Email marketing is an essential part of any ecommerce marketing strategy and a core piece of owned marketing. It enables brands to connect with customers, promote products and services, and drive sales. But, with so many brands vying for users' attention in their inboxes, it can be challenging to stand out and get your emails noticed. Here are five creative ways to increase email engagement and drive sales within your Klaviyo account:

What is owned marketing?
Owned marketing is the channels where you have control over how your brand is represented and who you are able to reach.

Klaviyo, the most-used email and text marketing platform for Shopify merchants, defines owned marketing as helping you, "build highly personalized, lifelong customer relationships with data that's already yours."

1. Use compelling subject lines

The subject line is the first thing your customers will see when they receive your email, and it plays a crucial role in determining whether they will open it or delete it. To increase email engagement, make your subject lines as compelling and attention-grabbing as possible.

There are several techniques you can use to craft effective subject lines:

• Keep it short and sweet: Aim for around 50 characters or less, as longer subject lines may get cut off on some devices.
• Use actionable language: Use verbs like "Get," "Save," and "Discover" to encourage your readers to take action.
• Use numbers: Lists and numbered subject lines tend to perform well, as they provide a clear idea of what the email will contain.
• Personalize your subject lines: Use your customers' names or other personalization details that you can pull in via Klaviyo custom properties to make the email feel more targeted and relevant.

Not only is the subject line important, but the preview text is, too. Preview text can help contextualize the information in the subject line and most devices (mobile especially) actually allow more characters to be seen in a notification for preview text than for a subject line. 

2. Personalize message content

Personalization is a powerful way to make your customers feel valued and engaged. Including their name in the subject line, you can make your message feel more personalized and relevant. But, even that is a "1.0" approach to personalization. The more advanced piece is leveraging information stored on a user's Klaviyo profile to display in-message content that is specific to them. 

For example, Promix Nutrition has a protein calculator that can help customers identify supplement and snack products that may be right for them based on their body types, workout habits and other identifying traits. When a user completes the protein calculator, that information is stored in Klaviyo as custom properties and can be used to personalize content. 

In a recent email about Promix's Raw Liver Capsules, a specific block of content was displayed for recipients who identified themselves as female in the calculator. The screenshot below shows how the custom property CalculatorGender where a user has entered female is being used to display a block of content that is most relevant to women recipients. 

3. Use segments to target specific recipients

Segmentation is a powerful element of owned marketing. Having the ability to reach specific groups of users and tailor content to them increases the likelihood that they will open, click and ultimately purchase something. 

Klaviyo allows the creation of segments based on many types of events, metrics and custom properties. That can include anything from open and click history, Shopify-related purchase data, information pushed into custom properties on profiles from third party tools and more. 

Here's an example of a segment that MoviePosters.com used in a recent campaign to target users that have previously purchased a Star Wars-related product, but whom have not placed a recent order.  

Using a segment like this to target users that have previously purchased, but haven't done so recently is an effective way to reach customers that may be more likely to buy than someone that bought more recently. 

4. Offer exclusive discounts

It's common practice to offer a discount a first-purchase incentive for users to initially join your list.

Here is a multi-step form that Netflix.shop users with a welcome offer for users to sign up for email and SMS.  

Beyond a first purchase incentive, though, it's not necessarily ideal from a profitability perspective to always offer discounts. Use them where it may be strategically relevant and when discounting, don't always showcase a sale across all of your marketing channels. Produce content and present offers to email subscribers that is truly exclusive to them. This will help fuel higher levels of engagement and drive conversion with a sense of urgency when you present time-limited deals only to certain groups of customers.

5. Make it mobile-friendly

More and more people are accessing their emails on their smartphones. It's realistic to expect that anywhere from 50-80% of recipients will view your content on a mobile device, so it's essential to make sure your emails are not just mobile-friendly, but as Klaviyo notes, design should be mobile-first. 

To ensure your emails are mobile-friendly, consider the following:

• Use a single-column layout: This will make it easier for your emails to adjust to different screen sizes.
• Use large, easy-to-read fonts: Small fonts can be difficult to read on a small screen, so opt for larger fonts to make your emails more readable.
• Balance the text in your messages with plenty of white space and imagery. 

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Looking for help in optimizing your email marketing on Klaviyo? Ben Zettler Digital is a Klaviyo Elite Partner and has helped hundreds of brands grow their online sales through owned marketing channels. Get in touch to learn more.