When was the last time you were excited to take a look at your inbox? If you're like most people—including the people you market to—the answer is probably never.

Let's be honest: Most emails are boring. Research backs that up: Social media tends to evoke "excitement" as the prevailing sentiment, but the first word that comes to mind for email is "productivity." Emails are a chore.

You might be interested in what's in the email, sure, but it's rare that you open an email and get excited by the content there.

Brands have taken email marketing for granted for so long that it's stagnating. Email is often a company's most effective digital marketing channel, but email marketing campaigns have stayed the same. Many brands are simply not trying anything new.

But what if you could make your emails more interesting? And what if, by making them more interesting, you could increase opens, click-throughs, and conversions?

Here are five email marketing tactics that can make all that happen.

1. Weather-Targeting

If you have a few thousand email addresses or more, there's a good chance that the customers getting your emails aren't all in the same region. So if you're an e-commerce website, your emails about a sale on sandals might also be going to areas where it's raining. Or if you're an event management company, your upcoming event list might be about outdoor festivals.

But what if you could—in real time—switch email content and offer rain boots or indoor venues, depending on the weather forecast?

Brands are starting to do exactly that with contextual email marketing technology that detects a customer's context. Real-time weather-targeting allows companies to change the content of an email depending on customer context. Even if it's raining in the morning then clears up in the afternoon, the customer would see the rain boots sale in the morning and the sandals sale in the afternoon.

Weather-targeting presents opportunities for content marketing, too: Even if you're not selling something directly, you can build specific content for specific weather conditions. Auto companies can create newsletter content with rainy-day driving tips, media companies can create activity packs or TV show lists for snow days, or finance companies can offer different rewards based on the weather.

2. Geo-Targeting

With about 67% of emails being opened on mobile, location and geo-targeting emails are becoming more important than ever. Emails with personalized maps that show customers the nearest retail locations can help drive in-store traffic and sales. Other industries, like financial institutions, have used geo-targeted emails to show the closest locations where customers can redeem rewards.

Customers already expect their phones to know their location; nearly three-quarters (PDF) say location information is helpful. Emails with personalized maps can drive higher sales simply by showing a store around the corner.

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Five Tactics to Make Your Emails More Interesting

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of Blaise Lucey

Blaise Lucey is content marketing manager for Movable Ink, an email marketing technology company.

LinkedIn: Blaise Lucey 

Twitter: @blaiselucey00