There are lots of emails your customers expect to receive email from you… welcome emails, order confirmations, product updates. Sometimes these emails are automated by your developer and you may have never even seen what they look like.

Typically the user is underwhelmed by these emails as there isn’t anything unique about the way the content is being presented. Here are a few email marketing strategies to spice up your emails and give users something worth remembering.

Real email from real people

People expect to receive automated messages but you can make it a little more personal by sending an email from a specific member on your team.

If that welcome email comes from the company owner or the marketing manager, it’s already more memorable than if it comes from the generic brand email. Take it a step further and put that person’s face in the email signature or add a custom handwritten signature for added personalization.

Let a little of their character show so your audience feel like they are getting to know someone who is a real live human being.

This doesn’t mean you need to craft each email individually (although that’s nice too). Make your emails feel as personal as possible while still sending them automatically as a part of your marketing funnel.

You can even play around with facial sight tracking (or whatever you want to call it) to help direct your users towards important content.

Here is an example from Bufferapp. See the email signature at the bottom…

Get creative with images

Let images tell a story about your brand personality. You should be conveying your brand messaging and tone across all of your marketing efforts and email is no different. Go beyond your logo and color scheme and use images to make the user experience more interesting or entertaining.

For one of the most recent emails designed for Badfish.tv, we added a fun gif of Leonardo DiCaprio on a boat with a drink in hand toasting our newest user with a congrats in big letters. This is the welcome email. Pretty welcoming, right?

And it gives you an idea about the kind of business we are right away. It keeps things light and funny while keeping the viewer interested.

Remember not to go overboard here (accidental pun, I promise). One simple image goes a long way and having an overcrowded email will be more of a turn off than anything. White space is your friend.

Need more inspiration?

I’m a big fan of reallygoodemails.com which offers tons of ideas for all different kinds of emails your brand will be sending. The most important thing is to make your emails unique to your business.

Have fun with it and design something that will get a reaction from you customers. New studies show that humans now have an attention span shorter than a goldfish (around 8 seconds) which means you have to engage your users quickly and put the important information where they can see it.

Now go look through all of those boring emails you’ve been sending and turn them into something they’ll actually enjoy.