How to kick off your customer email strategy with Sinch

“Every company in the world needs email.”

It’s a bold statement by Pathwire CEO Will Conway. It’s also absolutely true. And it’s the reason why, today, we’re so proud that Pathwire has officially become part of the Sinch team! That’s right – we’ve added a suite of powerful email APIs, an intuitive email campaign builder, and email testing tools from our latest acquisition. Say hello to Email by Sinch!

So if you’re a Sinch customer eager to add email to your messaging mix – or perhaps to improve the messaging program you already have – what should you keep in mind?

We caught up with Will Conway to get his advice on building an email program that makes a difference!

When it comes to company communications, email has unbeatable potential. Nearly 85% of email users check their inbox every day – and 75% of respondents want to hear from brands via email at least once a week. Of course you should be a part of that action!

But before you start sending email, it’s important to know what you want those emails to achieve.

“Email is frequently thought of as a one-trick pony, but it really never has been,” Will says. “A marketing strategy is different than a transactional strategy. It’s different than a fast-notify strategy.”

What you want your email to do affects how you should do it – when you should send, what the subject line should be, where it fits into your messaging mix, etc. One size does not fit all goals!

“It’s all about what’s actually happening after the email,” says Will. “You should send for different outcomes depending on what you want.”

Email isn’t really about the email itself. It’s not even about the open rate of your campaign. It’s about engagement, and how that email helps your customers along on their journey. For instance, is the goal of the campaign for customers to make a purchase – or simply to move them to the next stage of the funnel?

It’s important that you map your customer journey before and know where each email fits into that map. Each touchpoint builds a deeper story for your brand, and a stronger connection. But it’s when they work together that they really make a difference. Think about the big picture!

Alright, now that you know what you want your email strategy to do, and you’ve got a long-term plan for that, it’s time to make sure your emails actually get read.

The easiest way to do that is through optimization and personalization.

By optimization, we mean everything from using proper segmentation of your list to choosing at what time and what day each email should be sent. (Hint: 11am on Tuesdays and Thursdays is a good place to start!) Solutions like Mailjet make it easy to track every detail of your campaign, from segmentation and A/B testing to checking what time of day your audience responds best.

But you can make it even easier. Mailgun’s Send Time Optimization automation tool figures out when each subscriber on your list is most likely to engage with your email, and then sends that message to them at that perfect moment. Cool, huh?

“By optimizing your send times and making sure each email is delivered at the right moment, our customers see a huge lift in engagement,” Will says. “And that’s without changing any other variables in their campaigns.”

By personalization, we of course mean that it should be clear that the content is intended for that specific customer. Why? Because personalized email campaigns have way better open rates and click-through rates than those that aren’t personalized. You can do this by including the customer’s name in the subject line and body text, or by sending a customized offer based on what they bought last time around. (Get more ideas of what and how to personalize here!)

Of course, they definitely won’t see your email if it ends up in the spam box – or if it’s attacked by mailer daemons on the way. So make sure that doesn’t happen! Is your domain authenticated? Do you have a good sender reputation? Are the UTM tags working?

There’s a lot to think about. The key to ensuring deliverability – at least without getting a major headache every time you need to send a customer email – is to use a platform you can really trust.

“Just having a platform that can keep up with your application is the starting spot. If you don’t have that, if you don’t have something that can move information at the speed that it needs to, then nothing else matters,” Will notes.

Psst – Email on Acid has a full suite of tools for that. Including pre-deployment checklists and preview function – so you can get delivered and look good while doing it.

Here’s the thing about email and other messaging channels: they’re better when they’re together. You shouldn’t have one email strategy and one mobile messaging strategy – you should have an omnichannel customer communications strategy!

Obviously that’s easiest to do if you can access all channels using one platform. Thanks to Sinch’s acquisition of Pathwire, it’s entirely possible. We’re just sayin’…

“In the tech industry, you need the best parts to create the best full stack. None of it matters if the individual parts don’t work and aren’t on the cutting edge. Sinch is the leading provider of international messaging for enterprises around the world, and Pathwire is the number one email stack in the world. Together, we don’t have any weakness in CPaaS.”

And now you won’t have any weakness in your customer communications. Get in touch to learn more about Mailgun, Mailjet, and Email on Acid by Sinch – we can’t wait to help you get started!