Almost all email marketing education will talk about the perfect subject line, the sharpest hook, and how to pack value in your content. But as your customer's inboxes continue to get flooded, there reaches a point when even the best written email will drown in the sea of priorities.

But this doesn’t in any way mean email marketing is dying. According to Sleep Advisor, 78% of Americans check their emails before leaving for work, with 11% of them doing so immediately after waking up. The result of this? Louisa Zhou reports that email marketing has an overall return on investment of around 4200%! Customers certainly act based on email marketing. The trick is to just get them to open, and that's what this article is going to cover. How do you use your presence on your other platforms to help your email open rates once you've already nailed the art of writing effective email campaigns? 

Understanding the Inbox

Many marketers confine their strategy to the email, but having a more holistic approach could help. Yes, your target market is probably checking their emails as much as you hope they are, at least the stats are suggesting this. 99% of users check their emails daily. 

But as soon as they are in, they're immediately bombarded with countless emails, all vying for their time. Nearly 49% of consumers reported that they felt overwhelmed by emails from business owners and marketers. 

With such a significant number failing to manage all the marketing going on in their inbox, it becomes important to understand how they cope. 

On being hit with a tsunami of newsletters, human psychology kicks in; the mind begins to prioritise. Work emails usually take the top spot, followed by emails from people in their inner circle. Any email opened after this usually follows the same pattern: does it pay their bills, and do they care? And care will fall roughly into two categories: care about what you're talking about, or care about you.

The Limitations of Conventional Tactics

After mastering the hook, subject line, and finding the right leads, you've probably figured out how to write to the right audience, and about what they care about.  

But all of this won't mean much if your audience is overwhelmed and won’t even look at your email. If everyone is implementing the same best writing practices, then many of the emails in your potential customers' inboxes will also be well-written. This means you need to build a name or business name that customers will wade through a sea of other emails to fetch and open. They need to care about you–even if you already talk about a subject they care about, because it's usually many of you trying to speak about the same thing to the same person!

Why Customers Must Care About You: The Fenty-Cècred Example

If numbers are anything to go by, people seem to love both Beyoncè and Rihanna. Beyonce, for instance, enjoys a following of about 312 million followers on Instagram alone and Rihanna 149 million on the same platform.

Yet when they both launch products based on this fame, the numbers start to tell a story worth looking into. In 2024, Beyonce launched Cècred hair, amassing $13.9 million in earned media value(EMV). 

Earned media value quantifies the level of engagement with social media content about a brand that is created by a third party. 

When Rihanna's Fenty dropped Fenty Hair,  roughly four months later, it generated a staggering $24.6 million EMV. That's almost double Cècred's performance. The point in this isn't about the individuals, but their brands and how Rihanna's specifically influences action on her audience effectively. Understanding this will give you a foundation on what it takes to genuinely engage with your audience so that they are ready to consume what you put out, even if for starters it's just an email. 

Both brands embedded their personal hair journeys into their marketing companies. People almost had no idea what Beyonce's natural hair looked like but she showed it in the lead up to Cècred's launch. Rihanna talked about how motherhood changed her hair and how she had learnt to be creative with her hairstyles as a result. But, these pre-launch revelations have to be placed in context if they are going to help you. 

Beyoncé's persona is built around mystique and unattainability. So, when she launches a product, especially one for everyday use, it's often hard for potential customers to translate mighty Beyoncè into everyday life. And this is relevant because most products are coming in to solve something. They might as well be facing the same struggles as her, not finding products that can truly express their souls, but for the most part they won't even know she is human enough to share pain points.

The persona that intrigues her fans seems to act against her when it comes to convince the market to buy. How could they when they love authenticity and they for the most part don't know who Beyonce is outside of curated moments. It doesn't help that AI invading everything now, and almost everyone is craving human connection. With Cècred, she seems to recognize these shortcomings, brings her audience in a little bit. They get to see her do something so ordinary like washing her hair(gasps!) 

Rihanna on the other hand, has found a way to have her public persona match her brand values. Perhaps the first thing is that she has managed to show personality over the years in a way that it's recognizable when she creates a product that embodies that persona. When people buy, they know it's an actual “piece of Rihanna” and in that way, both her starpower and relatability work for her. 

Bringing This Back to Email Marketing 

What does this have to do with email? Everything. Rihanna's ability to drive action isn’t just about fame; it’s about trust and connection. Her audience knows what she stands for, recognizes her voice, and feels like they are part of her journey. That’s the same approach that makes email marketing effective beyond just a good subject line.  

The brands and individuals who consistently get high open rates aren't just sending well-crafted emails—they are sending emails from someone their audience recognizes, trusts, and wants to hear from. If your subscribers feel no connection to you outside of the inbox, they won’t prioritize your email inside of it.  

So, how do you ensure that when your email lands in their inbox, it’s one they’re excited to open? The answer lies in building a presence beyond the email itself.

It's Not Just About Their Inboxes

Your journey with your potential customer doesn't need to start in their inbox. You can use other platforms to warm your audience and create a connection with them. By the time your email arrives, they should already know where you sit in their heart, should already care who you are and what you have to say.

Methods to Foster Authentic Engagement

●    Face-to-Face (Virtually): No, you don't have to fly out to each of your potential client’s doorstep. You can create virtual encounters that make them feel as if they have seen you and know you in person. You can do “a day in the life of” videos, live events to talk about specific stuff, while you are there, it’s a good idea to not try to be too polished, too much like a rehearsed TV programme, and more just yourself. It's a breath of fresh air when your audience feels like it has cut through all the corporate speak and performance. 

●   Photos: It's a good idea to stay on your audience’s feeds and pictures are such low hanging fruits for this. When writing captions that go with these, don’t over think. A hack I heard from someone is to start by writing “Dear child/friend’s name” at the beginning, then deleting it before posting. That way you write how you speak to those closest to you- in your voice. 

●   Podcasts: After video interactions, podcasts are a close second. Its a great way of letting your audience join you in a relaxed setting, and let them in your mind about things that matter to you. The podcast could be about business, but its a great idea to let loose and not sound like an audio textbook. How would you speak if you were sitting across a good friend and had to talk about the topic you need to talk about? Aim for that!

●   Writing: By the time you are in their inbox, you aren't just another email, but if they wait for what you have to say on all these other platforms, chances are they are also waiting for you here. They will happily fetch your email from among a dozen others and read that first, and that is what you are aiming for. Remember, your emails need to provide unmatched value, just as the experts have always recommended. It just also has to be accompanied by strong brand engagement. 

Conclusion

Information isn't hard to come by for most of your audience. Their problem is the opposite; they are overwhelmed by it. Yet this doesn't mean they stop consuming content, but rather that their standards for who and what to listen to will continue to rise.

In such a world, building a genuine connection and brand relatability might just be the secret ingredient you've been looking for to creating content that your readers will open and act on.