2017 is being seen as the year of savvy emailer, as most professional marketers depend on email marketing more than other strategies when trying to acquire and retain customers.
Why is email marketing so popular?
Having a strong business model and product is not enough to make a business grow without a steady customer-base so businesses are looking into gaining new customers at a reasonable cost and eventually convert them into long-lasting customers.
As well as being cost-effective (compared to many other marketing channels), email marketing can be highly targeted, personalised and can be easily tracked & measured for achieving acquisition goals. And most importantly, it has proven to have the highest ROI amongst digital marketing channels.
Email marketing tips & trends
Smart email marketers are always on a quest to improve their email campaigns and design email creative that engages their audience, therefore it is important to keep up with changing email trends.
Content-First Strategy
- Personalisation is the key. Take a deeper look at your data to find true segments and personalise messages based on the needs of each segment. Main focus is making the experience more engaging and targeted through improvements in the design and relevance of emails – taking both content and context into consideration for the greatest level of success.
- Offer specialised content your target audience can’t easily find anywhere else. Very often, the best way to offer this type of content is with whitepapers covering subjects about your niche, or tutorials and relevant news to build your credibility. Keep your messaging purposeful.
- From subject line to the body copy, it is all about compelling content with a more conversational tone. Avoid uncommon acronyms and complicated language, write the way you talk, ask questions that encourage your customers to respond. This tone will help your customers better relate to you, thus, creating a personal connection.
- Include clear and specific call to action in your emails.
Automation
- Machine learning drives your strategy forward in three areas: Sophisticated segmentation, Lifecycle marketing optimisation and Intelligent personalisation
- Content Automation help marketers to save time and personalise at scale. It allows to continuously adapt campaigns to the individual customer journey. For example, if a subscriber takes some sort of action with your email, like clicking on a button or link, you can automate a relevant follow-up email to take advantage of the moment. This way, you will push the reader to take further action and potentially convert.
- Along with immediately engaging with potential customers by sending automated emails when they show interest, you can sequence out regular emails to maintain that communication and nurture leads with minimal effort on your end.
- Most automation tools also enable intelligent testing to deliver an improved customer experience.
- Finally, integrating email marketing with CRM helps you in optimising your customer relationship by providing you a centralised platform with improved customer data.
Design
- Development of a mobile-optimised customer journey remains a high priority. Test your emails in mobile devices to make sure that they're easy to read.
- Majority of the email design can now be dragged and dropped thanks to responsive email template builders. Modular designs mean less time is spent on designing the email. Focus shifts to creating more meaningful content.
- Compelling images in an email is a way to catch your subscribers' attention. Aside from still images, more marketers are now using video in their emails - as video in email is straightforward and easy for your subscribers to understand.
- According to Litmus poll, quarter of marketers interviewed believe pulling some interactive elements such as hamurger menus, carousels and some other interactions that would normally take place on the landing page into the email, reduces barriers to engagement and makes clickers have even higher intent.
- Rely on more data-driven design decisions and make sure to A/B test more design elements. Eye-tracking is now being used for testing email creative and it uses focus groups with real end users. According to Email Marketing TrendBook by expertsender, it is now possible to run fast and inexpensive email tests with eye tracking, thanks to more affordable hardware.
Email marketing is becoming more and more sophisticated – and with the advances in technology, it is more relevant today than ever before. If executed well within the overall marketing mix, marketers can utilise email marketing as a profitable and effective channel.
If you would like to discuss your email marketing as part of an integrated digital marketing strategy, please contact our digital strategists on (0) 1202 678 777.