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Apr 25, 2016 14 min read

33 Game-Changing Email Marketing Tips

From Experts Thatll Double Your
Conversions

Email is far from dead.

According to a 2016 study by eConsultancy, companies say that email

marketing is their #1 channel for ROI, with 73% of respondents report-
ing a Good or Excellent return on their money.

It gets better:

91% of consumers check their inbox daily. (ExactTarget)

Email is nearly 40X more eective than Facebook and Twitter for
acquiring customers. (McKinsey & Company)

Companies using email to nurture leads generate 50% more sales-

ready leads while generating them at 33% lower cost. (Forrester
Research)

But theres a catch

Your subscribers are getting emailed like crazy.

The average American worker now receives 121 emails per day. A big
part of turning subscribers into customers, then, is being able to win
the inbox.

Consider this post your unfair advantage.

We surveyed some of the worlds top growth leads, founders, consul-

tants, and copywriters for their #1 email marketing tip that they use in
their business. And they didnt disappoint.

Without further ado, which of these email marketing tips could you
implement?

1. Devesh Khanal from Grow and Convert

Email is not just for sales and informationits also for entertainment.
This is something very few brands do and it can cost you enormous rev-
enue that is slowly lost as weeks, months, and years go buy and your
stale emails get opened less and less.

I see two types of emails: (1) The sales emailenough said. (2) The
look were giving value! email.

While (2) is important and should indeed be the core of your email
marketing, Ive noticed that masterful brands also include entertain-
ment, fun, humor, and engaging stories in their emails. They include
funny links, a personal story, a fun user story, a gif, or anything else to
make reading the email pure fun.

This is transformative and shifts the relationship ever so slightly from

company & customer to fun brand.

2. Nichole Elizabeth DeMer from

NicholeElizabethDeMer.com
Identify your ideal customer, use their language, and know what suc-
cess looks like to them. Dont talk about yourself, or your products long
list of features, talk about them. And when you write emails, write as
though youre talking to a person, because you arewhile that may
seem obvious, most people dont do it.
3. Josh Pigford from Baremetrics
Segment your subscribers in to every bucket imaginable and youll find
you can email them exponentially more with much more eective re-
sults. Sending hyper-targeted emails reduces unsubscribes and in-
creases conversions.

4. Joanna Wiebe from CopyHackers

Write in a one-to-one narrative style following the Problem-Agitation-
Solution (PAS) framework:

Open with a problem to which the reader can relate; agitate that prob-
lem so your reader really feels it; then have your solution solve the
deeply felt problem. This can be done in just a few lines or in a longer,
story-like style.

If youre in nurturing / educating mode and not ready to drive to a

sales landing page yetwhich is often the case in trial nurturing se-
quencestweak this framework to PASOP. With a PASOP email, you
open with the Problem; Agitate it; Solve it with information (i.e., not
with the solution youre selling); give a measurable Outcome; and in-
troduce a new Problem, which you then promise to solve in your next
email. Your second email follows PASOP, too. And your third email
switches back to PAS, with your solution as the solution and with read-
ers driven to your sales landing page.

5. Wilson Hung from FounderOrigins

Tracking just your total # of email subscribers is good for boosting
your ego, but doesnt give you much useful information.

Instead, try focusing on the total # of ENGAGED email subscribers by

segmenting your list using Drip to find your most active users. These
active users (high open/click/reply rates) are your cheerleaders and
have a higher chance of buying your product, or referring your
business.

To do this, start by creating a flow diagram of your emails and segment

your users into three phases: Signed up, Activated, and Engaged.
Based on how often they open your email or reply to you, you can pro-
mote them to the activated or engaged phases. Heres an example
of the process flow I used for my website FounderOrigins.com.

In doing so, my north star metric is to increase the # of email subs in

my Engaged list, which is more useful than just tracking my total
email subs. This allowed me to find ways to optimize my email flow to
encourage users to be more active and become loyal customers. Want
to know more? Tweet me at @WilsonGHung with your
questions/comments.

6. Dan Norris from WPCurve and The 7-

Day Startup
My #1 email marketing tip is consistency. Ive been managing 2 lists
over the last few years, and one has got an email every single week
without fail, while the other has been ad hoc.

Once your audience stops getting used to hearing from you it has a big
impact on your list. Make sure you have a process in place that sees
your list getting regular great content without fail.

7. Steli Efti from Close.io

Segment out subscribers that havent engaged with your recent emails
and send them another email telling them youre breaking up with
them if they dont respond.

Use a subject line that makes this very clear: This is the last time youll
hear from me / Ill never email you again, unless and then in
the email ask them to click a link to re-confirm that they want to keep
receiving your emails. Youll maintain a much more engaged, focused
and valuable subscriber base.

8. Alex Turnbull from Groove

We implemented this three years ago, and its STILL our biggest email
win.

Every new user gets an email that asks a simple question: why did you
sign up for Groove? The insights weve gotten from the responses to
that email have been game-changing. We learn what the triggers are
for people to actually click Sign Up, and we learnin our customers
own wordsthe deepest problems theyre struggling with (and, espe-
cially early on, these werent the responses we had assumed theyd be).

Weve been able to transform our messaging based on what we learn,

and weve been able to build deeper relationships with our customers
by helping them with whatever unique goals or challenges drove them
to sign up.

9. Brennan Dunn from Double Your

Freelancing
I keep my email marketing app in total sync with my website. This
means that people on my list never see opt-in forms again. Those who
are subscribers but not yet customers are promoted my entry-level
product. And those who are already customers are upsold my most pre-
mium products. This alone has been worth tens, and hundreds+ of
thousands longterm, to my business.

The easiest way to get started is to pass a custom query string parame-
ter both back to your confirmation page after opting in and whenever
sending someone back to your site from an email. Write a cookie, and
then replace out your opt-in forms with something more valuable in
that real estate if that cookie is present.

10. Patrick McKenzie from Kalzumeus

Software
You should consider using an engagement CTA to your emails at least
some of the time, particularly if you have high unit economics. e.g. I
love talking about [problem/industry/etc], and would love talking to
you about it. What is your biggest problem with [same]? Hit Reply. I
read everything and respond to most email. The idea is to both in-
crease peoples sense of engagement with you, and also to start some
high-bandwidth conversations which might result in sales or perhaps
additional marketing opportunities. (Plus: free customer development
any time you want it.)

11. Jason Quey from The Storyteller

Marketer
One of the best strategies Ive used is to play with dierent emotions in
the subject line that will get the user to click.

For example, sometimes Ill invoke curiosity. The headline Salmon +

Broccoli = Blog Growth invokes a lot of confusion and curiosity. How
do they resolve that tension? They open the email.

By rotating through styles, unlike the boy who cried wolf, my readers
dont become numb to certain subject lines.

Finally, make sure you deliver on what you promise. Thats the dier-
ence between a powerful headline and clickbait garbage.

12. Dave Schneider from Ninja Outreach

If youre in SaaS, use an email campaign to recover people who aban-
don your trial sign up flow. Just like an online store sends emails to vis-
itors who leave their shopping cart.

To do this, capture an email before people advance to your credit card

payment page. Then, if they dont finish sign up, send a couple re-
minder emails. Since implementing this, we now rescue an extra 65 tri-
als per month we were losing.

13. Noah Kagan from SumoMe

Heres how you can easily increase your email open rates by 30%. I call
it Double Opens.

Step 1. Take an email youve already sent and change the subject line to
something new

Step 2. Email it out a week later JUST TO YOUR NON OPENS

You might think you have a great email open ratebut the fact is,
50%+ of people are NOT opening your emails.

With my first re-send, I got an extra 7,028 people to read my email, in

just 1 minute of work.

Pro tip: Drip users can now automate this in one click with Automatic
Broadcast Resend. H/t to Noah for inspiring this feature.
14. Brian Dean from Backlinko
Ask new subscribers to reply to your first email.

For example, heres what I send people who sign up for my newsletter.

How does this help?

1. First, it improves your email deliverability. Email providers (like

Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) want to see that people engage with your emails.
This makes engagement 10x more likely than a boring welcome email
from noreply@example.com.

2. It makes new subscribers feel more committed and engaged to your

brand and newsletter.

3. It helps get you out of Gmails dreaded promotions tab. The reply
tells Gmail that the person wants to see future emails. It doesnt work
100% of the time, but my tests show that it definitely helps.

The best part? Its REALLY easy to setup. Just add a sentence or two in
your first email and youre set.

15. Chris Mercer from Seriously Simple

Marketing
Create a conversation with your audience from the very start. Ask them
why they joined your list or what their biggest challenge currently is
and specifically ask them them to respond directly by hitting Reply on
the email. THEN ANSWER IT! The back and forth dialogue is a strong
signal the ISPs use and itll help improve your overall deliverability.

16. John McIntyre from The McMethod

Email marketingand business in generalis about trust and
relationships.

If youre the company that blasts everyone once or twice a month, and
thats all you do, you come across like a money-hungry monster that
doesnt care about your customers.
On the other hand, if you take the time to learn about your market, and
then use those insights to drive nurture campaigns, youll build genuine
trust and rapport, whereby people will choose your company over your
competitors, even if your competitor oers them a cheaper price.

17. Hiten Shah from Crazy Egg and

KISSmetrics
When I link to content in an email I always try to put my spin on it and
provide an opinion. When I dont do that, I noticed a substantial de-
cline in clicks and even get emails from people requesting I add my
opinion back in.

18. Nathan Peck from Dollar Hobbyz

We started putting funny .gifs in all of our transactional emails. We got
a bunch of good feedback, started the conversation with a laugh, and
made any delayed order notifications easier to swallow.

Theres no reason an order confirmation email has to JUST be informa-

tion; give your customers a reason to smile and theyll keep coming
back for more.

19. David Hehenberger from Fatcat Apps

Running a WordPress plugin company, whats worked best for me is of-
fering a free 5-day mini course to users of our free plugins.

After installing the plugin, users see a popup right inside of their Word-
Press backend that lets them sign up for the course with a single button
click (weve already pre-filled their email address based on their ac-
count configuration).

This results in hundreds of new leads each month for us.

20. Chris Davis from Automation Bridge

Manage your own opt-in process by using tags instead of the built-in
double opt-in most email marketing platforms provide by default.

By doing so you can set the exact criteria for what a confirmed contact
is and have full control over your lists hygiene.
21. Joel Klettke from Business Casual
Copywriting
Im a big fan of never wasting a chance for a P.S. section. While
younger generations arent all that familiar with paper mail, there are
huge swaths of people that grew up understanding that the juiciest,
most critical information in a letter was in the P.S.. I make use of that
heuristic and use the P.S. to call attention to compelling reasons to
take action, restate my oer, oer a critical piece of proofor anything
else I want to make SURE my audience will see.

22. Matt Antonino from Stack Digital

Prioritize sending regular emails. Its not necessarily fun to spend a
couple of hours setting up abandoned cart emails, creating that weekly
tips newsletter, or starting to outline your nurture stream, but the re-
sults are worth it. Social media is the fun marketing channel but email
done right is the money channel.

23. Steven Moody, Beachhead

I send out a well regarded weekly newsletter, and I used to send it to
everyone in my database. Each week thousands of people would re-
ceive an email from me that they didnt want, and occasionally they
would look up and unsubscribe.

One day, I decided to purge my list of anyone who hadnt engaged with
the newsletter in six months. Because of that, my list decreased 90%,
but I now could see more clearly my real audience. Within months I
had a clear sense of my real audience and could better create things
that they actually want. If you want to build your 1,000 true fans and
make something small but meaningful, purging your list of non-fans
can be one of the best things you do.

24. Peep Laja from ConversionXL

Test your oer. The most important factor for getting more people to
opt in to your email list is your oerhow compelling the value propo-
sition is. The actual oer itself and the way you present it (copy + de-
sign) can make a huge dierence. The oer needs to be relevant to
your audience, create curiosity and oer instant gratification. Run lots
of tests to find the right one.
25. Joe Stych from Zapier
Dont over-promise or mislead your subscribers just to get a click. Re-
member that the best way to build a list is to build trustprovide value
in every message and the rest will take care of itself.

26. Kath Pay from Holistic Email

Stop thinking about email marketing as a technology, and start thinking
about it as being a marketing channel enabled by technology. To action
this you simply need to use the basic principles of persuasive marketing
that were all familiar with from other channels, and begin to market to
unique individuals via their emotions, and not simply push a message
to a database.

27. Matt Ackerson from Petovera

The best hack we use in our email marketing is a smart (behavioral /
survey driven) email sales funnel. The way it works is after someone
opts-in to our list we ask them a couple of simple questions. Then we
use that data to put them into the proper follow-up email sequence.
This way their experience is personalized based on what they tell us
they need, and we give them the resources to match that need. The im-
pact of this segmented sales funnel approach is that engagement is 2X
higher, and sales are also up.

28. Tim Soulo from Ahrefs

My absolute favorite email marketing hack is using the so-called con-
tent upgrades to turn readers of your blog into email subscribers.

The trick is very simple. All you need to do is come up with a cool
bonus material for the article that youve published and put it behind
and opt-in form.

Once people read your articlethey will naturally want to get the
bonus, because the article will feel kind of incomplete without it. So
they will happily give you their email address in exchange for that
bonus content.

Ive seen some bloggers have a crazy 60% reader-to-lead conversion

rate on some of their articles that had content upgrades in them. On
my personal blog, Ive used this simple strategy to increase overall
signups by 300%.

29. Jordie van Rijn from EmailMonday

Before starting, write the main message down in a compressed version
with your subject matter and benefits to the reader. Then add the why
now and whats next. This will help you to define your angle, struc-
ture your message and make your email more clear overall.

30. Kevan Lee from Buffer

Number your newsletters.

When I run a weekly/monthly newsletter, I like to treat it like a new is-

sue of a publication. Ill give it a number (e.g., Issue #37Blogging
Tips of the Pros), which does a couple of things: 1) Helps build a bit of
momentum in the mind of the reader who sees these emails as an on-
going series that they dont want to miss (psychology!), 2) Helps estab-
lish an air of authority and consistency, if the issue number is high, and
3) is pretty catchy in the inbox.

31. William Harris from Elumynt

For blog update emails, I change the CTA to something tailored to that
blog posts content. For example, instead of making the CTA read
more, I write Read about the 40 ways to XYZ.

My click-thru-rate on these emails went from 1.3% to 8%, which is a

big deal if you have a large email list. Make your CTAs specific.

32. Justin Brooke from IMScalable

Some email marketing platforms have the ability to score your leads
based on actions. Or they have automations you can set up based on
clicks.

You can use these features to increase your clicks and sales, by turning
your emails into a game. A game where subscribers earn points for
actions.
In my email marketing my email series tells readers they can earn 10
points per click. Once they get to 100pts they get access to VIP list with
exclusive content and deals.

I use the automations to send them emails based on how many points
theyve earned. I also make sure to make it easy to earn points. The
links they click are strategic content that increases their desire for my
marketing services.

33. John Rampton from JohnRampton.com

Try sending sales emails on Thursday night at 9PM Pacific. This pings
our prospects when they are either in bed or getting ready for bed on
the night before Friday: pay day. Weve found that our prospects are 4x
more likely to buy on Thursday night over any other night.

Conclusion
Building an email list for your business is a no-brainer.

But working hard to collect emails is pointless if you cant cut through
the noise and build a relationship with those subscribers.

When you get this right, it can transform your business.

Experiment with these tips and A/B test your campaigns. If you get
your emails turning cold opt-ins into buyers, youll be able to spend $1
to make $2. (Or $40, according to the DMA.)

Question for the comments: Whats your #1 email marketing tip that you
use in your business?

Feature image: Direct Marketing Association

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P.P.S. Want a handy cheat sheet of these tips to read later?

Click here to get it.