What are the best email marketing ideas in 2017?

I like to understand the buyer persona pretty well, make the campaign engaging and interesting.. Designing a cool squeeze page also helps. I analyse the results and make improvements wherever possible like the subject line, CTAs or content itself. Videos and relevant images also provide best results.

Just ask yourself, how would you react to unsolicited advertisment in your e-mail folder? Negative, probably. E-mail marketing is a waste of time and money imo. Unless you're talking about a newsletter people signed up for, advertise via google adwords or facebook ads. There you can actually reach an audience.

I would ask a little more information around "achieve best results". Is the goal to engage current customers to buy or is it to inform? Do you need it to integrate with a CRM system or just send email? How price sensitive are you?

That said, there are a number solutions that all around good solutions. If you are a B2B marketer I can't say enough good things about Hubspot or Marketo. Both have easy entry and cost effective. If you are doing B2C non enterprise, Mailchimp is my go to until people give me other parameters that hone a better fit.

All three work hard at reputation management and while Marketo's customer service has slid over the last few years, they are still able to help solve most issues quickly and the community boards are quite helpful.

Emma, to answer your question more information is required. What type of relationship do you have to your email subscribers? What behavior are you attempting to elicit? How do you measure "results," meaning what metrics are important to you? There is an enormous amount of data on what works in different situations, but I recommend you subscribe to the iMedia Connection newsletter as a start. More significantly you need to start reading what MECLABS publishes on the subject. You can find them at http://www.marketingexperiments.com and what they actually TEST on a regular basis is much more valuable than anyone's anecdotes here.

@Jonathan G. - All of the data on e-mail marketing says you're wrong. Multiple sources, but see here: http://www.webpresencesolutions.net/email-marketing-statistics-2017/