When it comes to email marketing strategy, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Depending upon your organization’s goals and objectives, the way you approach communicating with your subscribers varies. But regardless of how you go about it, there’s no denying that email is the single most effective tool you have.

When you’re already running a website that offers a product or service, it may sometimes feel superfluous to also have to keep track of all the social media websites connected to it. Yet these sites are an essential component of a successful business, because like it or not, social is here to stay.

When sending an email requesting feedback or answers to a survey, your focus should either be to acquire more information about the recipient or to gauge and improve customer satisfaction. Formulate these emails knowing that the goal is to receive a response, so tone down any kind of pitch or hard sell that might distract from this purpose.

Announcement emails serve the purpose of letting your subscribers know what’s new in your world. These are different from a generic update about your office, in that they work to build up the hype surrounding a new product you’re selling or service you’re offering. Though a word of caution: depending upon what you’re announcing, consider whether or not your copy should be “focused on helping people solve their problem versus pitching a product.”

Emails that let subscribers know about an upcoming event can be particularly exciting, because they’re often tied to a one-time occurrence, and not simply set up as autoresponders. As such, they provide you with a chance to be especially creative with your messaging, and you should take full advantage of that opportunity.

In the world of email, your welcome is a lot like a first impression; while first impressions aren’t everything, they shouldn’t be downplayed either. As such, it’s important that your welcome email is clear in its intentions, is well designed, and helps set the tone that your future interactions will carry.

When you’re analyzing your email metrics, as all good marketers ought to do, there’s a chance that you might discover your CTOR isn’t what it used to be. If that happens, don’t be sad, and don’t panic. OK, maybe a little.

In a recent blog post, I talked about how to assess your email marketing performance and mentioned click-to-open-rate (CTOR) as an important indicator for how successful your content is at engaging your audience.

As email marketers, we’re always looking to do better. This is because when it comes to emails, it’s not just about opens or getting people to see your email. It’s also about making sure that the next step happens.

We all know the benefits of adding personalization to your emails, and marketers are finally beginning to prioritize it.