In casual conversation, email marketing may sound like an old story, something that flooded email boxes thousand years ago. Targeting potential customers via popular platforms, mobile apps, web design, and e-commerce are seen as the front-line channels of today’s social media marketing.
Without minimizing the importance of today’s popular digital marketing strategies, email marketing is still on board. It may be old but is not obsolete. After all, everyone on the Internet today has an email address, meaning that it is not only possible but also crucial to use this channel of communication to get people to a marketed brand.
New trends in email marketing can serve as proof of its viability. Stability may be good for some things but is definitely bad for advertising because it must constantly evolve to stay in touch with the modern community. Tricks and features that worked for people just several years ago may appear irrelevant for people in this year.
That being said, what are the most important trends of contemporary email marketing?
Email marketing trends – tips for modern digital marketing
Today’s marketing emails are not the same as in the 2010s, let alone the 2000s. COVID-19 and self-isolation encouraged people to check their email messages more frequently. It boosted the development of cost-effective email marketing campaigns, nurturing new trends.
There are a lot of brand-new features for email marketing nowadays, and many are yet to come. However, there are three most important trends:
- The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in collecting and examining the online data;
- To improve personalization – approaching every customer as an individual, not as just a cog in the promotion machine;
- To provide interactivity – allowing customers not only to see but to engage in the commercial.
Artificial Intelligence
When used correctly, AI can assist in increasing the audience, converting it into new customers. After all the lockdowns, it’s not the best idea to advertise the brand, products, or services of a company by sending impersonal, generic marketing emails with unremarkable subject lines. It’s even worse when email marketers’ efforts are nullified due to the text’s irrelevance for the receiver. AI can help achieve customer engagement by collecting the data useful for writing personalized content. Online information is huge and increasing. It became unreal to process it without AI.
It is noticeable that AIs are everywhere these days. While today’s AIs are not fully realized artificial entities from sci-fi novels, they appear more and more on the Web. People make incredible things with AI – making living images, colorizing old films, rearranging the information making it easier to find. So why not using AI in email marketing as well?
It’s obviously a good idea to take advantage of modern technologies when running an email marketing campaign.
Personalization
It’s necessary to stay distinguishable and relevant in chaotic information constantly bombarding people’s emails. Personalization, while closely linked to the previous email marketing trend, goes beyond AI. However advanced, marketing automation systems are still lacking in creativity. While they analyze the information about customers, it’s up to the marketers to reach the people.
A variety of articles, blog posts, and advertising texts, each dependent on subscribers’ age, location, occupation, favorite brands, personal preferences, can be composed and distributed by email marketing professionals. The cases of effective marketing in 2020 showed that email content, as well as attention-grabbing subject lines, must feel perfectly tailored for the receiver. This is when A/B-testing can be extremely helpful.
Everyone likes and values a personal approach. It is uplifting to receive it, it is worthily to provide it. Being proud of one’s work is important for all, and even indirect positive feedback from people can make a day.
Personalized content marketing will stay a significant part of effective email marketing strategy in 2021 as well.
Interactivity
Interactivity is one of the best ways to create user engagement. The good news is, even if the target audience prefers social media, communicating the brand and services of the business via email is still possible.
It’s almost impossible for simple text to grab the attention of email users. Marketing efforts should be directed at the goal of creating something eye-catching. Colorful animations, mini-games, popping-out images will win higher open rates for the emails and improve customer experience. Interactive elements encourage people to stay subscribed to a marketed website. Thus optimization for mobile devices is especially important, as most people in 2021 use smartphones rather than desktops to check the box.
One of the main purposes of any media is to spark interest in people. For the movies and video games, this can be summarized in the famous “Show, don’t tell” motto. For email marketing, the task is a bit more complicated, as a decent email commercial must both show and tell.
Showing and telling in email marketing is impossible without some interaction. Interactivity will allow the marketing emails to stand out more in hundreds of other received messages in the box.
Is email marketing worth the try in 2021?
Good promotion in 2021 requires using all possible ways to reach potential customers, and email marketing must not be overlooked. Reaching customers by sending them commercial email messages requires creativity and resourcefulness from the marketers. Current trends set users’ expectations at a very high level, much higher than in the previous decade. Providing clients with personalization and interactivity, as well as using Artificial Intelligence for collecting and analyzing the data, is indispensable.
While social media, such as Facebook or Instagram, and platforms like YouTube are today in the marketing spotlight, email marketing was never gone. It is hard to imagine using the Internet without owning an email box. This confirms the relevance of email marketing, as with it, the company can reach everyone on the Web.
It can be hard for business owners to grasp all the trends while simultaneously being in charge of their firms and shops that need promotion, click here to learn more.
Consulting a marketing agency is going to be a good decision, saving the time for running the business and converting potential customers into new ones.