9 Advanced Email Marketing Techniques You Need to Try [2025]

Did you know that there are there are 4.48 billion email users worldwide as of 2024?

That’s how vast the potential scope of email marketing is. Businesses know this, which is why 81 percent of companies use email marketing.

However, email marketing isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it tool. It requires continuous optimization and adaptation. You need to sharpen your email strategies if you want to connect with your audience and see a return for every dollar you spend on email marketing. 

In this article, I’ll take you through the email marketing strategies every business needs to implement if they want to make email a huge contributor to their revenue. Here’s what you need to know. 

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Collect subscribers and segment your list

You'll be surprised to note that despite all the talk about just how important email marketing for eCommerce is, most eCommerce stores (including Shopify stores) don't do it.

Don't be that kind of a store.

The first step is to collect email subscribers (which is relatively easy). 

By industry averages, your average conversion for signing up email subscribers for your eCommerce store should be around 2%, according to BigCommerce. 

Personalized email campaigns are shown to have 26 percent higher open rates. The best way to personalize emails? Segmentation.

Segmentation is the process of splitting your mailing list into subgroups based on specific qualities. The goal of segmentation is to create tailored and relevant emails for your audience. 

Just by segmenting your email subscribers (might or might not include customers, and you should), you get to grow your revenue, and boost the average order value, total revenue, and profits.

In other words, through segmentation you can avoid annoying your audience with low-value or uninteresting offers which can lead them to unsubscribing. 

Segmented email campaigns perform 100.95% higher (on average, in terms of clickthrough-rate or CTR) than non-segmented ones.

When you send emails to segmented email lists, your emails perform better. Just how better, you ask?

According to MailChimp, here's how well they perform overall, across parameters such as open rates, abuse reports, clicks, bounces, and more. 

You’d be surprised how open subscribers are to giving their information in exchange for more targeted content, so seize this opportunity and capture as much data as you can.

You can use any of the following criteria to divide your email list:

• Customer demographics (age, gender, location, job title)
• Purchase or browsing history (what products they bought, looked at, the pages they visited)
• Average order value
• Stage in the customer lifecycle (have they signed up for a discount, have they purchased from you before)
• The lead magnet they signed up for
• Email frequency preferences
• Email open and click rates
• Activity or inactivity

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Think of "segments" as "buckets". Group your email subscribers (this'll include customers as well) into specific categories depending on various parameters.

Segment email subscribers as follows (some more important than others, so you take the call:

• The average order value, lifetime value of a customer, or purchase history.
• Browsing behavior/interests [What products are your subscribers looking at, what do they do on your site? What pages do they visit? ]
• Where are they in the customer lifecycle? [Signed up for a discount coupon but never purchased? Purchased a product just once? ]
• If you do have lead magnets (such as discount coupons, PDF downloadables, etc), which lead magnet they signed up for? Discount coupons sign edup for which product category or collections on Shopify?
• Demographics, email frequency preferences, email open rates, email click rates

Here’s an example of a welcome email for ecommerce (and this email is sent precisely to people who signed up or browsed the store but didn’t make a purchase yet). 

Start segmenting your customers and watch your engagement metrics rise. This could be a big boost to customer trust and loyalty, in the long haul, so it makes even more sense to get started today.

According to Forbes, automated email series (or email flows) such as abandoned cart or post-purchase emails create up to 30 times more revenue per recipient.

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Improve sales conversions & revenue with email best practices

There are some things you could do with your email marketing (it takes work, of course) that drastically change how your email marketing campaigns perform.

Here are some of those email best practices you should be using:

• Focus on the little things: Microcopy (the bits of text here and there inside your email), the email preheader text, the salutation, the design layout (and hopefully, it’s mobile responsive as well). 
• The subject lines: Work more on the subject lines than you’d with anything else. Keep subject lines short, invoke emotion if possible, split test your subject lines, and more. 
• Understand your customers: Based on demographics, geolocation, and other factors),  optimize the email send time. 
• Use email marketing segmentation (above): Personalize your emails (with names, with browsing activity, with timing, and with data in your hands). 
• Utilize different types of offers: If you’re in ecommerce, experiment with product discounts, coupon codes, price matching, or free shipping to encourage more purchases. 
• Use A/B testing to your advantage: With a large enough sample size, deploy A/B tests or split testing (as it's called) to understand what works (whims, preconceived notions, and ideas won't work by themselves).
• Don’t forget post-purchase emails: You don't have to stop at a single sale. Send out "post-purchase" trigger emails to make upsells and cross-selling work for your business (Like Amazon does).
• Use GIFs and Video: If your email service provides a way for you to add videos directly, use it to your advantage. Also, experiment with custom-made GIFs and video thumbnails inside your emails. 

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Use images & always include a call to action

We are visual creatures. We make decisions based on visual imagery. We learn visually. Our brains comprehend the world around us visually.

Brains make sense of incoming information and process information visually. Visuals are everything.

While text-based emails do have a place in your advanced email strategy (such as those for cancellation email triggers, order update emails, and others), for regular email marketing, you should use images.

Email recipients who received an email with images were likely to open the message and spend more time browsing within it, as well as book higher conversion rates.

When you send out emails, using images inside your emails is a no-brainer. Ensure that you use high-quality images highlighting your product, and use visuals to let your customers visualize how the products look (even better if you can show someone using these products). 

Finally, always remember to use a call to action (as a button or as text, but buttons are visual as well). 

Calls to action guide your customers to take action. They are designed to invoke action.

Customers taking action of some sort is what makes real money for your  store (while knowing how many people open, click, the number of emails bounced, etc., are just nice to have). 

Don’t send out emails without a call-to-action: period. 

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Personalize your email campaigns

We’ve mentioned personalization but there are several ways to get creative with personalizing your emails to your subscribers, aside from segmenting your email list.

One of the more obvious ways is to add the subscriber’s first name to your email subject lines and email body text. But you can do better than that!

Use dynamic email content by setting up content blocks (pictures or text) tailored to the subscriber.

A content block can be a simple as inserting the recipient’s name to as complex as information directed to specific groups as if it was personally written for them based on the customer data you have. 

Other dynamic content examples you can use:

• CTAs
• Products
• Surveys
• Copy/Text
• Images 

For example, you can send emails measuring the activity or milestones a user or customer has reached on your website or app (time saved, words written, etc).

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You can also give personalized recommendations based on their tastes, location, the product they’ve added to their cart, and whether they’re in the middle of a free trial.

 Those are just a few examples but the possibilities are endless, which brings us to the next email marketing tactic you need to try…

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Use email marketing automations or flows

According to Forbes, automated email series (or email flows) such as abandoned cart or post-purchase emails create up to 30 times more revenue per recipient. If you’re not running email automations, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. 

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Examples of email flows you can use are:

• Welcome email flow
• Birthday email flow
• Cart abandonment email flow
• Post-purchase email flow
• Reengagment email flow

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Utilizing the data you have about your customer and the segments you’ve created out of that data, you can map out an email series that’s tailored to where customers are in their journey with you.

Automations also include drip campaigns and any other automated email sequences, too.

Using email automation technology also saves you a lot of time and the automation tools available are intuitive and easy to use, so setting these email flows are a piece of cake.

It’s a no brainer: if you want to boost conversions, establish your email automations and watch the cash roll in. 

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Regain customers by recovering abandoned carts

We’ve talked about email automations but we want to emphasize the importance of this one in particular: the abandoned cart email flow. 

Each time someone abandons your cart, you lose sales. Practically, that's money that's just gone out of the window (and not into your profit stream).

According to Barilliance, the average shopping cart abandonment rate is at a worrying 77.24% to 78.65% (through the years 2016 to 2017). That's more than 3/4ths of everyone who could have been your customer (but isn't).

To help regain customers, one of the best ways is to reduce shopping cart abandonments, increase sales, and bring in the revenue that you'd have lost.

Instead of sending a single email, use multi-stage triggered emails to "nurture" potential customers who just abandoned your shopping cart. Research is clear that around 2nd or 3rd such nurturing (but targeted and triggered) emails are clear winners.

Send out emails with a discount code to rekindle interest in abandoned carts.

Offer an incentive like free shipping or something else that the customer might want when they come back to your site. Provide a link inside of this email for them to click and continue shopping so you can avoid any cart abandonment issues later on.

Here’s an example of how a triggered email for ecommerce looks like: 

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Conduct A/B testing

Now, for the more advanced technique: A/B testing, also known as split testing. A/B testing involves tweaking different components of your emails to see which ones perform best. 

For example, you can experiment with different subject lines, copy, images, offers, and sending schedules. 

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Test out different variations of an email to see which ones get the most opens, clicks, and engagement. In the process, you will understand your audience more, which can inform your other campaigns.

That’s not to mention A/B testing will pave the way for your emails actually being read and therefore, the success rates of your email campaigns. 

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Scale up with relevant platforms for more

Remember the segmentation tactic (above)? It has another powerful use case paving the way for even more advanced email marketing strategies.

Pick up high-value audiences from your segmentation data such as:

• Customers who abandoned their shopping carts
• Customers with a purchase history of less than $100
• Customers who purchased "this" but not "that"
• Customers who showed interest, browsed your store, didn't make a purchase yet, etc.

Once you have these specific groups, you can tap into the power of platforms such as Facebook and Google and find audiences very similar to these groups.

Facebook calls these audiences 'lookalike audiences'. Google calls these audiences 'similar audiences'. This is on top of other audiences Google has in store for you such as "in-market" audiences and more.

By creating specific lists and uploading these lists to each of the platforms above (you also have more choices such as Quora PPC, Instagram, and others, of course), you'll have access to potential customers you haven't reached out to yet. 

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Ask for feedback 

Email is a two-way street. Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask questions to your subscribers. Integrate the previous tips we’ve mentioned by personalizing messages for each segment and sending a survey or quiz to these segments. 

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To increase participation, add an incentive such as a discount, upgrade, exclusive content, samples or a gift.

You can also ask feedback about:

• The frequency of the emails you send
• Your email content
• Your offers and promotions
• Any issues or concerns
• Questions about your products
• How likely they are to recommend your brand or products to others

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Keep your surveys concise and jargon-free so people are more likely to complete them. You can even send the survey to a small group first to find out if there are any issues. When done right, the feedback can be used to your other marketing efforts.

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FAQs

1. Is email marketing still profitable? 

Yes, email marketing remains one of the most cost-effective marketing channels, offering an impressive ROI of $36 for every $1 spent. By using techniques like personalization, segmentation, and automation, businesses can maximize engagement and drive more sales.  

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2. What are the benefits of email marketing automation?  

Email marketing automation saves time by sending relevant messages to subscribers based on their behavior or preferences. It increases efficiency and improves engagement by delivering the right content at the right time.  

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3. How can A/B testing improve email marketing campaigns? 

A/B testing helps you compare different versions of an email to see which performs better in terms of open rates, clicks, or conversions. This data-driven approach allows you to refine your strategy and create more effective campaigns.  

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