It’s been 45 years since Email was invented, yet this medium is more important than ever for the Digital Marketer. 56% India Marketers plan to allocate a majority of their budget to Email in 2017. And why not? Email has nearly three times as many user accounts as Facebook and Twitter combined and 40x more successful at acquiring new clients than either of the two. But if 2016 was not a good year for your emails, here are 10 best practices that will up your email marketing game in 2017:

Build an Acquisition Strategy: Begin by analysing the various other digital properties where customers are already engaging with your brand. Then, determine how to develop those interactions into long term engagement on email with cross channel campaigns, new tools and techniques.

Don’t Let Carts Go Abandoned: Your customer might have changed his mind, right when he was checking out the website but that doesn’t mean that they cannot be convinced to buy the product(s) which they added in the cart. You can still generate revenue from abandoned carts by using a more personalized approach. Trigger the first email between 1 or 2 hours of abandonment, the second email between 12- 48 hours and the third one between 48-72 hours of the original abandoned purchase. Show the abandoned cart clearly in the message and add recommendations for additional purchases to increase conversion and click-through rate.

Clean Your Email List: According a research, B2B data decays at a very high rate, so the best way to deal with email inactives is to try to re-engage them using special offers or a funny break-up email. You can also ask the inactive users if they’d like to change the frequency of emails to better fit their needs.

Your subscriber list is going to get smaller every year if you don’t refresh your contacts database to make up for this loss. You can prevent database decay by running cross-channel campaigns to generate new leads or engage a third party opt-in database of your target audience.

Be Current: Birthdays, Public Holidays and Festivals are best way to re-engage with your customers, tap into their festive spirit and show that you care about them.

Bring Your Emails to Life with GIFs: Images are a powerful tool for storytelling. Using an animated GIF adds an element of delight to a campaign that isn’t typically possible with static email designs and we’ve seen that embedded email usually gets more conversions. The only major email client that does not allow GIF support is Microsoft Outlook (2007+), which only displays the first frame of the animation.

Personalise Your Emails: Make your emails relevant to the customer by sending emails based on his/her interests and purchase behaviour. A trend that’s recently sprung is Programmatic Email which basically uses programmatic advertising data collected from a customer’s behaviour on other digital properties. It also helps with consistent messaging and branding so the user gets a rounded experience that isn’t fragmented.

Integrate Google Analytics: Google Analytics gives insights about user behavior after the click. You can quickly view the bounce rates of your emails, track data real time, compare performance of each individual email, get demographic insights and of course track email opens and clicks.

Send Device-Friendly Emails: A lot of people open emails on their mobile device and the rest still access emails on their desktops, tablets and other devices. The best strategy is to design emails that are responsive i.e. they are optimised to be viewed on a smartphone, desktop tablet, and even smartwatch!

A/B Test Your Email: A great way to decrease unsubscribers is by testing everything to see what has the most impact. By using A/B testing on your emails – the layout, offer, graphics, subject line and all the other aspects of an email campaign – one at a time, you can determine what your subscribers want to see, which will help you decrease the number of email unsubscribers on your campaigns. Testing multiple variables is a continuous process and your team should use A/B tests on a regular basis to determine what gets the most engagement.

Re-engage with Your Customers: Did you know that 53% of marketers say ongoing, personalized communication with existing customers results in moderate to significant revenue impact. Reach out to existing customers with relevant emails that are tailored to their purchase history.

Email’s ability to deliver targeted content continues to make it a sound investment of your brand’s marketing time and money to reach your customers.

Get the best of Email Marketing! Try Octane and start engaging. To know more visit http://www.octane.in/.

Want to know which Email Marketing trend will reign in 2017? We analysed data from 400+ India Marketers. Have a look at the insights.