How To Acquire More Customers Through The Inbox

Companies are flooding consumer inboxes at a rate higher than ever before. How do you make your marketing stand out in a sea of promotional emails?

Hello, 2025. This year, the marketing landscape is changing across the field with new privacy regulations, new AI tools, and new demands from customers.

All these changes apply especially to email, marketers’ favorite tool for increasing ROI and engaging prospects and customers. After all, for a channel with an ROI of $36 for every dollar spent, it’s paramount to follow best practices to a T.

In their quest to build active subscriber lists, email marketers must contend with transparency in their data collection and use, and provide clear email opt-ins and unsubscribe links to comply with regulations and ensure trust with their customers.

And what about improving open and click-through rates? Writing concise and clear subject lines, brief and actionable body copy, and using segmentation the right way can all improve email acquisition strategy.

Over 60% of customers prefer that brands reach them through email, and it’s 40 times easier to gain a customer through email than through Facebook or Twitter, according to McKinsey. And with almost 4.5 billion email users worldwide, email is here to stay, so you better catch up on all the latest ways to capture consumer interest through the place prospects want to see you most–the inbox.

Improving email open rates

So you’ve gotten prospects to subscribe to your email list. Now what?

You can’t acquire any new customers if none of them even open your emails.

Businesses are competing for email opens all day long. Inboxes are flooded with promotional emails at all times of the day–for that reason, a good open rate usually sits around 20 to 28% across most industries. Anything above 30% is considered extraordinary.

And the key to a good open rate? A compelling subject line.

Because of the competitive nature of open rates across email acquisition campaigns, in-depth research has been done on characteristics of the most open-able emails. Here’s what it says:

• Good subject lines are typically 6 to 10 words long. Marketing analytics firm Retention Science found that emails with subject lines of 6-10 words delivered the highest open rates. 
• Using song lyrics or movie quotes and titles also increased open rates over traditional subject lines, according to the study from Retention Science.
• Put your keywords first. Use top-performing keywords, and put them first so your prospect knows what to expect in your email.
• Add in your prospect’s name for a minor boost. Retention Science also found that subject lines that included a prospect’s name improved open rates by 2.6%.

Of course, these aren’t hard-and-fast rules. Especially when you consider the most important point: targeted emails see higher engagement. Segmentation makes the biggest difference, here, and correctly segmenting your audience can improve open rates drastically. 

Improving email click-through rates

Ok, you’ve overcome the hurdle of getting your email opened. Now, it’s only seconds before you either get a click-through or get deleted. Click-through rates are even lower in comparison to open rates. In order to secure the highest CTR, consider: 

• Using responsive design. Most users check their emails on their phones–so optimizing for a better mobile experience can improve click-through rates. Less clutter, less scrolling, and visible CTAs can all help here.
• Delivering value. This can include anything from personalized offers to educational content, depending on your industry. To stand out, providing value to customers is necessary.
• Keeping it brief. If your emails are getting opened but you’re not getting the click-through rates you hoped for, consider cutting back on the email’s content.

And of course, lest we forget, segmented emails see much better click-through rates.

The importance of segmenting your email subscribers

According to a study from Klaviyo, the more segmented your email campaign, the higher the open rates, click-through rates, and ROI. You can segment campaigns based on demographic makeup, but more effectively through behavior–such as purchase history and online activity. According to the study, the highest-performing campaigns segmented their audience to target 5% or less of their full email list, based on two or more conditions, including a specific behavior of their prospect.

Segmenting your audience to a highly granular degree allows you to target your prospects with content and offers that are meaningful to them. As a result, higher engagement rates and conversion follow.

So how do you personalize your email content based on highly-segmented groups? One easy way is to use dynamic content.

What is dynamic content?

Within an email, dynamic content refers to elements that change automatically based on the data of your recipient. With dynamic content, you can create personalized emails automatically, at scale, on a one-to-one basis.

Although one example of dynamic content is personalized greetings, it goes way beyond that. Here are some more examples of dynamic content: 

• Product recommendations. These can be based on past purchases or browsing history.
• Behavior-based triggers such as sending reminders about items left in a cart or showing tailored offers based on previous interactions.
• Dynamic images or offers such as displaying different images or discounts depending on user behavior.

Dynamic content increases engagement and click-through rates and enhances the user experience by providing relevant information. AI tools can also assist in creating dynamic content and personalized emails at scale.

Using AI-powered email marketing tools

When it comes to dynamic content, segmentation, and personalization, AI tools are changing the game. 70% of marketers are using some form of AI in their workflows at the current moment. In fact, according to G2, 95% of marketers using generative AI for email creation rated it as effective.

Not only can AI tools speed up tasks and allow for greater personalization, AI can help improve processes through machine learning. 

AI tools can help you quickly personalize emails based on specific audience segments and down to the individual level. Not only can you quickly change-up email copy, but you can automate email drip campaigns, organize email lists, and more thoroughly analyze email data. 

Measuring email campaign performance and optimizing for better results

Optimize your emails in real time by measuring email open rates and bounce rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. While we’ve already covered open rates and click-through rates, there are some other metrics you should also keep track of.

• Deliverability rate: the rate of emails that successfully reach your audience’s inboxes.
  • Conversely, bounce rates measure the rate of emails that don’t make it into your prospect’s inbox. Too high of a bounce rate, and your email provider may ban you from sending emails. To prevent this, clean your email list regularly and use trusted acquisition email services.

• Conversion rate: the percentage of users who take the action you want them to–whether that’s making a purchase or signing up for a call. Make sure the transition to your landing pages is seamless and that you implement responsive web design, including fast loading times.

• List-growth rate: the increase of your subscriber rate over time. If you offer valuable lead magnets like e-books or discounts, users are more apt to give you their emails in exchange.

• Unsubscribe rate: the percentage of subscribers who opt out of receiving further emails. High unsubscribe rates let you know that subscribers are dissatisfied with your content–and too high of an unsubscribe rate and you may be flagged for spam. Be sure to segment your subscribers and send targeted emails. Consider allowing subscribers to determine the frequency at which they receive emails.

Email marketing in 2025 is shaping up to include some big changes, especially in workflows considering the widespread use of AI. Don’t feel quite ready? Sitrista can help you navigate the new landscape in email marketing–and get ahead of competitors in the space.