Email marketing may not be the hottest trend for digital marketers, like Instagram or Snapchat, but research continues to show its ROI prowess—even among smartphone-tethered Millennials. According to eConsultancy and Adestra, email remains the most effective channel for building brand awareness, converting customers and retaining them over the long haul. Its effectiveness shines across demographics and devices. So if you want to get a message out to your customers, email remains an incredibly good way to do so.
However, email may be a long-established communication format, but today’s email marketing strategies can’t afford to be old-fashioned. As such, marketers are on a continual quest to understand their audience, their needs—and devise a strategy to reflect that. The most successful brands invest at least a fifth of their marketing budgets on email, and these brands are eight times as likely to see a 50 percent boost in sales attributable to email.
Fear not, we're here to help you succeed in your email marketing campaigns in 2017.
The rise of the Millennial
According to Epsilon, 43 percent of Millennials say they have been opening retailer’s emails more often in the past six months, compared to 32 percent of other shoppers, Adweek reported. In addition, a majority of Millennials would prefer interacting with brands on email and according to Adobe, 58 percent of Millennials say that email is their preferred method of communication with brands.
Mobile rules
A recent Mapp Digital survey found, 72 percent of users aged 18-64 check email on their smartphones. However, the rise of mobile could leads to problems if you're not prepared. Across all age groups, 42 percent will delete an email immediately if it doesn’t display properly on their smartphone, says BlueHornet. Brands must design their emails with a “mobile-first” mindset or risk alienating the growing group of users that live and breathe mobile.
Omnichannel experiences bring it all together
Now more than ever, marketers have the tools and data to build the most detailed views of individual customers. In order to break down those silos and integrate your data across channels, start by pooling your data. Piecing all of your customer interactions together is no small feat, but compiling a single view is the holy grail of effective communication. Simply put, integrating email with your customers experience across the web will pay dividends.
The year of interactivity
2017 looks to be setting the table for an improved email user experience. Now with 70% of email clients supporting email interactivity, it's time to take advantage. However, don't forget to put fallbacks in place to maintain a great experience for those without support. Reviews, photo galleries, in-email add-to-cart, in email purchase and in-email ad units are all great examples of how interactivity features can boost your email campaigns and drive revenue.
More automation
Triggered emails, like welcome emails and cart abandonment emails, already generate the majority of email marketing revenue for some brands, but triggered email volume typically only comprises 5% of the overall volume. It's 2017, so why are we continuing to allocate so much time and resourcing into traditional broadcast emails? Take a look at the graphic below for more evidence as to why you should be automating.
Take control of your email campaigns
2017 is going to be an exciting year for email marketers. Trends prove that email is here to stay, but with growing mobile usage, it’s not as easy to draw and keep a user’s attention. Today more than ever, marketers must employ new tricks and techniques to step their game up and continue to keep their customers engaged. Don't forget, if you need assistance with crafting a unique and engaging email program our professional services team is always here to help.