You’ve finally done it. Made a list, checked it twice, and now you want to start sending emails to your (hopefully) loyal subscribers. Ah, life is great and your business is surely set to explode with increased sales. As they say “It’s all in the list!”

But, do you really know what you’re doing? Are you armed with the knowledge needed to successfully send out useful emails to your list without getting spam-boxed and/or unsubscribed? This is perhaps the biggest hurdle you’ll always have to overcome throughout all the mailings you send.

Then there’s the marketing side of things — getting the sale, convincing them to buy again, all the while building a bulletproof brand. Email still edges out other online marketing methods including organic search, content marketing, and PPC.  And yes, even cold emails still work wonder.

So what’s the best strategy for 2018, you ask?

We’ve all been beat to death with tips about mobile optimization, image carousels, VR, and using Pareto’s 80/20 rule in our sending out emails (Ie., 80% value, 20% asking for a sale). But according to this blog post on email marketing trends in 2018, the ‘why’ and ‘how’ you’re sending are really much more important, especially in 2018.

Let’s look at how you can provide more relevance, value and an all-round better email experience for your list subscribers.

Embrace segmentation for more targeted results

Segmentation is so important when marketers consider just how many emails their subscribers are getting on a daily basis. If you’re not targeting specific information, answering relevant questions, and giving offers that are applicable to the unique interests of your subscribers, you’re never going to win the battle of the inbox. Worse, lack of relevance will always equal an ‘unsubscribe’ from the people who actually bother to read their email.

A great example of how to segment emails for better results would be a request for small business owners with 5 or fewer employees to attend a small business marketing event you are holding in Toronto, Canada:

• If you’ve smartly gathered data from your list when they signed up, or using surveys afterword — and plugged those details into a robust CRM — you should have information to segment your list into small business owners that meet your criteria within reasonable driving distance to the event venue in Toronto.

You would not be sending relevant emails out for this event example, if say you were sending invites to fortune 500 CEOs, or owners of larger companies. They’d quickly tire of these emails and unsubscribe or simply stop reading everything you send.

Personalized messages make segmentation even more powerful

Amazon is often cited as a great example of a company that knows how to personalize their emails to their lists. Every email starts with “Dear (name),” instead of “Dear valued customer,” or whatever iteration most marketers have been using for the last ten years.

The ecommerce giant sends emails asking for feedback after each delivery is made. Amazon gives offers based on buying history, items viewed on their site, products related to both buying and viewing history — and then tops it all off by showing their customers new emerging products on the site — just in case.

However, the level of personalization is what drives loyalty and of course, drives more sales because everything they send you via email, or serve up on their website is relevant and therefore not annoying to users.

Trigger emails are essential for getting the sale/retaining the customer

Trigger emails are the most welcomed of all emails from marketers. “Welcome,” “Thanks for your purchase,” “Rate your transaction,” “Here’s your receipt,” “Did you forget something?” and many other forms of trigger emails are actually an expectation from consumers. In fact, they have a 95% higher open rate, and double the click-through rate of any other kind of email.

The best news for growing brands is that very few of a large pool of marketers actually use trigger emails. When they do, they don’t always use them effectively (Ie., no personalization, don’t welcome customer feedback, don’t target customer needs with upsell offers).

Cart abandonment is the perfect time to hit existing and potential new customers with a triggered email, too. This is why it’s so important to make an email address a required field when a customer signs up for an official or guest account prior to the checkout page. When they get cold feet about a purchase, a trigger email can prompt the customer to reach out with their concerns, thus allowing you to remedy whatever issue is holding them back, if you can.

Email marketing isn’t going away

Email marketing is still the most effective way to market to consumers. Even with emerging social media branding, vlogging, blogging and other methods, email will always be an effective way to reach subscribers. What you need is a great strategy and a flawless execution – with the help of the best email marketing tool you can find.

Considering people check their email approximately 15 times a day, yet only brush their teeth twice, it’s safe to say that emails are potentially more important to people than their actual health!