No longer do we hear the outcry that email is dead, but rather the rally cry that email marketing is smarter and stronger than ever and is being used to deliver the right content to the right person at the right time. Powerful and affordable email marketing and automation are more accessible to every marketer regardless of technical ability, industry, or budget.
Email marketing continues to be one of the top performing tactics in marketers technology stacks so we once again partnered with some of the best and brightest email leaders around the globe to get their predictions on what we might expect in the next year.
Marketers will use data to improve the quality of their email lists, single touch payment from an email could be possible, and email marketing and automation will continue evolving into a dominant powerhouse driving consistent, engaging, revenue producing campaigns that don’t require hours of labour or code to deliver. (ref: Campaign Monitor)
Prediction 1: Superior Segmentation
2017 demands for something beyond the regular profile-based segmentation.
Segmentation is what helps you stay relevant, automatically, with your ever-changing list and their ever-changing wants / needs.
What time of the day do your subscribers generally open your emails, what type of emails do they open, etc. are some of the factors to consider. Integrating this data with other customer information will help you stay ahead of the lot in the coming year. Segmentation allows you to treat different groups of people differently.
By sending them more personalised content, you can increase conversions. Motivations, intentions, and anxieties, etc. change based on the stage of the conversion funnel, time, interests, age, and gender – the list is endless.
Prediction 2: Automation, automation, automation!
In the simplest terms, marketing automation refers to software that sends emails or email campaigns to customers and prospects, behind the scenes, based on rules you define.
Marketing automation uses “customer journeys” that start with a trigger – like signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or sharing an email. These journeys are designed to be more relevant to the recipient than just a mass email blast. They’re easier for marketers to execute since journeys are set up once.
This style of email marketing is also valuable because it creates an ongoing conversation with your subscribers and customers, and builds brand loyalty. But the bottom line is really the bottom line – marketing automation generates ROI, revenue, and results.
As we move toward a world in which more and more is automated, marketers need automation technology that delivers on its promise.
Campaign Monitor allows Fantastic Media to automate our emails that are automatically triggered after a specified number of days, or when a customer has completed an action.
We have the power to create customer journeys that can accomplish many outcomes from nurturing a lead, to reminding a consumer that they left an item in their shopping cart, to welcoming a new subscriber to an email list – so have a think how this could work for both your B2C and B2B clients.
Prediction 3: Mobile first email marketing
According to a study by Deloitte, on average, we check our phone 46 times a day.
To get a little more specific, that number jumps to almost 75 times a day for those of us between the ages of 18-24. In an even more recent study, Dscout found that average users physically interact with their smartphones (tap, type, swipe, click, etc.) 2,617 times a day.
Back in 2011, a mere 8% of emails were opened with a mobile device, but soaring statistics have taken mobile-friendly designs from a progressive choice to a crucial necessity that can make or break your business.
By April, 2015, 48% of emails were opened on mobile devices, and quickly climbed to 56% by September, 2016. With such a drastic increase in mobile email usage in just five years, email layouts must be designed with a mobile-first approach to stay on par with user trends and behaviour.
Google has said it would assign negative points for websites that aren’t developed for mobile viewing. The percentage of people checking their email on mobile will keep increasing, too.
For email marketers, the issue has gone beyond using responsive design for mobile readers. Developing metrics and KPIs for mobile is what’s important.
We’ll stop looking at email proofs on our desktop computers and look first on our phones to see how they render and behave.
Keep an eye on the blog for more 2017 marketing predictions from other members of Team Fantastic!
