Can you believe that 347.3 billion emails were sent and received every day in 2023? That’s a 4.3% increase from 2022 when the number of emails sent and received per day registered at 333.2 billion.
It’s hard to wrap your head around a number like that. And it goes to show the law of email still applies…
The law is simple: Every year, companies send more email. In 2024, the number of emails sent and received every day is predicted to be 361.6 billion. This means every year, it gets harder to stand out in the inbox. So what can you do to rise above the rest and win the attention of your subscribers?
Email expert and conversion copywriter Liz Willits, Dyspatch CEO Matt Harris, and ZeroBounce COO Brian Minick tackled this problem in our recent webinar. Drawing on decades of email expertise, they shared five strategies to help you move your engagement metrics up and to the right.
Read on for a recap of the event and answers to attendee questions, including the ones we couldn’t quite get to live!
5 Ways to Catapult Email Engagement in 2023
1. Growth loops
Growth loops refers to a model where you leverage your current users to create new users. It’s a more sustainable way of achieving growth than the typical top-down funnel where you’re basically paying for each new user.
For example, Eddie Shleyner of VeryGoodCopy.com creates an email growth loop by publishing a micro-article on his site, re-publishing a version of the article in a LinkedIn post, then sending out the article in a newsletter and asking for engagement on his LinkedIn post.
When his newsletter audience engages with the post on LinkedIn, their connections are notified, creating more engagement, more traffic to his website and more subscribers — and that ultimately adds to the audience he can leverage in future posts. So it’s a virtuous circle.
You can build growth loops right into your product with tactics like referral programs, user-generated content, team invitations, and more. Watch the full webinar for a more in-depth explanation of this concept.
2. Social proof
Social proof was first explained in the 1980s by psychologist Robert Cialdini. (If you haven’t read his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, I highly recommend it!) Here’s the simple explanation for this concept: When we’re uncertain about a decision or how to behave, we look to those around us for guidance.
Which makes social proof a powerful marketing tool. Folks want assurance that buying an item or using a service is the right decision. If you can provide assurances and earn someone’s trust, they’ll buy. And you can do just that by baking social proof into your emails.
There are many ways to do this. Some are obvious, like highlighting customer reviews and featuring expert endorsements. Some are a little more subtle, like partnering with trusted brands and adding accomplishments to email signatures. For 10 ideas and three gorgeous examples (you guessed it!), check out the full webinar.
3. Modular email design
Modular email design involves dividing templates up into pre-coded, independent parts (AKA modules or blocks). Think lego blocks for your email templates. Then, you can reuse and rearrange these modules to create new emails, without starting from scratch.
Modular email design helps improve engagement in several ways. For one, it makes it easy to maintain consistent branding, which has been shown to increase engagement and revenue by 33%. For two, it helps you move faster and gives you more freedom to try engagement techniques, like personalization and AMP for Email.
Speaking of which…
4. Personalization
Personalization is not a new topic. But it’s been re-emerging as especially crucial in a remote-first world. Companies are turning to email more and more, but that also means more competition in the inbox. (Remember the law of email?)
Of course, to personalize your emails, you first need to gather data about your subscribers.
The best way to get this data? Just ask! Ask in your welcome email or in your onboarding email series, so you can start personalizing your emails right out of the gate.
But it’s never too late to ask either. If you don’t have enough information about your existing subscribers, you can easily start gathering it by adding a callout to the occasional campaign. You can link that callout to a landing page with a form or fun quiz.
(Now, with AMP for Email, you could gather this information directly from an email — instead of having to set up a landing page and send subscribers there. I’ll get to AMP in more detail in a sec.)
There are loads of ways to personalize your emails, like segmenting your newsletter by subscriber interest, personalizing by location, celebrating important dates, following up after key actions… the list goes on. (And yes, to see the full list, I’ll direct you to the webinar recording!)
5. AMP for Email
AMP emails are live and interactive.
AMP emails update every time a subscriber opens the email. Think of a cart reminder email. If a customer adds another item to their cart, it’s possible for the email you sent yesterday to update and add the new item.
Interactive because readers can take action, right from an AMP email. Like that cart reminder email. They can add that extra item to their cart, right from their inbox. This is a big upgrade to the user experience and it’s a way to stand out in increasingly crowded inboxes.
And this example is just a well-known AMP use case. There are truly endless possibilities. For example, you can send interactive surveys, embed a product review or NPS form in an email, leverage a calendar booking app, and even play games in your inbox.
Intrigued? This white paper covers everything you need to know about AMP for Email.
Bonus
- Relevance
Again, not a new concept in digital marketing but one of the more important for a reason. Making sure the content of your emails is relevant and valuable to your audience, and that it addresses their specific needs or interests, means that they’re more likely to open your email the next time they read your name in the from box and builds your brand.
Key takeaways
- Flip your thinking from funnels to growth loops. Ask yourself: How can I make this email into a loop?
- Add social proof to your emails to engage and persuade your audience.
- Consider implementing modular email design for brand consistency and maximum efficiency.
- Leverage user data to delight your subscribers with personalized emails. Don’t have data? Ask for it!
- Position yourself as a leader and bring action into the inbox with AMP for Email.
