Is email marketing still relevant? Despite what you may think, email marketing is still growing, with 3.7 billion email users worldwide (Gmail has 1 billion users alone), and set to grow to 4.1 billion by 2021. That’s right: half the world uses email.

Consider this, according to Hubspot:

• 196 billion emails are sent every day.
• 91% of consumers check their email daily.
• Email is a channel that you own.
• 77% of consumers prefer email for marketing communications.
• Email lets you be highly personal.
• Email has a marketing ROI of 4,300%.

Email is not dead, but savvy users and more competitive landscape make it  harder to do well. To help you do it better, here are seven things you should (be doing already) start implementing right away.

1. Send emails to people that want you to.

Send email to people that you too. Use lists that have engagement. If you have email lists with low rates of engagement, stop using them. Sending to a list with low engagement rates is wasted effort that a) doesn’t produce a positive result, b) may turn recipients away from your brand, and c) hurts your domain reputation and your chances of connecting with new potential customers. So, little to no benefit, and undesirable consequences. Sound like a winning game plan to you? Us neither.

2. Contacts who’ve submitted forms, not purchased lists.

Seeing a theme here? People want email from sources they ask for it from when they understand what’s in it for them. They want it to add value to them. People don’t want email when they haven’t asked for it and don’t see value in it. You probably feel the same about your own email inbox. Engagement rates are higher when someone fills out a form and provides their email address. Cold contact emails typically have low engagement rates (shocking, right?).

3. Have a goal for each email before you send it.

If you don’t know why you’re sending the email, chances are your recipients won’t know either. It’s like a phone call when dating: “Hi. Um, whatcha doin’. Me? Oh, I dunno. Just hanging around I guess.” Guess who’s not going on a date? You don’t want your email campaign to end up the same way — alone, sitting at home, bored. Once you define a goal for your email sends, you can define success and build a list to make that happen:

• What action(s) do you want your subscribers to take?
• Why should your subscribers care?
• Who are you sending the campaign to?
• How will you measure success?

Is the goal to redeem a promotion? Provide information about an upcoming event? Give recipients options in your messages, like call-to-action buttons and links in-text, so they have multiple avenues to achieve your goal.

4. Personalize your emails.

Email personalization works. Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. Don’t overcomplicate it though; just personalize the recipient’s name and company name.

Also, test it to make sure it’s working properly. Nothing is less personal than receiving a “Dear Customer” or “Dear First Name” email, especially if it literally reads “Dear <first name field>,”. It will turn off your customer and make you look amateur.

5. Send emails from a personalized account.

Seeing another theme? People like authenticity, and don’t want spam from a robot. Don’t send emails from a “noreply” email account. And let the recipient send replies that go to a real person, which also boosts engagement rates.

6. Test: Experiment with sending emails on different days of the week.

Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are the most popular days to send email, because word got out they were great days to send email. The problem is now those days are super-saturated and it’s hard to cut through the noise and stand out. Experiment to find out what works well for you. Emails with calls-to-action perform well on Saturdays, so consider that.

7. Be thoughtful about your subject line.

Do: write subject lines that accurately, genuinely describe what the recipient should expect from the email. Don’t: write untruthful clickbait email subject lines. When people click on clickbait email and realize your subject line wasn’t genuine, they’ll abandon the email, and your clickthrough rates will suffer. Do experiment though. Customize and personalize email subject lines and experiment with emojis. Read subject lines out loud before sending. Would you open that email if you received it?