Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic that took the world to its knees in 2020, we have been experiencing what can be called a frenzied society with its roles, rules, and the ways of operation altering regularly. The world has gone digital, work is no longer confined to the four walls of an office, e-commerce is on a continuous rise, and marketing and PR are now focused on not just brand awareness but on keeping consumers engaged in this rapidly shifting world order.
However, if we look closely, there are some things that never change. Yes, they may face modifications and go through upgrades from time to time to keep up with the latest going on, but their core remains the same.
Email marketing is just one such rock.
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Before we go ahead, let us do a quick recap to ensure that we’re all on the same page here.
As its name suggests, email marketing is simply a technique utilized abundantly in the marketing world, wherein an electronic message is sent from the marketer to an individual or a group of individuals, company, or a group of companies. This communication is more often than not of a commercial nature. While it may or may not be asking for money directly, it could be a way to make people aware or remind them of your existence, request business, and/ or solicit sales and donations.
Why email marketing?
There are many reasons you should consider using email marketing for your business and it has many benefits, but we have compiled a short list below.
Let’s take a look.
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Better results than most marketing channels
Did you know that according to a study conducted by DMA in 2019, it was observed that for every $1 spent on email marketing, the return on said investment (ROI) was close to $42 on an average? Yup, you read correctly. In a market where the success or failure of every effort is determined by its ROI, emails are going strong even today right alongside the more advanced approaches like social media marketing.
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Customer engagement and retention
In the present day and time, a one-time contact to ensure brand loyalty is nowhere near enough. All the companies are gearing up with an arsenal of promotional and engagement tools to increase their customer retention rates. This is rapidly becoming the need of the hour for all marketing personnel, especially because of the vast variety of alternatives that are available to the masses.
They can pick and choose who they like but with the entire industry hard at work to capture their attention, losing a buyer is no more a surprise. That’s where email marketing campaigns come in! With a slew of engaging content at their fingertips, the marketing teams are back at mailing the latest updates to their clientele to make certain that they are still interested in their product or service.
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Brand awareness
Customer retention is important, yes. But no business can last only with a fixed client list. For a company to grow and expand, it is important that they continue finding and engaging new buyers in the market. Emails are a great way to perform this task. It not only helps the masses in finding out about this brand that exists for their service, it also helps the business in reaching the previously untouched markets.
Oftentimes, a consumer may simply know a name but no details to associate it with – this is also a task that an email can successfully accomplish by sharing valuable and relevant information about the enterprise’s activities.
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Trends to watch this year
There is a whole plethora of up-and-coming trends related to this aforementioned marketing tool. Of these, we have selected a few that definitely demand your attention and can work wonders for your business if executed correctly.
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Personalization
Making business communication as personal as possible for the recipient is a great way of leaving a lasting impression. As per a study by Instapage, personalized messages have an ROI of as high as 122%. By tracking the behavior your customer is exhibiting through their purchase patterns and in regards to other communication from your company, you can easily make certain that what they are receiving in their inbox is what they would like to look at.
You can also set behavior-based triggers through your email software that sends out a personal message every time a customer partakes in a certain activity, like leaving a loaded cart on your eCommerce website. This makes them feel that the mail is specially meant for them and that they are cared for by your company.
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Automation
We all want our client database to be as long as possible. However, what we often tend to forget is the fact that the bigger the list, the harder it is going to be to manage it. Sending personalized emails to all, based on their shopping behavior, likes and dislikes, their important days (like birthday, anniversary), festivals, etc, alongside analyzing the statistics, doing thorough segmentation, and sticking to the perfect frequency of said communication—simple when you have a handful of customers, but when you have a list of hundreds, thousands, or even millions?
That is where automation comes to the rescue. Setting up email marketing campaigns was never this easy. Simultaneously, AP-powered automation is also taking form slowly and there is still time before we may use it to completely control our emailing requirements, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.
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Mobile experience
Although emails that contain infographics, pictures, and/ or videos are becoming more common, they are also generally made with only the desktop experience in mind. That is, how an email looks when it is open on a desktop is what is kept in mind when creating them. A very important fact though is that mobile devices account for about 54% of email opening. Thus ensuring that the customers across all devices enjoy the same rich experience should be a priority while building the mail content.
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Wrapping up
Email marketing might seem like an old strategy amidst the fairly newer ones like social media marketing and such, but the thing to keep in mind is that it may be old, but it’s never obsolete. And going forward, we can safely assume that the email culture is nowhere near its end and is going to enjoy a long, fruitful lifespan while showering us with all the benefits we can successfully gain from it.
