Navigating the new email landscape

Three tips for keeping up with email industry trends like Gmail’s much-talked-about Priority Inbox.

If you’ve been an Emma client or an active email marketer for a while, you’ve probably got a pretty solid group of customers receiving your campaigns by now. In an email utopia, they’d all be opening and clicking everything you put in front of them, hanging on your every sentence. But if the industry averages published by people like the Email Stats Center are to be trusted, it doesn’t really happen like that. A double-digit click through rate makes you some kind of email marketing superhero.

So are your recipients just not that into you? Or are their mailboxes so full of marketing messages that you’re lost in the shuffle? Email providers like Gmail, Microsoft and Yahoo seem to think it’s the latter, and all three are trying to do something about it.

Yahoo partner OtherInbox created Spring, an add-on application for Yahoo Mail that automatically sorts and files marketing messages into pre-defined folders. Microsoft quickly followed suit by introducing Sweep, a function that allows you to choose what you want to read and then sweep the rest out of your inbox and into folders of your choice. And of course, Gmail released Priority Inbox — and typical of Google’s overall ingenuity, there’s a new wrinkle. They’re actually looking at Gmail users’ interaction with the mail they receive and making some assumptions about what’s really important to that person.

So what does this mean for you, fearless reader? Well, in short: It’s time to get to know your audience better than you ever have before. Internet Service Providers are watching you – how you send, who you send to and what they do with your messages. It’s time for you to dig into those response results and craft a thoughtful plan to reward your engaged audience members and re-engage those you may have lost on the way.

Don’t know where to start? Here are a few tips.

1. Welcome new audience members. Starting on the right foot in any relationship is a good thing. Make sure your subscribers remember why they signed up and why your emails will be important to them in the future. You can read more about welcome trigger emails right here on the blog.

2. Reward your most faithful readership. Say thanks for the support that these recipients have given you. Keeping these most engaged members happy, opening and clicking makes for good-looking response results and helps you maintain a good sending reputation.

3. Learn to let go. Sometimes, it’s just necessary. Search for people who haven’t opened or clicked in the last six months and send them an opt-in confirmation email. (Here’s how.) Let them know that you still want them around, but that you also want to respect their wishes if they decide not to receive your emails any longer. Those members who confirm their opt-in are reengaged and more aware of you than ever. Then you can remove the ones who choose not to confirm — and with them, you’ll be removing a part of your audience that’s dragging down your response numbers and potentially hurting your sending reputation.

If you need help getting started, just let us know — and don’t forget to take a look at our Help section, full of tips for becoming a well-informed, responsible email marketer. If you’re sitting there thinking “I’ve been doing this all along,” feel free to share your story with us in the comment section.