In DTC 217 , we explored three ways to level up your email marketing:

• Email templates for beautiful emails designed to stand out
• List segmentation to help you send targeted, relevant messaging, and
• Personalization to create a feeling of connection between you and your customers.

But we’re not quite done yet. As you know, email marketing ROIs are high – and it’s worth squeezing as much juice as possible out of this orange. 🍊

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Here’s 3 more ways to level up your email marketing:

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1️⃣ Optimize your email for mobile readers

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“60-80% of your email opens are likely to happen on mobile. If you ignore mobile formatting…you ignore over half your customers.” -Joe Portsmouth, Director of Retention, The Beard Club

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Double-check to be sure your email templates are mobile-responsive. They should automatically adjust themselves to fit the reader’s screen. 📲

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Why bother? For starters, it’s true that most people view your emails while on their phone. But that extends to their shopping habits, too. Mobile emails are 65% more likely to send shoppers to your site.

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Before you create an important email template, test it on your phone first:

• Is the CTA properly positioned?
• Is the offer in plain view?
• Is it easy to read?

If not, keep tweaking until they do.

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2️⃣ Create emails that feel like two-way conversations.

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“It takes ONE bad experience to wash out a dozen great ones. So, hire customer support staff who breathe your values + represent them.” -Ralitsa Minkova, email strategist and conversion copywriter

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The one-way nature of automated email can sometimes mislead you. It becomes tempting to think of emails as highly-effective versions of billboards. In reality, email was – and always will be – designed for two-way communication.

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While automation is great, you want to avoid the feeling of “canned responses.” Here are some ways to make your brand feel less stiff:

• Ask for responses. Use email surveys to incorporate feedback about users’ experiences. This feedback can be invaluable. Incorporate it into new products, new offerings, and new campaigns. But the mere fact that you’re asking to hear from customers will go far to establish your brand as one that cares.
• Don’t use vague language. One of the benefits of segmenting customers is you don’t have to write vague, catch-all emails. The more specific your customer emails, the better.
• Keep it casual. This is email, after all. Don’t write in big blocks. Don’t include 500 words of fine print. Write to customers like you’re writing to a family friend who needs a new product or a little customer support. This humanizes your brand and makes customers feel less like the cog in a machine.

3️⃣ Optimize to specific KPIs

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“KPIs are key figures that help you to measure the success of your email marketing campaign and, in turn, of your overall strategy.” -Damian Clarke, Brand+Aide LLC

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Clarke recommends paying attention to the following KPIs in your campaigns:

• Open rate
• Click rate
• Deliverability rate
• Sign-up rate
• Click-through rate

Why these in particular? Why not focus on how many people are unsubscribing? It comes down to engagement.

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🚨 If people are opening your emails, they’re finding the subject lines engaging. If they’re clicking through, they’re finding the content engaging.

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Entering an email marketing campaign without defining your KPIs is like going in blind. Before you start improving, you have to define the parameters for your success. KPIs pre-define these parameters.

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More importantly, they tell you which of your emails are the most successful and which still need work.

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A top-notch ESP (email service provider) will make these KPIs easy to measure. If you can measure it, then you can level it up.