7 ways to crush email in 2016

We recently saw email being named “the technology which has transformed how we work, the most in the last ten years”, above smartphones. This trend isn’t going to slow down in 2016. As email evolves through cloud computing, automation, integrating into social and becoming more focused around mobile, we need to make sure we keep up in order to make the most of this medium as both a sender and recipient.

In this post, I’ve gathered a list of tools that’ll make sure you crush email (in a good way) in 2016:

Make your contact list go further. You work hard to acquire new email addresses from prospects and customers. By using something like Clearbit you can make sure the contact list you’ve built up goes the extra mile by being transformed into a CRM, populate with relevant information.

Get real time notifications from your personal email. Ever wonder if that intro email you sent to a prospect was ever opened? Well wonder no more. Use a tool like Hubspot Sales to receive real-time notifications on personal and business emails. So next time you’re unsure whether to check back in, you’ll be able to gauge their interest by seeing whether they haven’t had time to read your email yet or they’ve seen it and are just subtly turning down your offer.

Consolidate all the information you gain from customers and utilise them for email marketing. Try out a tool like Segment.io and actually make sense of all the information you’re already collecting from your customer from different platforms. Then, use this data to hone your email marketing by sending the right message at the right time, to the right audience. Watch your conversion multiply!

Get smart when it comes to collecting email addresses. Are you looking to capture more email addresses from potential customers? When it comes to email marketing, nothing is more valuable than a good contact list. With a tool like SumoMe you can collect email addresses at the right time, on the right page of your website and have them saved on your Email Service Provider’s platform. This can increase the number of addresses collected and also make sure the contact list is populated by real prospects.

Don’t underestimate transactional email. Recent studies have shown that transactional email that includes personalised offers drive up to 20% conversion! If you’re already sending transactional email, then revisit your copy to see how you can utilise this strategy to increase your sales.

Automation is the future. Email and marketing automation have been a hot topic for four to five years. It’s only now reaching SMBs and enabling more casual users as it becomes more widely available, rather than being a ‘black magic’ tool only available by enterprise services. By using a service like SendWithUs & Mailjet, you can create automated trail of emails (drip campaigns) to be sent out based on user behaviour on your app or website, communicating with them at the right time with a specific and high converting message.

Manage everything from your inbox. “Built on everything we learned from Gmail, Inbox is a fresh start that goes beyond email to help you get back to what matters.” Inbox by Gmail is another testament to why email is the centre of our daily personal and business communication. With this new(ish) product, Google has created a tool to help you can colate anything from to-do lists, to automatic flight reminders to set your alarm through your inbox. Now you won’t have to go on multiple apps to organise your life!

Are you using any of these tools or techniques for your email marketing in 2016? Is there anything we’ve missed here that everyone should know about?