Customer engagement can mean the difference between whether or not new marketing initiatives are able to move the needle for your business. If you want to make customer engagement a priority, you need email marketing. Communicating with customers via email provides a way to cut through the noise they’re bombarded with on a daily basis and actually connect.

Because people have to deal with information overload on a daily basis, simply emailing customers isn’t going to be enough to drive meaningful engagement. Your business needs to go the extra mile to ensure your email marketing efforts are specifically optimized to drive engagement. For any business that’s wondering how to make that happen, here’s what to do:

Make Personalization a Priority

Personalization can mean different things to different businesses. What matters most is figuring out the right personalization strategy for the emails your business sends and then putting that strategy into action. Finding ways to show customers that you know they’re more than a number in a spreadsheet is the first step towards building real engagement.

Don’t Bury the Lead

Scanning is people’s default behavior when they’re online. Since more online activity is happening on smaller screens, it’s safe to say that scanning is something that’s here to stay. When it comes to emails, there’s a good chance people will only scan the subject line and possibly a snippet preview. Then they’ll use that information to decide whether to open the email or delete it. Giving customers a compelling reason to open your email instead of trash it is why you don’t want to waste any space sharing what matters most about the email you’re sending.

Test, Refine and Repeat

It’s hard to know exactly what is going to resonate with customers. Fortunately, this isn’t something you have to guess. Instead, you can start with an idea and test to see how well it works. From there, you can continue to improve engagement in subsequent emails by using data to identify what needs to be changed or refined.

Avoid Being a Stranger

Filling up customers’ inboxes with emails that don’t provide any value is going to make many of them click the unsubscribe link. However, many businesses are so worried about customers unsubscribing that they rarely send out emails. The problem with that approach is a lack of consistency makes it hard to create any type of relationship or engagement. Sending emails with value on a regular basis will give customers a reason to engage.

If you’re ready to get started with driving customer engagement through email marketing but either don’t have a tool that’s designed for this purpose or are afraid the tool you’re currently using won’t be able to provide all the functionality you need, find out how Global IntelliSystems can help.

1. Engagement
2. Marketing
3. Communication