Email marketing gets a bad rap. It is not as sexy of a topic as social media and other innovative ways of communicating. Plus, in-bins continue to get hammered with more and more emails, making many too easily conclude that this communications tool is no longer working.

In attending the DigitalSummit in Boston, it was pointed out that email marketing is not dead. In fact, evidence shows that marketers are seeing it as the clear winner of all marketing channels when it comes to the best return on investment. For most, it is still the top of their marketing spend.

Here are 10 pieces of advice shared in a four-hour session focusing on getting “email from zero to hero”:

1. The Main Preference

When people self-select how they want a brand to communicate with them, more than half of them pick email over all channels. Michael Barber, founder of barber&hewitt, said, that the mindset of people is, ‘If you are going to communicate to me as a brand, that is how I want you to do it.’  Especially “transactional confirmations.”  He believes recipients think ‘That is where I want it.’

He explained that email is growing. There are currently 3.2 billion email accounts across the globe and that is going to grow past 5 billion by 2020.

2. More Than An Email Address

“Email delivers the most ROI for marketers,” said Barber. Not only does it get responses, but it also assists other channels. He clarified that the email address becomes the ID, which is the database profile for customers. This allows for the merging of channels with third-party data.

Before email marketers only had the relationship with an email. Now the data profiles utilize the email, whether they are opted in or out. “You can target people out of email,” said Barber. 

He showed how retargeting people with advertising after they open the email makes them 22 percent more likely to purchase the product. In other words, first-party data can be taken and uploaded to other platforms to increase revenue.

3. Platforms Evolving

Marketers have to be prepared to message their audience no matter what device they are using. Mobile is dominant. 

When it comes to ecommerce, Barber said, “Women are more likely going to convert on a tablet. Men are more likely to convert on a smart phone.”

Of the email services, Outlook is behind, but will likely follow others like Gmail, so that better design functionality will work with all the category leaders.

4. Email Engagement Is Increasing

“We are spending more time on campaigns,” stated Barber. However, a study that he showed defined an engaged reader as one that reads an email for at least 8 seconds.

Since 2011, email recipients are actually engaging more with emails as they have transitioned to smaller screens with mobile devices, not less, as some might think.

5. Optimal Times Have Shifted

“Gone are the days of people just reading emails from 9 to 5,” said Barber. 

He laughed that every email strategist has been asked ‘When is the right time to send emails?’ The old answer used to be ‘9 a.m. local time on a Tuesday and Thursday.’  However, we are no longer just reading emails when sitting at a desk.

He then showed data that pointed out we are reading emails in different places during the day. For example, many people now read emails while watching a second screen (like TV or a movie), in bed, in the bathroom, and yes…while commuting.

Gone are also the days when an audience would take endless time to read emails.  Barber warned, “Likely they are not fully engaged in your campaign. If you are not giving them a single action they can do in about 8 seconds, you are probably doing them a disservice.”

6. Design Is Key

There are common mistakes Barber sees. He gave lots of examples like, using half of the screen before getting to the message, when all along we want the email recipient to take the least path of resistance. People will get frustrated if they cannot get to the message quickly.

People want you to get to the point in 8 seconds, so make sure they can. Get into the content as fast as you can. Let the images do the talking, Barber advised. He showed several examples of how marketers waste the small window of time they have to get their message across.

Design can be a real issue too. A bad contrast like a light font on a white background can be completely ineffective. 

Barber added, “Nobody reads column base emails.”  He believes nobody is zooming in anymore unless the email has maps or photos.

If a URL has to be shown, it should not have one thousand characters.

Emails should be tested to know what they look like through different devices and services before campaigns are blasted out.

7. Be Personable

He laughed that marketers still to this day send email from “DoNotReply@” email addresses. “In what world can you tell customers they can’t reply,” snarked Barber. It is part of the feedback loop to get a reply from the message that created the engagement.

Not all emails should go to all subscribers all of the time. Do not blanket customers with every email. Send them only the things that interest them.

If emails are going to be personalized, make sure the data is clean and the right things are personalized. Just because the name is dropped in an email does not mean the email is fully personalized.

8. Subject Lines Matter

While Barber believes that the length has no impact, he does see that the addition of emojis can make subject lines even better. For example, even in business-to-business (B2B) communications, emojis of thumbs up and check boxes can increase open rates. Emojis do work better if they are coming from an individual.

Even using someone’s first name in an email can have an increase of 26 percent in open rates.

The most read emails are the ones that are about them. For example, make the topic about the individual’s birthday.

9. Getting Emails Through Might Get Harder

Talking about spam folders, Barber said, “For years we had a junk box, if people self-reported you as junk. Now Gmail and other services are filtering messages based on deliverability, reputation data, how many people are unsubscribing and how many are actually reading the emails.

These services are and will make it easier to report emails as spam and unsubscribe. Not only is Gmail, the category leader, using promotions tabs to separate promotional emails, but they will be proactively asking if users want to unsubscribe.

Directing visitors to a website might get harder too. “Gmail will allow any video on YouTube to be able to be natively consumed,” said Barber. In other words, the email recipient will not be taken to a website, the content will function right in the email.

10. Tougher Restrictions

The United States CAN SPAM rule state that we can send one email to every address before they opt in. Barber stated that spam costs the global economy $20 billion.

“Some governments have gotten smart about spam. Every other country is penalizing, he warned. He referenced CASL, Canada’s anti-spam legislation, and European Union’s GDPR and gave examples of big fines if companies sent emails without the right opt-ins

Mike Byrnes is a national speaker and owner of Byrnes Consulting, LLC. His firm provides consulting services to help advisors become even more successful. Need help with business planning, marketing strategy, business development, client service and management effectiveness? Read more at ByrnesConsulting.com and follow @ByrnesConsultin.