5 Ways you can Improve your Brand's Email Strategy

Today, we’re asking why email marketing is important, share our top tips for supercharging your emails and look at the brands who are nailing Gen Z engagement right now.

Why is a good email strategy important for brands?

So why should you be focusing on your email strategy and what impact will this have on your brand and Gen Z? Louise Donnelly, Voxburner’s Marketing Manager, says: “Email marketing is consistently cited as the channel that provides the best ROI for many businesses. Unlike some channels, it’s easy to measure with many clear-cut metrics. Want to find out want content your audience really enjoys? You can be sure to find some hints through what they’re engaging within your email campaigns! And not only that, it’s one of the easiest ways to provide that all-important personalisation for your audience. The more time and effort you invest into your email marketing strategy the more results you’ll start to see!”

How you can improve your email marketing strategy

1. Make sure your subscribers are real, active and engaged

Okay, so maybe you have thousands of subscribers to your newsletters, but is this actually worth anything when half of them are inactive? Sadly not. Not only will it bring your metrics down, but you’ll also be making a lot more work for yourself when it comes to segmenting your audience (more on that later); there’s no point putting all that time and effort into creating the perfect personalised email only for it never to be opened.

Avoid this problem by:

Creating a double opt-in process for subscribers. This helps to avoid fake sign-ups and registrations (and also helps when people simply misspell their email addresses) – this prevents customers ‘subscribing’ just to access a quick freebie or discount!
Segment your content, depending on what status your subscribers are at. For example, if they have a low open rate, send them a special offer to get them involved again.
Sometimes it’s best to say goodbye. Sending a ‘break-up’ email to non-engaged contacts is occasionally the best cleansing exercise you can run. It will weed out the subscribers who don’t want to receive your emails anymore and ultimately reflect better in your metrics, such as open and click rate.

2. Have an engaging subject line

Test out different subject lines! Split your subscribers and try out different content in your subject line – this way you can figure out what style of subject heading has the best open rate. Do your subscribers like it when their name is in the heading? Maybe they love an emoji (especially if they’re Gen Z!), or a straight to the point discount? There’s only one way to find out. And remember, Gen Zers have short attention spans, so keep your headlines brief, engaging and direct.

3. Email segmentation

Much like sorting your active versus inactive subscribers, make sure you’re segmenting your subscribers so that you can tailor the content to them and their interests – this is likely to keep the engagement rate high.

For example, do you have subscribers based in the UK and the US? If so, make sure you’re using language in the US sends that American Gen Zers use/understand (with the relevant spelling, of course!), whilst UK sends need to be catered towards English Gen Zers.

And whilst we’re here, it’s worth mentioning that tone of voice really matters – try not to assume the role of an ‘adult’ when you’re writing or talking to Gen Z. Whether you’re sending them a shipping order or asking them to review a recently purchased product, treat them as your equal and use language that they understand and use.

4. Incorporate UGC

Okay, so you’re on social media (we hope), and Gen Zers across the world are creating content on the back of your brand and/or products. Consider incorporating these into your emails; if a Gen Zer opens your email to see one of their peers partaking in a trend or showing off your product, they’re much more likely to engage with you and relate to your brand. It might even inspire them to create their own social content – great for that brand-consumer engagement!

young people sat around a table on their phones

5. Optimize your email across all platforms

This might be obvious, but your emails need to look good on phones as well as laptop screens. The majority of Gen Zers will be opening their personal emails on their phones, and if your email looks terrible on a small screen, they won’t hang around! You want to avoid too much text and pixelated images and make sure that your content doesn’t require too much scrolling… the potential errors are endless!

Optimize your emails and test, test, test. And make sure you have a CTA at the beginning as well as at the end, just in case they don’t make it all the way down to the bottom!

Bonus tip

Gen Zers love a GIF, so don’t be afraid to use them. Embedding a GIF of a cultural reference they’ll recognise will help them relate to your brand. And while we’re at it, polls, surveys, carousels and imagery will go down well too. Basically, keep it interactive and make it visual!

The brands nailing email marketing right now

Monki (Clothing brand)

Strong headlines, such as ‘30% off selected tops 😍’
Hooks readers in immediately with discounts and fun emojis
Short, sharp, direct and clear CTAs
Plenty of colourful images/GIFs which display well on phones
Gen Z-friendly language, such as ‘just in time for the layering szn <3’

Ticketmaster

Regular ‘Your music update is here’ emails, personalised to your taste
Subheadings list artists you like who are on tour – grabs the attention
Strong, eye-catching images
Easy-to-understand list format – perfect for scrolling through on a phone
Concise and identifiable CTAs

Cake Stories, Newcastle (Coffee shop)

Friendly check-ins to sit alongside their sales emails
Chatty tone with plenty of bright colours and images
Regularly share positive world news, including upcoming events and gigs, competitions and awards
Quote customers – little snippets of their instore successes and happy customers