In 2017, Email Marketing still proved to be an important tool for brands reaching out to their audience. The Litmus' 2016 State of Email report states that 72% of consumers consider email as their top choice for brand communication. The DMA latest email tracker shows that emails get 30 times average ROI and 95% of users rates email of high importance to their organisations. In 2018, this remains the outlook for companies who have nailed it with email marketing. However, for others there remains to be much work.
Email marketing is indeed a powerful means to get your message to your target clients, if you get it right from the beginning. Email Marketing faces increasing competition with social media as mobile usage continues to surface as a major medium for content. With this, brands need to make sure they set their best foot forward in 2018 to provide relevant content that gets read, engages, converts and ultimately, brings in revenue and return on investment. Let's face it; we're living in a customer-centric world and consumers are after content that brings them value on top of anything else; so coming up with the right content that matters to the right people should be the priority concern for marketers. We've rounded up a few more email marketing trends and predictions that have emerged in the past year and predicted to impact email in 2018.
1. Sticky contents or editorials. Brands can strengthen their relationship with customers by providing content that is relevant to their lives. Some examples of content include gift guides, recipes, how-tos, tips and tricks, related news, outfits of the day. Incorporating lifestyle trends, providing informative and entertaining content and making an effort to educate them will keep your subscribers engaged.
2. Personalisation is among the top keys to successful email marketing campaigns. Failing on this part poses a risk of opt-outs and spam complaints. With AI as one of the hottest topics in marketing circles, experts believe that it will gain more experimentation when it comes to automation and personalisation in email marketing. AI has a great potential in developing more relevant content through machine learning and makes emails feel more human; thus, deepening connections with subscribers.
3. Tailored user experiences through real-time, cross-channel personalization to drive customer experience. This year marketers will increase their efforts to personalize content more frequently in emails, websites, mobile and even products. Talk about Coke bottles and Nutella jars with your name on it and Converse sneakers with the colour of your choice - see more of this in 2018.
4. The kinetic email will be the "in" thing. Emails will be designed to be more dynamic and have interactive features such as hover buttons, order carts, image carousels, etc. This will a add a layer of interest and recall on emails and thereby, increase engagement with the brand. Expect to see more of these features this year.
5. Marketers will come up with emails features such as content, images, call-to-action buttons that are more appealing to mobile audiences as mobile devices become the major agent for brand connection.
6. As the European legislation, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) deadline comes to a close in May 2018; marketers will be struggling to meet the GDPR requirements. The legislation will impact any brand that sells products to European markets.
Although some brands have already adopted some of these trends, we cannot guarantee it will be as effective with others. The key is to leverage on data to tailor fit your campaign to your target audience, carefully study what they need and what works for them and use emerging technology to your best advantage for your brand to stay relevant and maintain a high engagement level in the coming months.
0 comments:
Post a Comment