Future Trends of Email Marketing

Future Trends of Email Marketing

Today we will be taking a look into our crystal ball and taking a peek at what the future of email marketing will hold. The email industry is experiencing a resurgence after being under-utilized and, frankly, ignored during the rise of social media’s popularity. But companies are once again realizing the power of email marketing, both on its own and when combined with other marketing efforts.
As such, it can be expected that email will continue to see improvements and continue to push forward. So without further ado, here are several of the future trends of email marketing.

Predictive Analytics:

These have been around for a while in other marketing mediums, utilizing algorithms to make decisions based on past performance. These analytics tools are really just beginning to take off in email marketing. So look for them to begin playing a bigger and bigger part in the way email campaigns are run. These tools can be used to optimize all parts of an email, from sending time to subject line. If you want to check out our Sendlane™ Optimized Timing feature Click Here!

Dynamic Content:

Context is extremely important in email marketing, and using content dynamically is a trend we are seeing start to pick up a lot of steam. This allows the sender to include content that is tailored specifically for the reader, based on observed behavior rather than shared data. Dynamic emails allow content to change based on the weather or location of where an email is opened, all the way down to specific messaging based on actions taken by the user. Essentially, emails will start to predict the content you want.

Email and Wearables:

As well as ensuring that email messages are designed and adapted correctly for wearable devices, email marketers will be able to utilize the data collected from them. This will continue to help in effectively targeting and users and personalizing messaging to them. There will certainly be a large portion of users who will want to opt out of this type of data collection so this will certainly be an ongoing battle, but at a minimum, there will be some new data to come out of this.

Single Messaging:

In the past marketers have been  trying to jam pack a bunch of different messages into one email. Giving the reader no clear action to take. Now and into the future it’s becoming increasingly common to drive home just one single, simple message. With all of the consumer data that can be collected it’s become increasingly easy to hone in on what single message will interest a consumer most and get them to take action.

New Tracking Tools:

Email attribution is already a pretty big mess (despite some thinking of it as an easy to track channel), and wearables along with other new technologies will continue to make it worse. New tools will continue to be necessary to measure the effectiveness of your emails, and to track interactions across devices. It will also be increasingly important to establish goals before launching each new campaign. Rather than trying to reach for multiple goals in one shot. To better understand Sendlane’s™ current tracking and reporting tools Click Here.

Artificial Intelligence:

This is still a ways out, as evidenced by the recent failures of AI chatbots on social platforms. This is still something to keep an eye on. As automated software continues to improve, AI will be able to increasingly help out with more task-oriented items. Rather than the actual human interactions we’ve seen it try to handle in the past.

So there you have it, six email marketing trends to be on the lookout for here in the near future. Frankly trends that have already started to take shape. Head on over to www.sendlane.com and learn how we can get you set up with the latest analytics and automation software to take advantage of these trends.

If you found these new trends helpful, chances are your friends will too! Please Like and Share this post on your Social Media platforms. We really appreciate you helping us get out the message! 

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3 Ways to Sell On Social You Aren't Using Yet

When most emerging e-commerce brands turn to digital marketing to increase sales, many think of SEO, display advertising, and paid search. If you’re one of those companies, then not only are you leaving money on the table by not testing less expensive options, but you are missing a wave of new consumers that are not yet ad blind on those next new things.

Here are three ways to sell on social media that you aren't using yet:

1. AI customer support chat bot.

The promise of AI is finally here, at least as far as sales support is concerned. What’s worse than a potentially interested customer reaching out to you at 1 am with credit card in hand, only to lose interest when the support team finally gets around to answering questions at 2 pm the following day?

With the emergence of tools like Thezboy, customers can be captured at a higher rate since support is instantaneous and can be designed to carry a prospect from basic question and answering, directly into an order, all within the confines of the Facebook support channel on messenger.

Further, with AI customer support where bots employ machine learning and understand word variance, the support actually gets better over time as it begins to predict next possible questions and provides suggestions to management on everyday items to address that would negate the need to use support at all.

Thus, not only is AI expected to initially augment and then eventually replace the majority of support tickets that occur on the internet, but also the basic ping-pong conversations that take place between prospects and most customer service desk-centric sales departments. The future is very bright here, both from a sales perspective and labour cost savings.

Related: Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business

2.  Peer-level influencer marketing.

When social media first started its ascension into our hearts and minds, as a business community, we were quick to latch on, even though there was little way to relate activity performed on social to sales made offline. In time, however, tracking has become more sophisticated, and it is now possible to equate the slightest activities to downstream outcomes via Google Analytics, UTM tracking, specialised coupon codes, and custom phone numbers.

With those expanded tools, another boom started: word-of-mouth marketing presently referred to as influencer marketing. When most people think of influencer marketing, they might think of Kim Kardashian, or perhaps me, and Tyra Banks? There’s a lot more to it than that.

Peer-level influence as exemplified by services like Intellifluence is specific and more personal. Are you more likely to trust the recommendation of a reality TV show celebrity selling running shoes or your friend that runs a marathon every weekend? Even though your friend almost certainly has a smaller audience, you know her to be authoritative and knowledgeable on that subject, and thus more likely to trust her opinion vs. someone probably being paid millions to endorse the product-of-the-week.

Now that tracking allows brands to very quickly and easily utilise thousands of smaller individuals in the same way that they might have previously employed an untargeted display ad campaign, and iterate faster on which influencers are producing an ROI for the campaign, it is no wonder that this concept is the breakout marketing practice of 2017.

Related: Influencers vs. Ambassadors vs. Advocates: Stop the Confusion!

3. Psychographic ad targeting.

Psychographic segmentation, as a practice, is rapidly becoming a staple both by major brands and political pundits alike. The concept is by segmenting users by their stated or implied activities, interests, and opinions (AIOs), along with values they hold, behaviours they exhibit, and general attitudes, one can develop a significantly more targeted ad campaign. Companies like Aimclear explain how psychographics are expected to eat the traditional display ad budget by showing how much of typical display ad spend is wasted attempting to reach the wrong people and how much less can be spent with Facebook’s detailed behaviour targeting.

I wanted to mention psychographics last because as a targeting and segmentation practice, it can also be used to define the approach on the AI customer support chat bots. Imagine the power of being able to customise a support bot based on past chat behaviours and sentiment so as to more ideally mirror the prospects’ values within the support channel. Reaching common ground is a common sales technique, but has never been automated in such a way before.

Related: The 6 Best Advertising Strategies For Small Business

Finally, psychographics can also play a significant role in peer-level influencer marketing. The more nuanced and better understanding of a buyer persona, the more targeted an influence campaign can be, selecting those individuals that closest match your intended buyers. Now, imagine running such a campaign and using the chat bot to close the sale for you. Wow.

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