These 10 Email Marketing Tactics Are Working for Me in 2023 – Steal Them

Email marketing has been the foundation of my internet business success for my entire career.

Testing the effectiveness of new strategies and regularly assessing the effectiveness of my old strategies (to ensure they are still working) is paramount to my business.

I've sent 7 million emails out over the past 6 years and run experiments non stop. I've learned a lot along the way, and in this issue, I want to share 10 tactics that have stood out as clear winners.

These are working right now, so jump on them before they are played out. 

After all, we know that eventually, marketers ruin everything.

#1 End of Email Snippets (or "Super Signatures")

My lists aren't always in order of value, but this is an exception. I have these "super signatures" at the top of this list because they have been the single most effective thing I've implemented in the past several years.

What are "snippets" and "super signatures?"

They refer to the same thing. They are content blocks we put at the bottom of emails.

Typically, they are lists of resources or recommended next actions for readers to take.

They can be things like links to...

• Follow your social channels
• Read your best content
• Buy your products or affiliate products
• View your most recommended resources

If you're on my email list, you've seen them. They look like this. 

I am kicking myself for waiting so long to start using these. 

I consistently see 20% to 40% more clicks per email thanks to my super signature!.

My assumption was that by having too many links in one email, I'd trigger SPAM filters. This hasn't happened. 

As long as the links aren't to spammy, un-secure websites, there is no evidence that you'll have issues. 

If you use ConvertKit, you can add these with "Snippets."

Snippets are little pieces of short code that add your super signature.

If you use ConvertKit, you can create and edit snippets by navigating to "Send" and then selecting "Snippets."

You can create as many as you want. I have a snippet for each specific segment of my audience.

Here are some that I've made.

If you aren't using ConvertKit, see if your email software offers a feature like this. They might not call it snippets. If they don't offer it, it may be possible to add them as part of a formal email template. 

If that isn't an option, you should probably switch email providers! Of course, you can always add these manually (save them in a tool like TextExpander if you want to save time).

#2 Already Subscribed States

The last thing that we want to do is show annoying lead magnet pop ups to people who are already on our email list. 

Many bloggers do this though. They send a link to their latest blog post to their list, and when the visitors check it out, they are hit with the same pop up that they saw when they joined the list originally!

This isn't good. 

I'm able to avoid this though thanks to a feature in my lead generation software (Thrive Leads) called SmartLinks. 

SmartLinks lets me hide pop ups or show "already subscribed states" to my visitors. 

Here is what the flow looks like.

I've written at length about this feature on my blog post here, so go check it out to get a full understanding of this concept. 

If you aren't using Thrive Leads, I highly suggest checking it out, but you can most likely find similar functionality in whatever lead generation software you're using on your website to display your lead magnets.

#3 Resend to Un-opens

If an email is worth sending once, it's worth sending twice. The main thing is to use a verified email address, which can only be obtained using quality tools such as Findymail.

It is simple: You can send the same broadcast to a group of people who didn't open the first one. This helps you ensure that as many people as possible get the message you're trying to convey and functions similar to a email warm-up service. 

Most email marketing softwares offer this option.

The results can't be understated. I've consistently seen nearly 2x as many clicks when I do a resend to un-opens email. 

There is a bit of nuance here though.

This isn't as simple as "send every email twice to get more clicks."

Here's a video I made that explains how to do this in ConvertKit in deeper detail, but just know this...

#1 Use this method sparingly. I do it maybe 2x a month and only for really great emails that have value. If the first email doesn't have a good open rate and CTR (click through rate), I won't bother with a resend email. 

#2 Redo the subject line, preview text and body. You don't need to change them completely, but never send the exact same email 2x. 

#3 Wait at least 48 hours between emails. Give people time. After about 48 hours, about 95% of people who will open my emails have already done so. 

#4 Don't forget about the people who already clicked. Sometimes it's best to just send a new email to the entire list multiple times. Why? Because the people who clicked are still the ones who are most likely to buy or take action, but most of them haven't done so. Don't use the resend to un-opens as a replacement to continual effort to make sales. I often use the resend to un-open feature when I'm sending a one-off broadcast that isn't part of a larger scale effort comprising multiple emails across multiple days.

Do those 4 things and you'll have success with resend to un-open emails. 

#4 Lowercase Subject Lines

This one is tough for some marketers. Yes, some people will receive the lowercase email and think, "wow, what an idiot, how did they miss that typo?" 

However, do you know who sends lower cased emails? Not big businesses.

Friends.

Friends send lowercase emails. 

Lowercase subject lines have regularly outperformed proper case ones for me. It's not every time, but it's enough of the time that it's worth trying out. 

Depending on your audience, it may work better, or worse, than it has for me. Unless you're some sort of university or serious professional business like a law firm, give lower case subject lines a shot. Black Friday emails might be your chance. 

If your email marketing software offers A/B testing (it should, if not, switch to ConvertKit like you should have already) test the lower case vs. proper subject line and see how it goes. 

#5 Emojis in Subject Line

Regardless of your opinion on receiving emails with emojis in the subject line, they appear to be working across many industries. 

You should definitely at least give them a test drive.

Here's why...

First, this method isn't played out yet. Far from it.  

Only 2% of companies use emojis in their subject lines. This will give you the opportunity to stand out from your competitors and adopt a more casual tone. 

But remember, marketers ruin everything, so you will want to jump on this train before it becomes annoying and overdone. 

My concern early on was that emojis might send off spam triggers. However, I haven't seen that at all. There is no evidence that emojis will send your broadcasts into the spam folder. 

Now, this doesn't mean you can send the eggplant emoji 20x in a subject line and expect to hit the main inbox. Common sense is required.

#6 Replay the Greatest Hits

When you've been sending emails as long as I have, you've got a nice pool of past work to reference. 

My audience is still in the same niche (relatively), but the people change.

Subscribers come and go daily. People who received a great email in 2018 might not be on the list anymore, and people who joined in 2023 haven't seen it. 

The people who have seen it likely won't recognize it as a repeat, anyway. 

So, it's worth replaying my greatest hits. I recommend "remixing" them though. Don't send the same emails verbatim. 

ConvertKit allows me to export all of my past broadcast engagement data to CSV files. I can then add filters to this data and see many amazing insights. 

I can identify the emails that were the biggest winners by filtering with open rates, click-through rates, or total clicks.

These are the ones I should consider repeating. 

#7 "Don't Contact Regarding" Tag Rules

Too many email marketers seem to oversimplify their subscribers. 

They see it as one of two options. 

You either you want every email or you want off the list. That is not actually the case, though. 

Some subscribers want to stay on your list but don't want to be sent things that are irrelevant.

We need to give them the opportunity to tell us which things they are tired of seeing and which things they want to see. This turns potential unsubscribes into long-term list members. 

In ConvertKit, I can do this with a "tag subscribers who click" rule.

This is what it looks like.

All I need to do is create a page on my website that says something like "You won't hear about (insert thing) anymore! Check out these other resources while you're here!" 

Then, at the bottom of an email, I'll put something short like... 

"PS: If you don't want to hear anymore about the (product, promotion, or topic), just click here and you won't receive any further emails about it." 

I just need to make sure that I use the "Don't Contact" tag properly and keep these people out of future broadcasts on the topic. 

There are a lot of other important email tags you can leverage. Read the blog post below to check them out. 

#8 Countdown Timers

We all know that scarcity sells. Even if you aren't a marketer, you've surely experienced it.

McRibs anyone?

Adding literal countdown timers to emails takes things up a notch. 

That's because 90% of all the information that enters our brain is visual. Animated visuals, like a ticking timer, also are processed 60,000 times faster than images.

Tools like ConvertKit allow you to add countdown timers directly to any email.

We can set rules on what to display when the timer has expired, and we can make the timer link to any URL we want. 

#3 Keeps your list warm. People will engage with your emails more, which will whitelist them in the future. This means that open rates will go up over time, and your spam rates will go down. 

So pick a day and a theme and commit to it each week. You'll see serious results.

Conclusion and Resources

Here's a quick recap of the 10 tactics.

#1 End of Email Snippets (or "Super Signatures")
#2 Already Subscribed States
#3 Resend to Un-opens
#4 Lowercase Subject Lines
#5 Emojis in Subject Line
#6 Replay the Greatest Hits
#7 "Don't Contact Regarding" Tag Rules
#8 Countdown Timers
#9 First Name Short Code
#10 Weekly Themed Emails

Try them all or just the ones that interest you. But remember, get on them before everyone else does and they lose their effectiveness!