Every year, we look forward to the new year, making many new year’s resolutions in an attempt to improve our lives and become a better version of ourselves. One resolution many people make is to grow their email list. With new platforms like Google Analytics, which provide better detail on email opening and landing pages, it is possible to track the success of email marketing campaigns and pinpoint areas for growth.
If your New Year’s resolution is to grow your email list, then why not consider using some of the trends predicted for the coming year to do so? Email marketing is one of the most popular forms of digital marketing, and with good reason. The email owner or marketer can craft an informative, entertaining, or creative message to entice the recipient to open the email and click a link or continue reading.
Let’s take a look at the top email marketing trends for 2018.
1. Personalized Email Marketing
The year 2018 will be the year of personalized email marketing. Why? Due to the fact that it’s personalized. Just like a handwritten note or a phone call from a salesperson is more likely to be remembered and responded to favourably than a robotic blast from a marketing email, similarly a personalized email is more memorable and engaging than a routine broadcast.
Take a few moments to think about some of your favourite brands. If you’re like most people, you’ll instantly recall some of the brands that left a lasting impression on you. Maybe it was their pricing that caught your attention, or perhaps it was the unique stories of their products that made a lasting impression.
Take HubSpot, for example. When you think about businesses focused on inbound marketing, you’ll probably think of HubSpot. Why? Because HubSpot is one of the pioneers in the field and continues to innovate and evolve the practice of marketing to be more relevant and effective.
What is HubSpot’s approach to email marketing? They’ve made a conscious decision to go against the grain and provide a truly personal experience in their marketing. As a result, HubSpot’s email campaigns are completely bespoke and highly personalized.
2. Bespoke Email Marketing
If you’re reading this, it’s quite possible that you’re already using some bespoke email marketing software to craft your email campaigns. We already covered how HubSpot provides a fully custom email experience, but that’s not the only platform to provide bespoke email marketing. In fact, many platforms offer this feature.
Take a look at MailChimp, one of the most popular and well-known email marketing platforms. With many templates and designs to choose from, it’s easy for you to make your email look like an official communication from your brand. What’s more is that you can use a variety of fonts, colours, and images to bring your campaign to life. It’s a feature that has allowed even non-designers to have a go at creating their own mailers.
3. Video In Email Marketing
Thanks to platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, video is now easily accessible on many devices. As a result, many people are now turning to video content in their digital marketing strategies. Why? Videos allow the consumer to see an actual representation of the product or service, and it’s easy for the recipient to share the video with their friends.
Many businesses, both big and small, are already taking advantage of this trend and are integrating video content into their marketing platforms. In fact, many platforms now offer inbound video features, which makes creating video content easy and accessible for almost anyone.
The key takeaway from this trend is that video content is easy to create and requires almost no technical know-how to do so. As a result, anyone can create a short video and upload it to a site like YouTube, where it can easily be found and consumed by anyone interested in your product or service.
4. Product Awareness
Product awareness reveals itself in many forms. One of the most prominent of which is brand familiarity. If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s probably because you’re not familiar with the practice. Brand familiarity, as a form of product awareness, is the process of learning about a brand without having to spend too much time researching about it. For example, you might see a stranger wearing a Gucci shirt and decide to research more about the brand. Or perhaps you’ve heard of a certain perfume, but not much else. In those instances, you would have brand familiarity regarding the shirt and the perfume, respectively, but you would not necessarily know much about the company that designs them. Creating familiarity is important because, as an informed consumer, you are more likely to make purchase decisions based on knowledge rather than emotions.
5. Influencer-led Marketing
If you’re reading this, it’s quite possible that you’re an influencer or have the potential to be one. Influencer-led marketing, simply put, is the practice of using influencers to gain brand awareness and drive sales.
Why is influencer-led marketing becoming such a hot topic in 2018 and beyond? Well, for one, influencers are everywhere. Thanks to the popularity of Instagram and Twitter, influencers have become easy to find and accessible to almost everyone. As a result, businesses from all over the world are trying to figure out how to work with influencers to boost their brand and gain exposure.
6. Authentic Long-Form Content
When you read an email, you’ll often see a short form. Maybe it’s an alert to open up a website or it’s an offer to purchase a product. While these shorter forms are convenient, they can sometimes feel less than genuine. Many people have grown tired of forms that don’t provide the full experience, and marketers have started to notice this trend.
To bring more authenticity to your email marketing, consider creating content in long-form. This content isn’t necessarily any longer than what you’d find in a typical short-form, but the ability to read between the lines and glean insights or useful information is important. When you create long-form content, you provide your readers with information they might not have seen before and allow them to engage with your content in a deeper way. In doing so, you’re providing value and drawing more customers to your side.
7. Personalized Relevance
If you want your email to stand out among the masses, consider providing it with a personalized relevance rating. When a potential customer lands on your website or opens your email, they should feel that they’ve come across content that is relevant and valuable to them specifically. That way, you’ll hit the jackpot and they’ll feel compelled to take action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a trial.
To achieve this, you can use a service like Sumo to track the behavior of individuals on your website and then use this insight to create more personalized messages to these users. For example, if you notice someone has visited your site five times in the past month and each time they’ve arrived at a different page, you can send them a personalized email based on their activity. The key takeaway from this is that if you want to create relevance in your email marketing, you need to look at specific behaviors and activity rather than just at the general idea of a user being on your website.
8. Content Curation
Content curation is the practice of gathering and presenting content from various sources. Essentially, content curation allows you to discover and make use of all the amazing content that is available out there, regardless of whether you’ve created it yourself or found it elsewhere.
Take an online fashion store, for example. They could have an amazing collection of designer handbags, but if you’re not a handbag fan, then you’ll never know about their collection. So, rather than having a handbag-only section on their website, they could instead curate content from various sources to make it more relevant and useful to their customers.
If you want to create content that is useful and relevant to your target audience, then consider using a tool like Pulse to discover the various content platforms and websites that have an interest in your industry and subject matter. From there, you can curate content to fit their needs and interests.
9. Integrated Digital Marketing
Thanks to platforms like HubSpot and Marketo, it is possible to integrate your email marketing with other forms of digital marketing. What does this mean? If you’re using HubSpot, for example, you can pull data from other places in your marketing ecosystem and use this data to inform your email marketing campaigns. The idea is to have a complete picture of the customer and provide them with the best experience possible throughout their lifecycle.