Looking for ways to give your email marketing campaigns a boost in the new year? Here are 14 easy email tactics to try. Good luck! (Scroll down for text only.)

2. Segment your lists

All subscribers are not created equal, so it’s time to stop sending the same email blast to your whole subscriber list. Consider creating segmented lists based on consumer behavior (VIP’s vs. one time shoppers), life stage (single vs. parent) or interests (indie rock vs. hip hop). There are unlimited ways to slice and dice your subscribers so you can start creating more targeted email campaigns.

3. Switch up the sender name

A friendly sender name can boost your open rates. Try experimenting with a couple options such as “Company Name”, “Hello from Company Name”, or “Person from Company Name”. An Iterable client experimented with a couple sender name variations and the winning name actually earned over 70% increase in email open rates over the control.

4. Vary your send times

Is your audience more likely to check email in the morning when they go to work or at night in bed before going to sleep? Try switching up your send times to see which time gives you best open and click rates.

5. Pay attention to the preheader

The preheader is the text that appears after the email subject in the inbox, and it’s shocking how many times it gets ignored. Think of it as 80-120 more characters you can use to convince people to open your email. Use it as a preview or summary for the body of the email.

6. Try different subject lines

Effective subject lines are straightforward, concise and pique the user’s interest to open the email. Avoid using spammy words such as “Free”, “All Natural”, “Act now”, and refrain from adding too many exclamation points!!! If you plan on doing some A/B testing on your email campaigns, the subject line is another great place to start.

7. Get better deliverability by implementing DKIM, SPF and DMARC

DKIM, SPF and DMARC are email authentication techniques that can improve your sender reputation and the deliverability of emails sent from your domain. They can be activated by adjusting your DNS records.

8. Add your social networks to your emails

Email may not be everyone’s preferred method of communicating with your brand. Add social icons to your emails to allow your customers to engage with you through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and other social channels. You’ll also enjoy increased fans, followers, +1’s, etc.

9. Experiment with your call to action buttons

You’ve A/B tested the best color, font size and copy for call to action buttons on your website, but when’s the last time you tested those variations for email? Experimenting with different elements of your email templates may help you uncover the option that maximizes conversions.

10. Optimize for mobile

Almost 50% of emails are opened on a mobile device. Therefore it’s imperative to make sure your email looks just as good on a phone or tablet, as it does on desktop. If you’re using a 3rd party ESP, make sure it has the ability to preview emails by device.

11. Let people choose how often they want to receive emails

Allowing people to choose how often they hear from you can lower your unsubscribe rates or save your emails from being marked as spam.

12. Create triggered email campaigns

Triggered email campaigns send emails to users after a certain user action or event. Some examples could be birthday promotion emails, Amazon’s “products you may also like” emails or registration confirmation emails. If you are currently only sending uniform blast emails, adding some triggered campaigns could encourage audience interaction with your brand.

13. Incorporate gifs into your email

The internet is gif-obsessed, proven by the popularity of Vine, Tumblr and Buzzfeed. Incorporating these moving images in your email can help you showcase multiple products, highlight a product in motion, or just get your audience to take a second look at your email.

14. Use video

There’s an ongoing debate about whether or not it is wise to add video to emails, considering it is only supported by 62% of email clients. However, if you just spent a lot of resources creating a dazzling new video, adding it to email would help increase its reach. Just be sure to add a fallback image, so users using non-video supported email clients can click the hyperlinked image to view the video in a browser.

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Have more email tactics you’d like to share? Tell us in the comments below!

This blog post was originally published on the Iterable blog.

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