In 2020, it was estimated that 306 billion emails were sent and received each day worldwide. It’s anticipated this figure will continue to increase each year, eventually reaching 376 billion by 2025.
With emails set to remain an essential part of daily business life, prudent businesses should look to exploit various email marketing strategies to effectively increase revenue, boost brand reputation, and ultimately gain an edge over their competitors.
Throughout this article, I’ll be examining the five email marketing trends that can be used to support marketing efforts and help businesses stand out in a saturated market while working remotely.
Email automation
Alongside other marketing strategies, businesses can use email automation to reach their customer base with relevant messaging at the correct time, with minimal input.
There are a wide variety of email automation tools available to both SMEs and larger corporations alike that can help achieve the goals of each business. 30 percent of companies agree that email automation’s biggest benefit is saving time.
From sending a welcome email to new customers, product recommendations after a user has bought from your site, or even providing reminders for events, email automation frees up company time that can be used elsewhere.
It can also help customers learn more about your brand, encourage them to make repeat purchases, and remind them why they chose your company in the first place.
However, companies mustn’t solely rely on email automation if they want to maintain their customer base. In order to keep customers engaged and secure repeat business, other marketing tactics must be implemented.
Interactive email signatures
Customers are becoming more ethically aware of their spending on email marketing, with 81 percent saying that trust is now a deal-breaker or deciding factor when making a buying decision.
Include ‘social proofing’ within email signatures, such as customer testimonials, big brand endorsements, or star ratings as an easy way of boosting brand credibility and inspiring trust.
Businesses can go that one step further and implement an interactive email signature to highlight additional marketing channels. For example, an image carousel may feature a new product line, or an embedded survey link can easily capture customer feedback with one click.
By using an email signature management solution also brand consistency is maintained across all departments while remote working.
Not only is brand messaging across the whole company conveniently kept up to date, a third-party solution can also ensure email signatures remain compliant with the law via appropriate email disclaimers, providing businesses with additional peace of mind.
Drip campaigns
Drip campaigns are automated sets of emails that gradually ‘drip feed’ a company’s message to a prospective or existing customer over an extended period.
One of the many benefits of implementing drip campaigns is businesses are able to target and personalize their message to specific audiences. Drip campaigns are tailored to the specific needs of the recipient and will adjust accordingly based on the user’s actions.
This means prospects and customers don’t get bombarded by irrelevant and impersonal email blasts that so often negatively impact ona brand’s reputation. Drip campaigns have been shown to increase click-through rates by up to 119 percent compared to regular email campaigns.
And since personalized, relevant emails produce 18 times more revenue than non-targeted emails, companies can drive a greater audience while building trust with minimal effort.
Hyper-personalization
Hyper-personalization goes beyond the parameters of previous personalized email marketing and enables businesses to deliver highly targeted, tailored content to users.
Where standard personalization tactics take basic data such as purchase history to gain insights into customer behavior, hyper-personalization uses advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) to analyze a customer’s interactions, using real-time data to form a comprehensive customer profile.
By hyper-personalizing emails, businesses reduce irrelevant content being sent to customers, minimizing the number of bounce rates while increasing conversions.
Gated content
When executed effectively, gated content can easily increase quality leads without complex lead generation tactics.
A business may ‘gate’ content by withholding desirable assets, such as e-books and other materials, to encourage a visitor to give their email address to access it.
Companies can then add the visitor to their mailing list in the hope of converting them into a customer.
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To execute this strategy effectively, however, companies must first assess their business goals to determine when best to gate content.
For example, if your business is looking to generate brand awareness, gated content is most likely not appropriate. You’ll first need to build trust with the prospective customer during this early introductory stage before asking them to provide their personal information. Otherwise, you’ll likely turn them off your brand.
Relationships with customers must be suitably nurtured before businesses can effectively gate content as customers move further down the marketing funnel.
[To share your insights, please write to us at sghosh@martechseries.com]
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