How to Improve Your Business’s Email Marketing Efforts with Simple Design Solutions

There is a lot of chatter about using heat map analysis on websites, however there is relatively little about using it to analyze marketing emails. Many companies spend a good chunk of their marketing budget on email marketing only to be underwhelmed by the results. There is often little to none actionable data that gives insights into what went wrong with the email marketing campaign. One way to get around this problem is by using heat map software to understand what people find engaging. Using this information you can then design your emails according to that knowledge to create more effective emails. 

Easy SMTP and EyeQuant recently teamed up to analyze a number of email marketing campaigns using specialized heat map software. They took a number of different campaigns and rated them based on three different factors. The three factors were a clarity score, an excitingness score and an attention map score. Each email received a score for each of the three factors as well as feedback and pro tips on how to improve each one. The emails came from a wide variety of sources including an advertisement, a trade publication, B2B marketing, financial services, and a product description. They then turned the information from analyzing the emails into a comprehensive infographic (featured below). You can see the results here.

They also offered a series of takeaways based on what they learned from their heat map analysis. Some of the more interesting takeaways:

• Using white space is important to steer the eye toward your desired target.

• By narrowing the options available to the user, you are able to focus your message.

• Use a simple design with contrasting call to actions. 

• If you have technical content, focus on a clean display. 

• It is important to be mindful of colors and secondary elements in images. 

As you can see there is a lot of useful information that can be learned by using heat map analysis on emails. By analyzing your current email marketing campaigns, you can learn what is working and what isn’t and adjust the design of your emails accordingly.

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21 Sentences You Should Never Include in an Email for Any Reason (infographic)

Whether you’re planning to email a top influencer about a collaboration idea or thinking of sending a pitch email to an Angel investor, there’s one important thing you have to keep in mind and that is: these people are very wise on how they spend their time.

They won’t spend the whole day reading and replying to all the emails they’ve received. They have more important things to do. So how do you make them read and reply to your email? Just keep it short, simple and professional.

To help you with your email struggle and save you from any embarrassment, here’s a quick guide made with Visme on the top 21 sentences you should never (ever!) mention in an email.

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10 Ways for Small Businesses to Dominate Local Markets

Small Business Saturday (Nov. 26, 2016) is an American shopping holiday that aims to promote shopping at local businesses. Last year, it generated $16.2 billion in spending for small businesses which was a 14 percent increase from 2014. While it’s great to use Small Business Saturday as a way to increase sales, most small businesses need more consistency throughout the year to survive in the increasingly competitive marketplace. Fortunately, there are several ways small businesses can better position themselves to compete in the local market.

1. Small business tips online.

According to a study from Bazaarvoice, roughly 39 percent of in-store shoppers research a product online before buying at a physical location. This means that your small business must have an online presence in order to compete locally. How can your small business improve its online presence?

2. Improve your local SEO.

Focusing on improving your small business’ local SEO will help generate more traffic to your website and ultimately, more leads and sales for your business. With roughly 97 percent of consumers going online to search for local businesses, why wouldn’t you make SEO a priority? Additionally, Google is placing more emphasis on local search with prominent local results floating at the top of targeted search queries. With that said, Google has altered their local results to focus on the top three businesses for a specific search. This means, while difficult, getting your small business inside the top three results can result in tremendous return on investment. To get started, make sure you register your business with Google and Bing Places. Other considerations to improve local SEO include, hyper-local content creation onsite and offsite, outreach and publisher partnerships with local websites, optimizing your website (NAP, keywords, etc.) and strategic social media management among others.

3. Increase online reviews.

Online reviews are a critical part of your local search rankings, not just on Google and Bing, but also sites like Yelp and Facebook. Additionally, online reviews are the modern version of word-of-mouth advertising and can persuade new customers to use your small business, or to not use your small business. In fact, roughly 67 percent of consumersreported that their purchasing decisions were influenced by online reviews. Thus, it’s important to perpetuate reviews from your customers, especially if you know they had a positive experience. Consider adding calls-to-action on your receipts or training your employees to ask for reviews on your Google+, Facebook and Yelp page.

4. Use email marketing.

Email marketing is an undervalued resource for small businesses. It gives you a scalable tool to communicate with current, previous and potential clients. In fact, it seems like most small businesses put more energy into social media than email, even though email marketing is estimated to yield three times higher results and a 17 percent higher value in conversion. Consider using a free email marketing resourcelike Mailchimp or Constant Contact.

5. Target paid local results.

With local search getting increasingly difficult, it might make sense for your small business to consider pay-per-click (PPC) options like AdWords. PPC is when you pay for each individual customer that visits your website after clicking a specific advertisement. The best part is, you can optimize PPC campaigns to target affordable, yet actionable keywords in specific geographical areas. PPC lets you get your advertisement in front of highly targeted keywords in your local market, which will increase your conversions.

6. Small business tips offline.

Brick-and-mortar locations are the staple of small businesses. Even in the increasingly digital world, there are several offline tactics that can help small businesses excel.

7. Become active in the community.

Small businesses are often considered to be “backbones” of their respective communities. As a result, local companies can differentiate themselves by staying active in local affairs. In fact, 82 percent of consumers consider corporate social responsibility as an important factor when making purchasing decisions. As a start, you can join your local Chamber of Commerce to find relevant events in your target market. If you really want to make a splash, consider sponsoring a local event or charity. Social activism in your local community is an excellent marketing tool and a great way to gain positive PR.

8. Target local government contracts.

The government sets aside specific contracts for companies that are designated as small businesses. If your business qualifies, you should consider going after local opportunities. Winning a government contract can provide a stable and consistent revenue stream to supplement other clients. The SBA states that the law requires the government to award 23 percent of their contracts to local businesses, which amounts to roughly $115 billion annually. Winning these contracts are not a given, and you’ll need to devote time and energy into understanding and finding opportunities, as well as creating compelling proposals. However, the risk vs. reward is substantial if you’re able to win a government contract.

9. Focus on the customer experience.

If small businesses are the backbone of a community, then customers are the heart of small businesses. As such, it is vital that your small business focus its efforts on providing the best customer experience possible. Cox reports that 90 percent of U.S. consumers frequent small businesses at least once a week. Furthermore, 63 percent of the respondents said that they feel a strong need to support local entrepreneurs. This is mostly in part to the convenience, customer service and social equity of local businesses compared to corporations. As a result, small businesses can dominate their local market by providing incredible customer service, convenient operating hours, a friendly atmosphere and the inclusion of customer opinions and feedback into strategic decisions.

10. Don’t be afraid of change.

Change is one of the hardest things for small business owners to accept. However, an inability to adapt to changing trends can kill your small business quicker than any competition can. In fact, autonomy and flexibility are two benefits that small business have over corporate competitors. The bureaucracy of larger companies can make it difficult for pivots or strategic changes, but as a small business with a typically flat management style, you are able to adapt on the fly. CRM and other integrated data systems can provide small businesses the insight needed to see trends in their operations. This will help you capitalize on opportunities and prepare for imminent threats.

Life as a small business owner can be difficult. With the saturation of local markets and the increasingly globalized economy, the external pressures forced down on small businesses can seem insurmountable. However, there are several strategies that small businesses can focus on to improve their competitive position. Remember to market yourself online, continue to improve your relationship with customers and never be afraid to change.

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15 of the Best Email Marketing Campaign Examples You've Ever Seen

At one point or another, we all need inspiration to do our jobs better. It doesn't matter whether you're a marketing veteran who has navigated through years of changing technology or a newbie fresh out of college -- we all need examples of outstanding content. It helps us get through creative ruts, make the case to our boss for experimentation, and improve our own marketing.

Most of the time, inspiration is easy to find because most marketing content is publicly available. You can scour the internet or go on your favorite social network to see what your connections are talking about.

But there's one marketing channel that is really, really hard to find good examples of unless you're already in the know: email. There's nothing casual about it -- you usually need to be subscribed to an email list to find great examples of emails. And even if you're subscribed to good emails, they are often bombarding you day after day, so it's hard to notice the gems. 

Because it's so difficult to find good email marketing examples, we decided to do the scouring and compiling for you. Read on to discover some great emails and get the lowdown on what makes them great -- or just keep on scrolling to get a general feel for each. 

(And check out this guide to uncover email productivity hacks that'll save you a ton of time.)

15 Examples of Effective Email Marketing

1) charity: water

When people talk about email marketing, lots of them forget to mention transactional emails. (Download this free offer for all sorts of email copy templates. email copy templates.) These are the automated emails you get in your inbox after taking a certain action on a website. This could be anything from filling out a form to purchasing a product to updating you on the progress of your order. Often, these are plain text emails that email marketers set and forget.

Well, charity: water took an alternate route. Once someone donates to a charity: water projects, their money takes a long journey. Most charities don't tell you about that journey at all -- charity: water uses automated emails to show donors how their money is making an impact over time. With the project timeline and accompanying table, you don't even really need to read the email -- you know immediately where you are in the whole process so you can move on to other things in your inbox.

2) BuzzFeed

I already have a soft spot for BuzzFeed content (21 Puppies so Cute You Will Literally Gasp and Then Probably Cry, anyone?), but that isn't the only reason I fell in love with its emails.

First of all, BuzzFeed has awesome subject lines and preview text. They are always short and punchy -- which fits in perfectly with the rest of BuzzFeed's content. I especially love how the preview text will accompany the subject line. For example, if the subject line is a question, the preview text is the answer. Or if the subject line is a command (like the one below), the preview text seems like the next logical thought right after it:

Once you open up an email from them, the copy is equally awesome. Just take a look at that glorious alt text action happening where the images should be. The email still conveys what it is supposed to convey -- and looks great -- whether you use an image or not. That's definitely something to admire.

Without images:

With images:

3) Uber

The beauty of Uber's emails is in their simplicity. They let their email subscribers know about deals and promotions by sending an email like the one you see below. We love how brief the initial description is, paired with a very clear call-to-action -- which is perfect for subscribers who are quickly skimming the email. For the people who want to learn more, these are followed by a more detailed (but still pleasingly simple), step-by-step explanation of how the deal works.

We also love how consistent the design of their emails is with their brand. Like their app, website, social media photos, and other parts of their visual brand, their emails are represented by bright colors and geometric patterns. All of their communications and marketing assets tell their brand's story -- and brand consistency is one tactic Uber's nailedin order to gain brand loyalty.

4) TheSkimm

We've written about TheSkimm's daily newsletter before -- especially its clean design and its short, punchy paragraphs. But newsletters aren't TheSkimm's only strength when it comes to email. Check out their subscriber engagement email below, which rewarded my colleague Ginny Mineo for being subscribed for two years.

Emails triggered by milestones like anniversary emails and birthday emails are fun to get -- who doesn't like to celebrate a special occasion? The beauty of anniversary emails in particular is that they don't require subscribers to input any extra data, and they can work for a variety of senders and the timeframe can be modified based on the business model.

Here, the folks at TheSkimm took it a step further by asking her if she'd like to earn the title of brand ambassador as a loyal subscriber -- which would require her to share the link with ten friends, of course.

5) Mom and Dad Money

Think you know all about the people who are reading your marketing emails? How much of what you "know" about them is based on assumptions? The strongest buyer personas are based on insights you gather from your actual readership, through surveys, interviews, and so on, in addition to the market research. That's exactly what Matt Becker of Mom and Dad Money does -- and he does it very, very well.

Here's an example of an email I got in my inbox a few weeks ago. Design-wise, it's nothing special -- but that's the point. It reads just like an email from a friend or colleague asking for a quick favor.

Not only was this initial email great, but his response to my answers was even better: Within a few days of responding to the questionnaire, I received a long and detailed personal email from Matt thanking me for filling out the questionnaire and offering a ton of helpful advice and links to resources specifically catered to my answers. I was very impressed by his business acumen, communication skills, and obvious dedication to his readers.

6) Poncho

Some of the best emails out there pair super simple design with brief, clever copy. When it comes down to it, my daily emails from Poncho, which sends me customizable weather forecasts each morning, takes the cake. They're colorful, use delightful images and GIFs, and very easy to scan. The copy is brief but clever -- some great puns in there -- and aligns perfectly with the brand. Check out the copy near the bottom asking to "hang out outside of email." Hats off to Poncho for using design to better communicate its message.

7) Birchbox

The subject line of this email from beauty product subscription service Birchbox got my colleague Pam Vaughan clicking. It read: "We Forgot Something in Your February Box!" Of course, if you read the email copy below, they didn't actually forget to put that discount code in her box -- but it was certainly a clever way to get her attention.

And the discount code for Rent the Runway, a dress rental company that likely fits the interest profile of most Birchbox customers, certainly didn't disappoint. That's a great co-marketing partnership right there.

8) Postmates

I've gotta say, I'm a sucker for GIFs. They're easy to consume, they catch your eye, and they have an emotional impact -- like the fun GIF in one of Postmates' emails that's not only delightful to watch, but also makes you crave some delicious Chipotle.

You too can use animated GIFs in your marketing to show a fun header, to draw people's eye to a certain part of the email, or to display your products and services in action. Here are the best places to find GIFs on the internet, and here's an easy Photoshop tutorial for making your own.

9) Dropbox

You might think it'd be hard to love an email from a company whose product you haven't been using. But Dropbox found a way to make their "come back to us!" email cute and funny, thanks to a pair of whimsical cartoons and an emoticon.

Plus, they kept the email short and sweet to emphasize the message that they don't want to intrude, they just want to remind the recipient that they exist and why they could be helpful. When sending these types of email, you might include an incentive for recipients to come back to using your service, like a limited-time coupon.

10) InVision App

Every week, the folks at InVision send a roundup of their best blog content, their favorite design links from the week, and a new opportunity to win a free t-shirt. (Seriously. They give away a new design every week.) They also sometimes have fun survey questions where they crowdsource for their blog. This week's, for example, asked subscribers what they would do if the internet didn't exist.

Not only is their newsletter a great mix of content, but I also love the nice balance between images and text, making it really easy to read and mobile-friendly -- which is especially important because their newsletters are so long. (Below is just an excerpt, but you can read through the full email here.) We like the clever copy on their call-to-action buttons, too.

11) Warby Parker

What goes better with a new prescription than a new pair of glasses? The folks at Warby Parker made that connection very clear in their email to a friend of mine back in 2014. It's an older email, but it's such a good example of personalized email marketing that I had to include it in here.

The subject line was: "Uh-oh, your prescription is expiring." What a clever email trigger. And you've gotta love 'em for reminding you your prescription needs updating.

Speaking of which ... check out the clever co-marketing at the bottom of the email: If you don't know where to go to renew your subscription, the information for an optometrist is right in the email. Now there's no excuse not to shop for new glasses!

12) Cook Smarts

I've been a huge fan of Cook Smarts' "Weekly Eats" newsletter for a while. The company sends yummy recipes in meal plan form to my inbox every week. But I didn't just include it because of its delicious recipes ... I'm truly a fan of its emails. I love the layout: Each email features three distinct sections (one for the menu, one for kitchen how-to's, and one for the tips). This means you don't have to go hunting to find the most interesting part of its blog posts -- you know exactly where to look after an email or two.

I also love Cook Smarts' "Forward to a Friend" call-to-action in the top-right of the email. Emails are super shareable on -- you guessed it -- email, so you should also think about reminding your subscribers to forward your emails to friends, coworkers, or heck, even family.

13) HireVue

"Saying goodbye is never easy to do… So, we thought we’d give you a chance to rethink things". That was the subject of this automated unsubscribe email from HireVue. We love the simple, guilt-free messaging here, from the funny header images to the great call-to-action button copy.

Not only are the design and copy here top-notch, but we applaud the folks at HireVue for sending automated unsubscribe emails in the first place. It's smart to purge your subscriber lists of folks who aren't opening your email lists because low open rates can seriously hurt email deliverability. We sent out a similar email in December 2015 when we automatically unsubscribed people once they became unengaged, which you can read about here.

14) Paperless Post

When you think of "holiday email marketing," your mind might jump straight to Christmas, but there are other holidays sprinkled throughout the rest of the year that you can create campaigns around. (Download these email marketing planning templates to keep yourself organized throughout the year.)

Take the email below from Paperless Post, for example. I love the header of this email: It provides a clear call-to-action that includes a sense of urgency. Then, the subheader asks a question that forces recipients to think to themselves, "Wait, when is Mother's Day again? DidI buy Mom a card?" Below this copy, the simple grid design is both easy to scan and is quite visually appealing. Each card picture is a CTA in and of itself -- click on any one of them and you will be taken to a purchase page.

15) Stitcher

Humans crave personalized experiences. It's science. When emails appear to be created especially for you, you feel special -- you’re not just getting what everyone else is getting. You might even feel like the company sending you the email knows you in some way, and that they care about your preferences and making you happy.

That's why I love on-demand podcast/radio show app Stitcher's "Recommended For You" email. I tend to listen to episodes from the same podcast instead of branching out to new ones. But Stitcher wants me to discover (and subscribe to) all the other awesome content they have -- and I probably wouldn't without their encouragement.

I think this email is also quite a brilliant use of responsive design. The colors are bright, and it's not too hard to scroll and click -- notice the CTAs are large enough for me to hit with my thumbs. Also, the mobile email actually has features that make sense for recipients who are on their mobile device. Check out the CTA at the bottom of the email, for example: The "Open Stitcher Radio" button prompts the app to open on your phone.

These are just some of our favorite emails. Don't just follow best practice when it comes to your marketing emails. Every email you send from your work email address also can be optimised to convert. Try out our free email signature generator now. Check out some more of our favorite HubSpot marketing email examples.

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Beyond Email: How to Automatically Nurture Customers with Different Channels

Marketing automation = emails.

Right?

Well yes. But there’s so much more.

Which is fortunate, considering it’s never been more difficult to reach customers through email.

The competition’s higher. But email providers themselves are introducing new ways and methods to do everything in their power to limit the amount of promotional messages that reach a person’s inbox.

That’s great news for consumers. But terrible for marketers.

The good news, is that there’s a plethora of other available alternatives to combine with your marketing automation tactics.

Here are four to start using this week.

Is There Life After Email?

Marketing automation can deliver an unbelievable 451% new qualified leads and 34% increase in sales.

A big reason is because it successfully delivers the Holy Trinity of right message, right person, and right timing.

Despite the promising potential though, 85% aren’t happy with their execution.

And I’m willing to bet that part of it is due to our over-reliance (as marketers) on email.

Email is king. Was, king.

It used to generate $38 for every $1 spent. It still destroys Facebook and Twitter by 40X in acquiring new customers.

But today we’re becoming inundated by it.

Trillions of emails are being sent. It’s only a matter of time before you start receiving 140 on a daily basis!

The ‘graymail‘ we all send doesn’t help.

It’s being picked off today by powerful machine learning algorithms that instantly detect whether your message will hit someone’s inbox, end up in the Promotions graveyard, or be rejected altogether.

Today the hardest part isn’t sending email, but getting the damned things delivered in the first place.

Email’s still obviously powerful, but consumer behavior has evolved past just emails as well.

Multi-channel, multi-device shopping is now the norm. The customer journey isn’t a linear, one-off process.

That’s why it can take you over 13+ touches before someone purchases something.

So a single newsletter isn’t good enough. A single automated workflow of emails ain’t gonna cut it either.

Instead, we need to think beyond email and look for ways to incorporate other channels (and other tools or techniques) so that we can touch (in a strictly G-rated way) customers as much as possible, wherever they are.

Here are four.

1. Behavioral-Influenced Live Chat

Live chat is the top choice for consumer’s preference of support channels, with 79% preferring it over email and phone because of its immediacy.

It’s efficient, resolving most problems in only 42 seconds. And people like it because they don’t have to wait around on hold (or worse, try and get through an impenetrable phone tree).

But let’s be honest with each other for a second:

Live chat used to suck.

It was ‘static’ and dumb; giving you like-a-whole-IP’s-worth of knowledge about the person you were speaking too. Maybe a first name too (if it wasn’t fake).

The good news is that the times have evolved a bit.

With new options like Drift and Intercom, live chat (and the broader trend – messaging) has been transformed into a living, breathing communication channel that can power some pretty amazing stuff.

For example, Drift reports that their customers are able to start conversations with around 7-20% of their website visitors now.

Today these systems are more like a blend between lead generation (getting visitor’s attention and interaction), marketing automation (reacting and responding differently depending on who’s viewing it), and customer service (answering basic sales or support questions).

New techniques like machine learning and artificial intelligence are being applied, allowing you to route or trigger messages to specific people based on key events.

That means you can tailor one message or conversation for a new visitor on your pricing page, differently than a long-term customer whose entire website and app visit history you can see. These triggers (and auto-saved replies) can be applied on a number of different criteria like their:

• Website activity (pages viewed, etc.)
• Visit frequency (and number of pages viewed)
• Location and language
• Previous conversations with your team members

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And the best part is that they’re beginning to provide a deeper integration with other automation tools like HubSpot.

So you can use live chat and interaction responses someone provides to kick off workflows that can run a series of other events, like sending out emails, or even text messages.

Which brings us to the next tactic.

2. Proactively Follow-Up with SMS

Email open rates continue to fall precipitously to a depressing average of 15-25%.

Contrast that with SMS open rates, which are closer to 99%!

Even more interesting is that more than a third of business people reported that they “couldn’t go 10 minutes without responding to a text”. (Which kinda makes sense when you think about your own texting behaviors.)

Part of the reason for its high success rate is because it hasn’t been completely abused (yet) like email. Only 38% of contact centers in one study reported to using SMS.

Some of the savviest organizations are now using texting in their normal onboarding or sales process to boost response rates.

For example, your typical email-based marketing automation sequence kicks off after a form is filled out. I literally just started working on one yesterday:

But while doing some research for a client, we came across one company that started replacing (and augmenting) some of these automated emails with instant text messages.

For example, after filling out a form on their PPC landing page your phone instantly lights up, buzzs, and says:

“$FNAME Thanks for your interest in $COMPANYNAME, we’ll be calling you soon.”

They followed up, and pre-sold the phone call (trying to increase the % of people who opt-in to accepting the first phone call).

Of course, like terribile prospects, we didn’t answer the phone call. So here’s what we received:

“We were unable to reach you. Click $PHONENUMBER to call us now.”

This is a textbook marketing automation example, where you use conditional IF/Then statements to create different response workflows based on actions they DO or DON’T take.

But they’re just substituting less declining channels (like email) with more responsive ones (like SMS and phone).

The SMS infancy was used for basic one-off messages (like limited time promotions or discounts) and your basic support or notifications.

However now, providers like TextMagic and Twilio (as we saw with live chat tools a second ago) are morphing into a ‘smarter’ option that includes the ability to run lead nurturing campaigns based on different segments of contacts (and where they might be in the overall lifecycle).

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Hell – even Zapier can send SMS messages. And you can do A LOT with Zapier, using hacks like this to create fully-functioning marketing automation sequences with basic, inexpensive software.

3. Drive Engagement with In-App Notifications

Free trials are nice. But they’re just the start.

Because the majority of leads still won’t open their wallet and become a paying customer.

One older study showed that 70% of your free trial-er’s are going to leave. They evaluate a few options, sign up for a free trial (or two), use the product once and then leave forever.

In-app messaging can be an antidote though, allowing you to (again) trigger messages and notifications based on what users are doing (or not doing) inside your app.

In-app notifications are a way to drive engagement, getting people to interact with certain parts of your product (again and again and again) thereby increasing the chances they start paying you and lowering the chances they’re going to churn.

For example, are people using that latest feature you just released last week?

You can create a Funnel Report inside of Kissmetrics to first analyze the number of people who successfully checked out and used that new feature:

To increase that abysmal number, you can trigger notifications when new users login:

This just scratches the surface of delivery too. Beyond the basic overlay features that can slide in-and-out of the corners of a user’s screen, you can also do full screen takeovers.

You can (and should) send an email. And with someone’s email address, you can even create retargeting campaigns with a Facebook custom audience campaign or send something in the actual mail.

4. Go Old-School with Direct Mail

Walk out to your mailbox right now.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Open it up, and retrieve the junk inside.

Honestly – it’s probably junk. Coupons and other assorted direct mail pieces that are inexplicably still sent in this age of digital.

Apparently, there’s a reason. The USPS – like, the post office – did a study that showed 60% of direct mail recipients will ALSO visit a website being promoted on the piece.

Turns out, there’s some method to the madness as direct mail can provide an interesting way to sidestep the cluttered battleground that is your prospect’s inbox.

Even old school tactics like direct mail are getting treated to an overhaul, courtesy of players like Lob that allow you to trigger new campaigns through an API.

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You supply all the content and creative ahead of time, and allow them to manage the headache of creating, coordinating and delivering each piece automagically.

You can use custom referring domains to track when new site visits occur based on offline activities. And you can use custom 800-numbers and set-up tools like CallRail (through their convenient Kissmetrics integration) to manage notoriously difficult phone calls.

Conclusion

The question isn’t, “Email, or…”. But “Email, and…”.

It’s still effective, to a point. But it needs help. The competition for attention inside an inbox continues to increase, and email service providers are becoming increasingly stingy on what they let in their pearly gates.

Consumer behavior has also evolved, so the days of converting leads and customers off a single email (or any single-channel event for that matter) are long gone.

Today, it takes a multifaceted messaging approach for our multi-device, multi-channel world.

You should still send automated emails – absolutely.

But you should also be coordinating those activities with what people are doing on your website, inside your app, and strategically reaching them on-the-go when possible too.

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