campaigns achieved a 72X ROI and a 25% increase in CLTV.
Slazenger was looking for an email marketing solution that could incorporate other channels to build personalized cross-channel customer journeys and maximize ROI. Slazenger chose Insider to leverage its customer data and deliver contextual, personalized messages, such as price drop notifications and cart reminders through Architect. By leveraging customer data and putting email at the heart of its journeys, Slazenger achieved a 49X ROI in two months and increased customer acquisition by incredibly 700%.
To enhance email marketing campaigns, focus on personalization, segmentation, and engaging content tailored to your audience’s preferences.
Yes, email marketing remains effective in 2024, offering a direct and cost-efficient means of engaging audiences, especially when personalized and strategically executed.
Email marketing involves sending targeted messages to a group of recipients via email to build relationships, drive engagement, and achieve specific marketing goals.
To start email marketing, define your goals, build a quality email list, choose a reliable email marketing platform, and create compelling content that resonates with your audience.
Written by
Katie Morley
Katie is an award-winning content marketer with over eight years of experience in content strategy, development, and copywriting. As Global Content Director at Insider, she currently oversees content strategy across 26 regions. Fun fact: Katie read 64 books last year (for which she owes a long commute and two week-long holidays where she spent approximately six hours a day with her nose in a book).
