By Maria Dahlqvist Canton, VP Marketing, Exclaimer
With more than 319 billion emails anticipated to be sent and received each day throughout 2021, it’s more important than ever for businesses to effectively use email as part of their marketing strategy.
Using this often-overlooked channel of communication for promotional and advertorial purposes can give businesses an edge over their competitors.
In this article, I will explain the top five email marketing trends that businesses can implement to increase bottom lines and boost brand reputability while employees work remotely.
The use of drip campaigns
Drip campaigns are pre-written emails scheduled to be sent out automatically to prospects and customers over a period of time.
One of the many benefits of implementing drip campaigns is businesses are able to target and personalise their message to specific audiences. Drip campaigns are tailored to the specific needs of the prospect or customer and will adjust according to the user’s actions. So, you’re able to target different audience groups based on loyalty, demographics, and spending activity.
This means prospective and existing customers are no longer bombarded by irrelevant and impersonal email blasts that so often turn them off a brand. Instead, drip campaigns aim to be thoughtful in terms of content, relevance and timing of the email.
When implemented, drip campaigns have shown to increase click-through rates by 119 percent compared to regular campaigns. So, businesses can drive greater engagement with prospects and customers all while building trust within the brand name with minimal effort.
Hyper-personalise emails
With email open rates averaging at only 21 percent, the demand for relevant and engaging email content is needed now more than ever.
While personalisation is nothing new in email marketing, hyper-personalisation has the potential to make a greater impact on customer experience, which can ultimately increase the success of your business goals.
Where standard personalisation takes basic data such as purchase history to gain insights into customers, hyper-personalisation uses advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), IoT and machine learning to analyse data.
It combines behavioural and real-time data from multiple channels and touchpoints, employs a more granular approach, and focuses on customer intent to deliver contextualised content to customers.
By using hyper-personalised email marketing, businesses are able to reduce the amount of irrelevant content they send out, which in turn minimises bounce rates while increasing conversions.
Make email signatures interactive
81 percent of consumers reveal trust is a deal breaker in their buying decision. ‘Social proofing’ your email signatures is one of the simplest ways you can increase trust in your brand.
Including customer testimonials, brand endorsements, or star ratings within your email signatures serve as easy ways of boosting brand credibility.
Go that one step further and implement an interactive email signature to highlight additional marketing channels. For example, a graphical banner may showcase a new product line, or an embedded 1-click survey can capture quick customer feedback.
To minimise headaches for the internal IT department, introduce a third-party solution such as an email signature management service to ensure brand consistency across all departments while employees continue working remotely.
Gate content
Gated content can be an invaluable way of ethically and transparently gaining email data for lead generation.
It’s essentially ‘locking away’ content such as e-books and other desirable assets so that a visitor must give their personal information to access it.
Businesses can then use this information to add the user to their mailing list with the aim of converting them to a customer.
However, businesses must first assess when it’s best to gate content to execute this strategy effectively. You wouldn’t want to deter potential customers who are only at the awareness stage of discovering your business by gating content.
Giving prospects and customers access to snippets of engaging content at an introductory stage builds trust. Only after this relationship has been nurtured can businesses effectively gate content as customers move further down the marketing funnel.
When executed effectively, gated content can easily increase quality leads without complex lead generation tactics.
Automate emails
Email automation enables businesses to reach their prospect and customer base with relevant messaging at the correct time, with minimal input.
From sending a welcome email to new customers, product recommendations after a user has bought from your site, or even reminders for events, email automation frees up valuable company time to be used elsewhere. It can also help customers learn more about your brand, encourage them to keep coming back, or remind them why they chose you in the first place.
