Digital Marketing, and especially the landscape of Email Marketing see frequent changes. Trends come, transforms the marketing industry for good and are replaced by new ones. This might leave you wondering whether you are utilizing your email list or missing out on any trend that could have given higher conversions. But relax, the fact is: All trends are not meant for all types of email lists. Not sure which one trend you should follow in 2019? Well then, here are 09 email marketing trends that will help you make the most of your email marketing efforts.
Expand Your Email List
There are a number of ways to get a huge list or at least a relevant list. And the process of adding more people to the list should not stop. Here are few easy and trending ways to get good quality leads with their email addresses:
Use Lead Magnets: If you follow a freemium pattern of business, offer free products in return of email address. If can be a pdf guide, a video tutorial, or even a live webinar and act as lead magnets. This speed may depend on the site traffic you already have and is a steady source for leads and users as 60% users tend to sign-up to access the freebies. So based on what can be a needful addition for your audience, create content and add a form to it.
Buy a Quality Email List: Sometimes the lead magnet may not collect perfect leads due to temporary or not-in-use email addresses used for sign up. So what is next? Let an email aggregator it for you. Irrespective of what your target audience is, these firms provide you a quality list and help you append them to the existing database with ease.
Acquisition of a quality lead base is the building blocks of an effective email marketing efforts.
Game Starts with the Email ‘Subject’
When every second receiver reads the subject to even open an email, your hard earned list lost half of its efficiency. This calls for a short and engaging subject lines.
One of the best ways to see the trending subject lines is your inbox itself. See which email you want to open and how did the subject of the email effect your decision.
Second, you should go for multiple subject lines for one template. For instance, put a different subject line for the first 1000 recipients and a different subject line for the next 1000 recipients, and so on for a single campaign. Do track the performance of the emails to find the most performing subject lines. Based on email analytics you will also need to update your style and embrace new ways.
Try Getting Personal in the Emails
This strategy works well when you are on the way of building brand awareness. By having their email address you are already inside the bedrooms of people. There is a high chance that they are going to open their emails when they are calm and are mentally aware of what they are looking at.
So this can be your chance to make a personal approach and become comfortable to share learning and experience with your audience. The results can leave you amazed as you might be getting a lot of replies and appreciation.
Consider a young CEO sharing his journey to the top or the obstacles some business faced while serving their audience feature in emails. Chances are high that people will leave a reply and you’ll increase your brand value just by sharing your personal views rather than boasting of your success.
Remove Unproductive Leads
Each new email lead brings happiness and gives us the feeling that we are inching closer to a successful deal. But is is enough? How do you make sure you have a real person who uses the email address on a regular basis? We all know about bot and temporary email address, so your email list calls for a validation. There can be people who marked you spam, some email addresses might not exist. Anyway an unsuccessful attempt will hamper your reputation as a sender.
Get an email validation system to segregate your email list and keep your list free from emails that reduces your sender score.
Restructure The Email Copy
Your email body can contain one or all of text or images. To the point writing and a careful choice of words is the key to a perfect copy. Any irrelevant word or context is going to make a difference and reader may find it offensive, less interesting or may not convey the message. So make a template with the right amount of everything and lead a successful email campaign.
If you are struggling with this, you can either hire a copywriter or take services from a digital marketing company to nurture this art. Or if required, you can take a copy writing class and start giving valuable inputs to your copies. The internet is itself an ocean and you’ll find a whole lot of templates. You can do basic editing to come up with an email copy that performs.
Consider Adding GIFs
We know that a picture is worth a 1000 words, this makes GIF even more expressive. These will allow you to grab a lot of attention and are a great way to engage your audience. You’ll be able to focus on any mood of your audience just by sending one GIF. Since these are mostly aimed at bringing smile to faces, people are expected to embrace your brand’s social behavior.
The only issue with this is that not all platforms will auto play your GIF’s, so it is a good practice to add a ‘click to play’ button for such situations. You will be surprised to know that almost half of the marketing mails now include GIF’s so even the audience is getting used to it.
For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $32 (DMA, 2018)
Craft A “Must Follow” Schedule
On an average of 150 emails congregation in our inbox every day of which only a few bring useful or interesting stuff. And if these few emails are consistent, they become a pleasure for the readers. By sending these emails at a scheduled interval, you remain in the active memory of your customers and drive a converting traffic with each mail delivered.
You may have a huge list of email ids but this should not stop you from reaching each of them in quick succession. Few reasons you should frame an email sending schedule are to:
- Keep your legitimacy alive to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
- Create a reputation among your audience
- Keep you among your probable customers
So prepare a calendar and better schedule the Pick a day and time and make sure you show up in people’s inboxes on the dot. You’ll see your open rates going up, as well. The more you engage with your subscribers, the more they’ll engage with you, too.
Email Marketing: Your Gateway for Building a Community
Email marketing comes with a huge impact on the way you engage your customers. So if you are not working to build a fruitful and open-hearted association with your audience, there can be a serious impact on the audience growth, sales, click through rate or even the opening of emails.
So, it comes down to knowing your customers better. Since you already have a list, raise your curiosity buds, know what you can offer and why will they accept the offer. Your CRM must be your biggest tool to know the existing customers and use the insights to come up with a solid community building strategy.
You can always know more about your community. Manage timely response to email replies, put forward questions, ask for possible product improvements, share ideas and stories to get positive feedback. In some way or the other, you’ll need to make your audience feel like they are a part your brand and product evolutions.
Enjoy Every Bit of It!
Did you ever think why people attend a sports event or a rock concert at such a large scale? The reason is the fun element and the way they enjoy it. Now consider if the players stop enjoying the game in the ground or the performer is dull on the stage. Yes, of course, the attendance will fall in subsequent events.
This is exactly what happens with the emails you send. Enjoy the way to create each email template. Keep the sense of excitement and some elements of interest and you’ll find things getting into your way. Rest depends on the constructive approach and how you engage with them on different stages. Here is an additional tip- be steady, open-handed and sincere.
Conclusion: Email marketing has changed a lot over the years. Emails giants like Gmail has applied filters based on the sender while people don’t open the updates and promotions tab quite often, and the chances of being marked spam was never this high. So a balanced act with the content, the schedule and the email list is the way around. We hope that these email trends prove to be productive for your business.
