Nurture Your Leads the Right Way: 11 Email Marketing Tips for 2023

When 84.3% of consumers check their emails at least once a day, you need to take advantage of this channel. Email marketing is a great way to be right in front of your audience—you get to talk directly to them and provide rich insights and solutions. 

• 80% of professionals believe email marketing boosts customer retention.
• Each dollar spent on email marketing reels in an average return of $36. 

The catch? Worldwide, the average person receives over 100 emails daily, so you’re up against a lot of competition. You need to make your emails stand out. 

With 2023 just around the corner, there’s no time to waste. Start using these 11 email marketing tips today, and bring your best foot forward into the new year. 

Here’s more advice for spending in 2023:

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• How Much Should You Spend on Marketing in 2023?
• 20 Ways to Increase Your Revenue in 2023

1. Send Your Emails at the Right Time

When do you generally send out your emails? Even though there are studies that convey ideal times and days to reach out to leads, the right time really depends on your audience, industry, and business. 

For example, sending out emails during the late afternoon hours might work for B2B industry folks (office employees with 9-5 jobs who are likely hitting that “afternoon slump” between 2-4 p.m.). Still, this timeframe may not work for those in the B2C space, where customers have varying schedules. 

Discovering the right time requires experimenting with: 

• Different times. Send out emails in the morning, afternoon, and evening for a month until you find that sweet spot. Look at your email open and click-through rates (CTR) to see whether people are more engaged during one time versus another.
• Different days. Tuesdays and Thursdays are generally the two most popular days to send out newsletters. But this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t test out Wednesday or heck, even a Saturday. Think about your audience—when will they likely have some downtime and check their emails? 

2. Find the Right Frequency

Like a lot of good digital marketing tactics, employing effective email marketing tips takes consistency (and a fair amount of trial and error) to achieve lasting results. 

But what exactly defines consistency? In other words, how often should you reach out to your contacts? How much is too much? 

This can get pretty tricky. You don’t want to inundate inboxes, but you also don’t want to disperse emails sparingly (this can lead to missed revenue and loyalty opportunities). 

To strike a fine balance in frequency: 

• Tap into your business goals. What do you want to maximize? Whatever they are, let them guide you in deciphering what optimal frequency looks like for your campaign. For example, if your goal is to boost conversions during a quarter, you may want to send out two emails each week instead of one.
• Analyze your contacts/prospects. What are the buying habits or engagement histories of your people? Could some benefit from that extra email more than others? If so, consider splitting up your contacts into two or more groups. This can help you hit the right number of emails AND personalize your campaigns, which brings us to our next point.

3. Personalize Through Segmentation

Segmentation is a strategy that streamlines and groups your leads based on specific characteristics (age, geographic location, buying habits, engagement history, etc.). You can then send unique messages to each group and better nurture your audience.  

We know—segmentation sounds cool, but it also sounds like a lot of work. Well luckily, you can automate this process with the help of marketing automation. 

With the intent to automate your lead-nurturing campaigns, marketing automation software can segment leads for you. Marketers who use segmented email campaigns see a 760 percent increase in revenue. 

Some renowned MA tools to consider include: 

• Hubspot
• Salesforce
• Moosend

So take a look at your list of contacts—what are some defining characteristics that set some people apart from others? Could a specific category of people benefit from a particular product or offer?

Your email needs to stand out in a digital world where people are bombarded with numerous emails, your email needs to stand out. Segmentation allows you to give your prospects what they want and a reason to open yours out of a hundred others. 

4. Implement Lead Scoring

Want to take your email personalization even further? Create a lead-scoring model. 

This model assigns a value to each contact and prioritizes them. When Roof Maxx implemented a lead scoring tool, their team earned a 200 percent increase in the number of sales meetings. 

You can base your model on various factors like: 

• Email engagement: Give higher values to those who have engaged with your emails the most (you can refer to their CTRs).
• Company information: Depending on the types of businesses (for instance, B2B versus B2C) you’re trying to target, you may want to assign a higher value to a contact based on their industry.

Your marketing automation software can help you easily execute a lead-scoring model.

5. A/B Test Subject Lines & Content Designs

How to execute good email marketing tactics requires testing. A/B testing, or split testing, involves sending one variation of your email to one subset and a different variation to another. It’s one of the best email marketing tips that over half of marketers use.

The goal is to identify the one email that generates better results. Once the winner has been selected, the winning variation is sent to the rest of your recipients. 

The great thing about A/B testing is you can test various components against each other. For example, you can test: 

• Subject lines: Your subject line is the first impression that may or may not compel someone to click on your email. Try testing out a subject line that poses a question versus one that’s an unfinished statement. Which one will entice your audience to open your email? Testing your subject lines can help you learn the kind of language and tone that will work best for your recipients.
• Content designs: Does your audience respond better to a text-only email or an image email? Some people like plain and simple emails—they may feel more personable. But some may respond better to image-focused emails. Testing these variations can help you find creative ways to garner more clicks and engagement. 

6. Weave in CTAs

You need to inspire your prospects to take action. Whether that’s reading your latest blog post or unlocking a free offer, you’ve got to give them a little push. You’ve got to give them a CTA that kicks ass. 

A good CTA:  

• Carries compelling action verbs. For example, say you’re providing a free offer. Instead of saying, “Click Here”, you can say, “Unlock My Offer”. Unlock carries mystery that incites interest and action, and the use of My gives it that extra touch of personalization.
• Has been tested against other CTAs. You can conduct A/B tests to try different types of CTAs. Consider testing them out as buttons versus links. Global technology company, Campaign Monitor, found that a button-based CTA boosted their CTR by 28 percent compared to a linked CTA. 

For example, consider testing: 

• Buttons vs. links: Global technology company Campaign Monitor found that a button-based CTA boosted its CTR by 28% compared to a linked CTA. 
• Quantity of CTAs: Emails with one CTA (versus a few) increase clicks by 371% and sales by 1617%. 

7. Make Your Emails Mobile-Friendly

How’s your email design looking on your phone? Not only does mobile make up more than half of the worldwide traffic, but 46% of mobile users prefer email as their way of getting notices from businesses.

Your recipients could be anywhere when they receive your email. They could be on the train ride home or waiting in the check-out line at the grocery store. Wherever they are, you need to give them a seamless user experience. 

This might require: 

• Simplifying your copy. Copy tends to look a lot more bloated on the smaller screen. Most email platforms, like Hubspot, allow you to preview your email in both desktop and mobile formats. So see how your copy looks on mobile and cut it down if necessary. Numbered lists and bullet points are always good options to help with readability.
• Making your email click-friendly. This means leaving enough white space around your buttons/links. This makes it easier for people to click without accidentally clicking something else (people have large fingers!).
• Being more strategic with your images. Not all mobile devices display images by default, so it’s good to plan for a non-image experience. This means your email should still make sense in the case the picture doesn’t show. 

8. Track Relevant Metrics

There are a lot of metrics when it comes to your emails. Before you get overwhelmed, think about the purpose behind your tests and campaigns. Then use that to help you focus on the right metrics. 

Here are the three common metrics you’ll see: 

• Open rates: If you want to see how effective your subject lines are and/or how relevant the theme of your email is, look at your open rates. This is the percentage of the total number of people who opened your email. A good email rate tends to be 20.94 percent on average.
• CTR: Trying out a new email design/template? Striving to boost engagement? Testing out CTAs? Your CTR will be a good indication of your contacts’ level of engagement and commitment to your messages. It reflects the percentage of subscribers who have clicked the links/CTAs in your email. Across all industries, the average CTR is 7.8 percent.
• Unsubscribe rates: An unsubscribe rate that’s below 0.5 percent is generally good. Anything above that indicates you’ve got work to do. We know, it hurts! But remember, finding out what doesn’t work for your audience will help you find out what does work. 

9. Whatever You Do, Don’t Bombard People—Focus on Authenticity

We get it, you want more engagement, leads, and sales. But don’t overdo it. Be vigilant about how often you send out emails.

Sending out emails rapid-fire might just land you in the spam folder. As of December 2021, 45.37% of email traffic entailed spam messages. Don’t be just another “annoying email.” 

Instead, channel that energy into getting to know your audience more and brainstorming new ways you educate and engage. Focus on authenticity. 

This might look like:  

• Assessing your audience’s spending and social media habits and how you should realign your messaging to meet those shifts. When Redmond Life created new email campaigns based on buyer behaviors, this contributed to over 25K form submissions and a 65.1% open rate.
• Evaluating your marketing funnel to thoroughly understand the customer journey—from when someone becomes aware of your business to when they become loyal customers. There are five stages to the funnel: 
  • Awareness
  • Interest
  • Desire
  • Action 
  • Loyalty 

Tapping into each phase and deciphering what types of content to share and when to share them can elevate the quality of your email strategy.

• Spreading out your emails uniformly to leave your contacts curious and wanting more. They’ll anticipate your next email. 
• Listening in on what your audience is saying about your brand online (via social listening tools and online reviews). Use this to drive the right conversations and grow your email list.

10. Include Relevant Links/Pages

So you’ve got all the right CTAs. Great. But how are the landing pages they lead to? 

You want to make the email journey simple. When someone clicks on your link, the page they land on should be exactly what they expect (and where you want them to go). Sending a prospect or customer to a rather broad page (e.g., the home page) won’t do you any favors. 

Create relevant and customized landing pages that align with the email content. In today’s digital world, when there is a lot of noise out there, specificity is key. 

11. Audit and Clean Your Email Lists

With Google getting rid of third-party cookies in 2023 and Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) rollout, stay vigilant about how you capture and use customer data. Lean into first-party data—consensual information—and protect it. 

Make sure you have permission to use every email address by auditing and cleaning your contact list. Cleaning your email list can enhance your IP/domain-sending reputation. In other words, bad email addresses can impact your email deliverability and put you at risk of account suspension. 

Enhance Your Email Marketing Strategy for 2023

For more effective email marketing tips for beginners and seasoned professionals alike, reach out to us. Our digital marketing team carries experience executing email marketing campaigns for clients and we’re happy to offer advice and point you in the right direction. 

In the meantime, check out this seven-step guide on how to create an eCommerce email marketing strategy from start to finish.