A digital marketing revolution is underway in leveraging new cloud technology, innovative SEO strategies, and advanced technological platforms. But, at the end of the day, traditional email marketing continues to rule the roost as one of the most effective ways of driving sales and boosting revenues. In 2018, businesses need to reinvent and redefine marketing techniques to ensure they are exploiting their email capabilities to the hilt.
US retail industry stats released by Adobe in the autumn of 2017 reveal that email continues to perform strongly compared to organic and paid searches. Email scores rich dividends as a customer communication tool beating even the click-through rates propelled by social media. The stats reveal that email inspired customer growth has quadrupled in the last four years.
Needless to say, email has grown as a powerful tool for predicting customer behavior, and email has given us the power to analyze and possibly influence what the customer is likely to do. With email anchoring the foundation for digital marketing, we finally have a tool that can strengthen the bond between a customer and his favored brand.
Digital Marketing: Nine Factors That Underscore Email’s Effectiveness
Implied and Express Consent Campaigns Boost Revenues
Companies that deploy implied consent and express consent email campaigning are seeing better open and click-through rates. These are driving sales and boosting revenues in a big way. Website community members and registered or paid subscribers get email messages through implied consent. Where implied consent is absent, companies need express consent to send campaigns. This means that visitors fill their email addresses in a subscription form appearing on your website, or they enter their details in your newsletter subscription form. A sound strategy for obtaining consent is offering something of value in exchange.
Emails With Interactive Displays Garner Better Click-Through Rates
Users scan emails looking for relevant content, trying hard not to be distracted by intervening messages and popups. Kinetic email designing has caught on with emails offering attractive visuals that are interactive in an informative way. This has improved unique click rates and click-to-open rates in a big way.
Effective Email Marketing Is Reducing Website Bounce Rate
For email marketing to become an effective strategy, messages have to reach the consumer’s inbox. An advanced email list validation tool cleanses mailing lists of undesirable and undeliverable email. Sanitizing the business client list reduces the bounce rate, thereby boosting click-throughs and conversions.
Emails That Are Mobile-Optimized Are Performing Better
With a huge segment of consumers using their mobiles to access the net, emails have become mobile savvy and friendlier to handheld devices. Businesses ought to be writing, designing, and delivering their marketing emails in a manner that enhances readability just as easily on a mobile device as with a laptop or desktop computer. This is an empowering strategy because consumers will respond no matter where they are or what they may be doing.
Intelligently Personalized Emails Are Redefining Marketing Strategies
Over 80 percent of emails miss the issues that are relevant to the consumer and finally head for the trash bin. Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix have mastered the art of presenting a unique and personalized experience to their customers. Other businesses are catching on. Artificial intelligence (AI) is powering personalization. AI intuitively grasps a product’s attributes and builds a consumer’s personal taste profile using historical likes, dislikes and spending patterns. This enables a consumer to be marketed products or services that are unique to his personal profile and different from what others may like.
Email Segmentation Marketing Is Boosting Bottom Lines and ROI
Blanketing consumers with uniform messages hoping something hits base somewhere is a waste of your time and that of the email recipient. The better performing strategy is to divide your consumers into segments or groups, each sporting its personalized profile. Email segmentation creates grounds for more focused campaigning.
An old aged pensioner will not receive an email for a high-end luxury car. The person who doesn’t own a car won’t be offered a car insurance policy, and so on. Market surveys reveal that segmented email campaigning generates explosive revenue growth.
One’s geographical location, age, gender, social profile, lifestyle choices, purchasing habits, and browsing patterns yield data that drives sophisticated segmentation marketing.
Creative Subject Lines Arrest Attention and Trigger Response
Surveys reveal that over 69 percent of email recipients trash emails as spam basing their assessment on the email’s subject line. Email subject lines that attract highest openings are usually lines that tug at human emotion, excite curiosity or appeal to other types of human behavior. Time-sensitive warnings like “urgent”, “breaking”, “important” or “alert” compel increased opening rates. The fear of missing out on something of value plays out when you get a subject line like “[URGENT] You’re 24 HOURS away from this BONANZA.” A simple line, “Don’t Ever Open This Email” excites curiosity. A socks retailer writing, “We Love Being Used” applies an appealing touch of humor. Use all the creativity that you can muster to write something short and sweet, and which is compelling enough to see people clicking through.
Enhanced Customer Experiences Generate Greater Revenue
An American Express survey revealed that 60 percent of customers are willing to shell out money for a better and more personalized experience. Customer experience or CX is the new buzzword. It’s a service that extends a benefit to the consumer that goes way above customer service. The ideal email offers a personalized message, extends something of value proactively and unexpectedly, and makes you accessible when a response comes through.
The Future Will Gift You an Email With Advanced Features
The email is set for a visual makeover. Pics, videos, and all attachments will be available as previews without having to be downloaded. The inbox is likely to be a 3d environment where you use gestures to sort, group, organize, and delete emails within a 3d storage space. Contact labels will become more customized; you can prioritize emails received from your favorite contacts.
Your name appended to a hashtag could become usable by close contacts to respond to urgent messages. It is likely that paid emails may automatically segregate and dispose of junk mail that you program it to do. The hottest trend will be the private Email Service Provider (ESP) hosting a dedicated server to handle your company’s email traffic.
Conclusion
The future is bright for email marketing. The hassles associated with handling complex email tools will become a distant memory. In all probability, your ESP will assume the responsibility for email marketing. The service provider will be helping businesses to create effortless emails, and compelling campaigns, powered by eye-catching templates that portray the brand image and logo in a positive light.
Advanced levels of email personalization will tie up smoothly with business CRM programs. The email as a channel of communication with consumers will continue to grow, and marketers will pay increasing attention to consumer concerns. The end result should be happier consumers getting what they really desire.
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