Are you looking to step up your email marketing game in 2019?
Putting more focus on email marketing is an excellent idea. After all, did you know that for every $1 you put into email marketing, you can expect an average return of $38?
And, did you know that in 2019, the number of email users is expected to grow to 2.9 billion people? That’s way more than the number of people who are on Facebook or any other social media platform.
Reassuring statistics aside though, how exactly are you supposed to approach email marketing with such stiff competition?
The key to email marketing is to stay one step ahead of the game. And to do that, you need to stay on top of the latest email marketing trends.
What are they?
Read on to learn about the top email marketing trends of 2019.
Nurturing Over Selling
It’s long been proven that aggressive email marketing tactics (and aggressive sales tactics in general, for that matter) do not work.
In fact, most people find aggressive tactics to be annoying, and if you use aggressive tactics in your emails, you will likely start to see a lot of people unsubscribing.
In order for businesses to ensure they’re not being overly aggressive, it’s becoming more and more common to focus on nurturing. 2019 is all about finding a balance between informative and gently moving customers forward to the purchasing stage. Instead of going for the hard sell, more businesses are focusing on putting out informative content for their customers.
In 2019, you shouldn’t think of email marketing as a tactic for gaining new customers. Instead, you should think of it as a way to build relationships with leads with the goal of eventually turning them into customers.
Hyper-Personalized Emails
One of the biggest issues with email marketing is that it tends to make us sound robotic.
And when we sound robotic, people have no intention of doing business with us.
Therefore, in 2019 there is going to be a big focus on making sure emails sound personalized and human.
This will go beyond knowing the names of your audience members or having great design. In the coming year, customers want to feel like you know them personally. This means that when you reach out to your audience, you should use purchase history, location information, and any other data you can find that will make it feel like you are speaking directly to them.
Interactive Content
We spend a lot of our time checking emails. In fact, it is estimated that the average person checks their email 15 times a day.
However, the average person only spends 4 seconds reading each email. This could be for a variety of reasons. But, it’s pretty safe to say that one of the reasons people spend so little time reading an email is because there is nothing in that email that jumps out at them.
So, in order to make sure marketing emails stand out, more and more businesses are starting to think outside the traditional letter style format of emails.
Instead, you can expect to see more and more emails that contain interactive content in 2019. This includes things like quizzes, games, image carousels, and animated click buttons.
In 2019, you can expect to see this type of content being used as both a means to sell and as a means to engage and educate.
Targeted Automation
Automation is about a lot more than just making certain tasks easier to handle. Nowadays, email automation is helping marketers create hyper-personalized messages for their target audience.
In 2019, you can expect more and more marketers taking advantage of targeted workflows that are triggered by behavior or by user engagement. By using targeted workflows, your prospects will only receive emails that are relevant to their interests.
While emails are already targeted, you can expect marketers to narrow in even more on their targeting in 2019.
Mobile Optimization
It’s no secret that people are spending more time on their mobile devices than ever before.
In fact, 55% of emails are opened on mobile devices as opposed to laptops. Therefore, in order to stay ahead of the competition in the coming year, you need to make sure your emails are mobile-friendly.
This is especially important when sending out emails that contain interactive content. Otherwise, if an email takes too long to load, people will just delete it.
Integrating Email with Other Marketing Channels
We already know that it’s important to integrate our different marketing channels with one other.
In 2019, however, you should see an even more intense focus on this. Virtually all social media platforms allow for retargeting by uploading your email subscriber list to their platform. Learn how to use retargeting and other email tactics.
When creating email marketing campaigns, you should make sure that each email contains links to your social media accounts. It’s been proven that emails with social share links have a 158% higher CTR.
Loyalty Programs as a Way to Collect Customer Data
Hopefully, your business is already running some sort of loyalty program.
In 2019, it’s expected that these programs will become much more sophisticated. You can expect to see marketers using loyalty programs to collect data from their customers and better understand customer behavior.
Email marketing will be used to track the most loyal customers in order to better understand their needs. Marketers will track what time of day these customers like to receive emails, what products they typically browse, and what promotional strategies work best for them.
Then, we will see marketers take this data to find subscribers with similar behavior, and they will encourage these subscribers to join their targeted loyalty programs.
Email Marketing Trends: Until Next Year!
As you can see, there is a lot in store in the coming year when it comes to email marketing. If you have any questions about these email marketing trends, please reach out to us. And, be sure to check out our guide to the best email marketing platforms for small businesses.