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If you’re reading this blog post, there’s a good chance you arrived here by clicking on a link in an email we sent to you.

Email marketing is a powerful tool to encourage your audience to engage with content and to nurture leads in your database along the buyer’s journey.

And despite what you may think, email marketing is still growing: Gmail alone has 1 billion users worldwide, and The Radicati Group predicts that there will be 3 billion email users worldwide by 2020 (that’s almost half of the world’s population).

Certainly email is not dead, but it is getting harder to do well. HubSpot Postmaster and Email Engineering Director Tom Monaghan distilled his wisdom into a set of guidelines for email marketing for growth in 2017 at INBOUND last year. Read on to learn what strategies you should start implementing, absolutely avoid, and keep up in 2017 and in years ahead.

How to Improve Your Email Marketing in 2017

1) Send emails to lists that want to hear from you.

If you have email lists with low rates of engagement activity, stop sending to them. Every time you send to a list with low open and engagement rates, it hurts your domain reputation and your chances of connecting with other potential customers.

Monaghan said it best in his talk: “You are what you eat, and so is your marketing.” When you receive tons of emails from brands you don’t engage with, constantly deleting them or marking them as “read” is most likely tiresome. Empathize with your subscribers and treat their inbox the way you would want your inbox treated.

2) Have a goal for each email before you press “send.”

If you don’t have a goal in mind for the emails you’re sending, the recipients won’t know what the goal is, either. Once you define a goal for your email sends, you can define success and build a list to make that happen.

Goals for your emails could include a contact filling out a longer form for a gated content offer to provide your team with more information about their organization, or redeeming a promo code for a purchase on your website.

Give recipients options in your messages, such as calls-to-action and links in text, so they have multiple avenues to achieve your goal. Everyone’s behavior is different, so make your emails flexible.

3) Personalize and test your emails.

Email personalization really works. For example, back in 2014, we found that emails with the recipients’ first names in the subject lines had higher clickthrough rates than emails that didn’t.

When it comes to personalizing your emails, stick with the basics. Personalize according to recipient names and company names, but to avoid being creepy, leave it at that, urges Monaghan.

Nothing is less personal than receiving a “Dear Customer” or “Dear First Name” email, so test every email to make sure you’re sending to recipient names.

4) Send emails from a personalized account.

Don’t send emails from a “noreply” email account. Personalization works on your end, too. Boost your engagement by personalizing the “from” email address to drive replies from subscribers to a real person instead of “noreply@company.com.”

5) Experiment with sending emails on different days of the week.

Stop sending emails on Tuesdays. Seriously, stop.

Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are the most popular days to send email, but they’re oversaturated with messages that might be overwhelming your subscribers. If you want your emails to be opened, try sending them on Mondays and Fridays. Emails with calls-to-action perform well on Saturdays, so don’t be afraid to send emails on the weekend, either.

In any case, try experimenting with your approach to lessen your subscribers’ email load Tuesday through Thursday, when most business emails are sent.

6) Engage with contacts who’ve submitted forms, not contacts whose information you’ve imported.

When someone fills out a form and provides their email address, their engagement rates are typically higher than cold contacts you’ve imported from a list. That’s because they want to hear from you and chose to engage with your content — they’ve told you this by filling out a form. This is evidence that the inbound marketing methodology is working for email marketers.

And by the way, don’t buy email lists — you’re only hurting your credibility and annoying people who haven’t asked to hear from you.

7) Suppress your unengaged subscribers to avoid sending graymail.

You may be sending spam without knowing it, and that’s because the definition of spam has changed. Graymail refers to bulk email messages that aren’t technically spam because the recipients gave you their information, but the fact of the matter is, they get your emails and don’t touch them. Engagement rates plummet if recipients don’t open your first email, so if they continue ignoring you, the probability of them ever opening your messages is going way, way down.

Stop sending graymail, and listen to what people are telling you by not opening your emails. Start suppressing your unengaged subscribers. That way, your open rates will increase, and inbox providers will see that you’re responding to subscriber behavior.

8) If people are unsubscribing, don’t worry too much (yet).

You can’t please everyone, and unsubscribes will happen. Luckily, your subscribers didn’t mark you as spam — they simply told you, in the nicest way possible, that they’re not interested in hearing from you anymore.

Don’t be too worried yet, but if more people keep unsubscribing, try to identify the potential cause. Consider suppressing or sending fewer emails to subscribers who aren’t engaging as much.

9) If people stop opening your emails, figure out what’s going wrong fast.

If your email open rate is falling, it means you’re missing the expectations of your recipients and that you should prepare for worse outcomes. It’s a leading indicator that spam complaints and unsubscribes are coming, and you should immediately suppress your unengaged subscribers to show email providers that you’re responding to feedback. Test different emails to see if you can improve your open rates.

10) If people mark you as spam, immediately stop sending email and identify the source of the complaints.

If you’re being marked as spam, your domain reputation is at risk, and you could become blacklisted by email providers. Whether the spam complaints are caused by a new source, bad forms, or you missing expectations of your list, slow or completely stop sending emails until you figure it out.

If you aren’t getting unsubscribe or spam complaints, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in the clear — the messages could be going straight to recipients’ junk folders.

11) If you want to learn more about email marketing, take the free email marketing certification course.

Learn more about email marketing with Monaghan right now by taking HubSpot Academy’s Email Marketing Certification course. In only 3.5 hours, you’ll learn about lifecycle marketing, email list segmentation, design, deliverability, and more skills to help you cultivate a strong strategy for 2017 and beyond.

12) Be thoughtful about your subject line.

Don’t write clickbait email subject lines. When people click on your email and then immediately bounce away when they realize your subject line wasn’t genuine, your clickthrough rates will suffer.

For best results, customize and personalize email subject lines and experiment with emojis. Pro tip: Read subject lines out loud before sending. Would you open that email if you received it?

13) Remember: Email is getting harder, but it’s still working.

Every year, engagement rates start to slip, and it gets harder to reach people’s inboxes. This doesn’t mean that email marketing is losing its efficacy, it’s just getting more competitive. The divide is growing between email marketers who know what they’re doing and those who don’t, so make sure to put in effort to test different strategies and keep your subscribers engaged.

The theme of all of these email marketing guidelines? Testing. Every audience and contacts database is different, so make sure you’re testing the implementation of new strategies and tailoring them according to how your subscribers engage. And when you’re ready to hit “send,” here are some lead nurturing email examples to inspire your creativity.

Before you go, you can watch Monaghan’s INBOUND 2016 talk in full below:

How will you be changing your email marketing strategy in 2017? Share with us in the comments below.

It’s once again that time of year for taking a good look at the lessons we’ve learned from our marketing efforts and resolving what we will, or won’t, do again in 2017:

1) Less Bulk Email

Your prospects want to know you see them. Personalized emails provide 6x the transaction rates as generic email. Yet the bar for what qualifies as “personalized” is getting higher. Personalization no more precise than segmenting your list into prospects and parents of prospects doesn’t meet expectations. Your prospects want to feel that you see them as an individual. That means knowing what questions they have, whether they prefer Instagram to Twitter, or even Facebook, and send them videos, not reports. When you collect information through their digital behavior and optimized online forms, put that intel to use when customizing the content you email individuals.

2) Better communication with Enrollment/Admissions

This is a symbiotic relationship. The stronger the relationship between Marketing and Admissions, the more effective both departments are. Admissions folks are great sources of intel regarding what current prospects’ pressing questions are, or understanding why applicants do and don’t enroll. Their frontline knowledge on these issues can help you craft a topic list that will have traction. Work together to define what is an admissions qualified lead (AQL). If you don’t already have an service level agreement (SLA), 2017 is the year to put one together with your colleagues. It provides the framework for mutual support, open communication, and shared goals.

3) Stop posting just for the sake of posting

You have a blog to keep fresh and an extensive editorial calendar to execute! The drive to publish often leads to publishing whatever you can think of. But guess work is so 2013.

You need to publish new posts regularly. The more you publish blog posts, the more traffic and leads you drive to your website. Here’s the critical caveat: are you attracting traffic and leads that fit your personas? You don’t want just any old eyeballs. If you want to attract your ideal students and their parents, you must publish posts they actually want to read. You need to address their most pressing concerns, answer their burning questions, be a resource for the information they seek. Revisit your keyword research to reflect those burning questions, and what words they’re using to ask them. Analyze your internal data to see which blog post topics are attracting the types of prospects you want. Freshen those up and use them as a starting point to brainstorm new post topics.

For more info on how to create content for schools check out ->> How to Use Blogging to Attract Students to Your School

4) It’s not all about you

Not that your school isn’t fabulous. It is. But the hard truth is that most people aren’t terribly interested in your school. Their single focus is making sure they get the best education for themselves or their kids. In the early stages of their enrollment journey, when they’re researching, they only have a sketchy idea of what the “best education” means to them. Questions about their educational future are at a much higher level. Even when they’ve moved to their consideration and decision-making phases, their main interest is still: what about this school suits me, meets my needs, will get me where I want to be. If you want people to continue to visit your blog or follow your school’s social media profiles, the content there needs to provide pure value to prospects and their parents. It’s not about you. It’s about them.

5) Stop relying entirely on the written word

It’s easy to think of blog posts as written articles, but what if you posted a video interview with someone from your career office on your blog? Or an infographic showing the breakdown of the collegiate and professional paths of your alumni?

Don’t overlook video, podcasts, and other visual content. Infographics are liked and shared on social media 3x more than any other type of content. That’s just one jaw-dropping stat on the power images have in your content. People are also watching more digital video, especially video messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and Snapchat. Don’t just think verbally. Think visually. Start with some of your best-performing written content and repurpose it into a visual format. That will give you a reason to promote both formats, so both the readers and the visual folks can connect with it.

6) Do more on social

Social engagement can’t be an afterthought. It must be a strategic piece of your marketing plan. From deciding which social platforms to focus on (don’t waste resources using them all), to determining how your school will use the different channels. Social media is a distribution channel that drives traffic back to your blog and landing pages. It can also be the delivery channel for your content, like your YouTube channel or Instagram account. It can also be the most direct, personal means you have to talk directly to your prospects, like Twitter. Specify each platform’s role for your school so you’re incorporating them effectively in the planning for all your campaigns and community-building activities.

7) Keep learning

The principles of inbound marketing never change. Build trust and credibility with your target personas by publishing awesome, informative content they can’t ignore. The best strategies, tactics, and tools are another story. Options to try to new things, or using tools in new ways, is constantly growing. Keep reading your favorite marketing blogs (thank you very much!). You might even consider getting inbound certified!

Work these resolutions into your planning for next quarter and next year. They’ll become good habits soon enough. Then you can start working on your personal batch of resolutions. And our best wishes for a happy holiday season!

2016 saw a surge in the popularity of video as a content marketing format. From 360-degree videos to Facebook Live, marketers are responding to audiences’ shorter attention spans by making content more interactive and visual — and it’s paying off.

Video is growing to dominate your audience’s online activity: 78% of people watch videos online every week, and 55% watch videos online every day. If you don’t already have a video marketing strategy in place for your website and social media, you’re missing a tremendous opportunity to reach and engage with your audience.

HighQ created the following infographic that illustrates why 2017 will be the year of video marketing. Learn about just how many videos are watched on social media every day (hint: it’s a lot) and how other marketers are using video to achieve their goals.

The best leaders seem to possess an elusive mix of qualities that resist precise categorization.

It feels like every week there’s a new study or book discussing what the best leaders do and don’t do, but what if there was a more data-driven approach to identifying pivotal indicators of successful leadership?

New data from Russell Reynolds Associates and Hogan Assessment Systems sheds some light on what separates the best leaders from average ones. By analyzing interviews, resumes, and multiple personality assessment questionnaires, researchers constructed in-depth psychometric profiles of 200 CEOs from around the world. They then validated the trends in an additional sample of 700 CEOs from Hogan’s global database.

The final results, published in Harvard Business Review, reveal three major indicators of successful CEOs. Although there is no single perfect profile of a successful leader, the following qualities are usually associated with high-performing chief executives. Check them out below to see where you stand. 

3 Successful Leadership Indicators

1) They have a strong sense of purpose, passion, and urgency.

The worst thing a CEO can do, according to a related study on CEO transitions by McKinsey & Company, is “sit on their hands.” The best CEOs move swiftly and decisively towards their personal and professional goals, never losing sight of their organization’s core purpose or wavering in their desire for change. 

Let’s break these specific qualities down to examine each individually:

Purpose

Think of purpose like an internal compass, guiding a leader’s actions and keeping them focused on the big picture objectives that impact their organization’s bottom line. The best leaders have an innate ability to understand how different components of their organizations contribute to long term goals, and they’re comfortable taking ownership of those larger missions. 

Passion

How do you measure passion? It’s tricky, but researchers found that leaders who worked towards their organizational goals with intensity and genuine excitement were more successful overall.

Passion keeps leaders personally invested in the success of their organizations. It helps foster a profound sense of ownership over the changes they initiate, and motivates them to nurture those initiatives with enthusiasm and conviction. 

Urgency

Researchers found that urgency often manifested in successful CEOs as impatience and a consistent eagerness to drive progress. Most quality leaders are experts at mobilizing their teams, but the very best leaders are driven by a constant and deeply personal need to move things forward and seek new developments.

They aren’t satisfied with moving slowly or with too much caution — they understand the importance of staying nimble and pushing their organizations towards transformative change. It’s important to note, however, that the best leaders don’t just make unreasonably impulsive decisions — they take measured risks to move their organizations into the future and keep ahead of the competition. 

2) They know how to sift through information and find the most important parts.

Leaders are responsible for managing potentially overwhelming amounts of information on a daily basis. Their responsibilities are broad and widely varied, requiring them to simultaneously oversee a number of initiatives and projects without losing focus on their organization’s core objectives.

With so many moving parts to keep track of, leaders need to make tough decisions about what to prioritize. And this requires an innate ability to sift through information and make firm, confident choices about how to move their organizations forward.

The most successful leaders have an elevated capacity to “separate the signal from the noise,” as the Russell Reynolds Associates study summarized it. “Great CEOs have a ‘nose’ for what are the most significant issues, challenges, threats, and opportunities facing an organization,” Dean Stamoulis, the leader of Russell Reynolds Associates, wrote in Harvard Business Review.

While it might seem like it sometimes, successful leaders don’t exactly have a psychic power that enables them to make the best decisions — but they do know how to examine many different sources of information and make clear, largely independent decisions they can proudly stand behind. The best leaders navigate the complex demands of their roles with a heightened decisiveness that sets them apart from the pack.

3) They are humble, always learning, and master collaborators.

This might conflict with the conventional view of the chief executive as an extroverted and wildly independent commander, but the Russell Reynolds Associates study found that these leadership qualities were related to favorable organizational results.

The best leaders are more than capable of acting independently, but they are self-aware enough to know that they can’t possibly know or do everything. To compensate for the gaps in their knowledge, they aren’t afraid to turn to advisors and employees to seek new ideas and points of view. They are constantly in pursuit of the best new ideas, and they don’t care if those ideas come from themselves or from someone else.

Coupled with this open mindedness is a desire to always be absorbing new information, honing new skills, and bettering their own abilities through constant learning. The best leaders are not content to operate solely on what they currently know — they recognize that the demands of their position are always changing, and they need to better themselves to keep their organizations successful.

So what does constant learning look like? It’s more than just reading new books and listening to podcasts. The most successful leaders learn from the people around them by engaging with projects at every level and surrounding themselves with people who aren’t afraid to challenge even their most closely held ideas.

It’s this consistent intellectual immersion that keep leaders on their toes, forcing them to reevaluate, defend, and question what they know.

What traits do you look for in a leader?