25 Ideas to Transform Ho-Hum Infographics into Something Extraordinary

A few weeks ago here on Copyblogger, Demian Farnworth presented the infographic as the Salvador Dalí of content marketing — the most interesting person at the cocktail party.
More than just a superficial presence, an infographic is a significant asset pillar with diverse possibilities that help you grow your media empire.
Today, let’s equate the Internet to the world of pop music. In this case, infographics are The Beatles.
They’re irresistible. They create massive hits. At their best, they balance style and substance.
They can be relentlessly imaginative. And like John, Paul, George, and Ringo, they can communicate sophisticated ideas to a mass audience.
Yep, they’re lovable. How lovable?
The factoid below comes from a 2012 infographic by NeoMam Studios.



Even stories about infographics sizzle. I wrote “The Most Important Thing You Need to Know About Infographics” and it climbed to the number one spot on my chart last year.
Before we brainstorm infographic ideas, let’s discuss why infographics work.

Why do we love infographics?

Here are 15 reasons I’ve assessed:

1. They’re so webable. First, I must offer my theory and ask you to live with my funny new word. Although data visualizations exist in traditional media, they’ve exploded in the digital age because they perfectly suit new media and the devices we use to consume information.
2. We’re visual creatures. The fun, interactive infographic, “13 Reasons Why Your Brain Craves Infographics,” makes this case with powerful data points.

3. They simplify complex ideas. Infographics aid comprehension by pairing text with straightforward pictures.
4. They’re easy to share. We love to share information we find valuable. It feeds our appetites for being conduits of wisdom. Creators and publishers of infographics encourage you to share their content and often simplify the process by providing code you can embed on your website.
5. They’re familiar. The general recipe for infographics features ingredients we’re comfortable with: illustrations, icons, charts, diagrams, and captions. The familiarity speaks to us and obliterates any objections.
6. They travel well. Infographics are multi-screen portable. They translate nicely to slides and also tend to work on paper.
7. They’re fast. Up above, in Number Two, you see an interesting data point about how fast we’re able to process visual information. The process of reading takes time. Given our short attention spans, the speed with which we can absorb visual information makes infographics attractive.
8. They’re less taxing. A related, but slightly different idea than the one above about speed is we give ourselves a little break when we digest information aided by visuals. We encounter a lot of information daily. We can only read so much. The data below comes from:
   • Welcome to the information age — 174 newspapers a day, The Telegraph.
   • Measuring Consumer Information, International Journal of Communication, Vol 6.
   • How Little Do Users Read?


9. People thrive on data. We’re drawn to data and proof points. I like this presentation from Juice, Inc. that explains how data drives exploration, understanding, presentation, discovery, motivation, learning, and above all, “doing.”
10. They tell stories. A lot of infographics use storytelling tactics including characters, conflicts, problems, and resolutions. Stories hold our attention as we relate to characters and go on journeys with them.
11. They promote branding. When infographics are republished, a brand travels with the image, which usually includes a logo and URL.
12. People search for them. Because they’re so useful (and often entertaining), people search for infographics, as evidenced in the statistic presented above. Since search engines can’t index the content within an image, headlines often appear with the explicit label “Infographic”.
13. People collect them. Do you do this? I sure do. I stash infographics for safekeeping on Pinterest and in my swipe files if I suspect I’ll want to reference them (or use them) again in the future.
14. They dominate the page. I believe one of the many factors that make infographics appealing is they tend to dominate a webpage.
15. They’re generally large and colorful. Unlike plain text, infographics defeat distractions and help us focus on the content.

Ready to create your own infographic?

Here are 25 infographic types, themes, and concepts:

1. Process. Create an infographic to explain a process. They’re ideal for breaking down and simplifying a multi-step process that may otherwise appear intimidating.
2. Comparison. These images may include sections such as: before and after, this vs. that, old way vs. new way, us and them, etc.
3. Timeline. Infographics help illustrate the evolution of a subject matter.
4. Roundup. Various types of roundups, such as quotes, reviews, favorites, etc. can be presented as a collection.
5. Components. Just as it’s useful to break down a process into steps, you can decouple the components of just about anything to aid understanding, i.e., an engine, recipe, or team.
6. Instructions. Use an infographic to simplify complex tutorials or communicate how to complete a task.
7. Charts and tables. Simple charts or tables featuring icons or images representing a topic create visual interest.
8. Categories. Take any category of interest to your audience and tell a story with an infographic. Check out one of my favorites, “The Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music”. Amazing.
9. Study of a “universe.” Produce massive visual collections on: beers, bands, books, bikes, beaches, etc. Here’s The Ultimate Infographic on Infographics from Curata.
10. Warnings. This popular article style tends to be irresistible. A list of dangers, myths, or mistakes is a powerhouse for infographics, too.
11. Metaphor. I love it when an interesting metaphor presents a concept. I bet you do too.
12. Résumé. Job hunting? The résumé as an infographic is such an engaging idea, services such as vizualize.me and kinzaa.com have sprung forth.
13. Report. Research and survey results offer great value in traditional report formats, but the same information, or highlights from it, make compelling infographics.
14. Product or service. You may not score a viral hit with an infographic that showcases what you sell, but you’re likely to have an engaging tool that presents your goods to potential buyers.
15. Trend. Showcasing a trend in an infographic makes a newsworthy story even more fun.
16. Past to present. This is another timeline idea that displays the history of a topic.
17. Place or event. Any place (from a nation to a campground) or any event (from a war to a conference) can be summarized in an infographic.
18. Guide. A rather obvious theme, I know, but any “how to” begs to be transformed into an infographic.
19. Family tree. These can be downright intoxicating. You can use a tree, flow chart, or similar symbols to explain relationships.
20. Cause and effect. You probably see a “this caused that” form of presentation more than you realize. It’s simple and smart.
21. Biography. Perform a search for “biography of Steve Jobs infographic” and you’ll discover some amazingly creative graphics. Study them for inspiration.
22. Story. Simple one here. Tell a story, like a picture book.
23. Manifesto. This approach can be a stellar branding tool. Write a manifesto that defines what you stand for and have a great designer create an infographic that makes you proud.
24. List. Don’t ignore this age-old, can’t-miss tactic for communicating fascinating, useful content.
25. Acronym. Spell out an acronym or abbreviation, with pictures, of course, and you’ll have a double-whammy simplification of a robust idea.

Grow your audience with infographics

Which type of infographic will you make to reach and educate a larger audience?


Flickr Creative Commons Image via Saad Faruque.
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4 Ways to Marry Your Email Marketing and Website Optimization Strategies

Do you hear that? It’s getting louder. It’s the sound of millions of emails, targeted ads, and personalized web experiences fighting for relevance. Despite the noise, B2B and B2C brands succeed at delivering relevant information to their target audiences. According to Direct Marketing Association, for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return-on-investment is $40.56. But there’s a difference between threading the needle and really creating something.

In many cases, data is being used to deliver personalized email campaigns with fantastic results. The Aberdeen Group says that personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10%. With results like these, the motivation to test, segment, and personalize email campaigns will no doubt increase. However, the success of these incremental improvements to email marketing depends largely on the next steps customers take after engaging with your email. Whether you’re sending them to a specific landing page or inviting them to take advantage of a personalized offer on-site, the work doesn’t end in your customer’s inbox.

By looking at how you use data to improve email marketing from the broader perspective of your web or mobile experience, you can multiply the impact of your targeting. And it’s worth it. According to Steelhouse, using correct targeting and testing methods can increase conversion rates up to 300%.

Break Down the Barriers

Closing the data loop and breaking down the organizational divisions between email marketing and website optimization is increasingly common. Marketers are adopting this strategy, particularly as facts about open-rates on mobile come to light and digital teams unite forces. But any brand making a significant investment in email marketing will soon be throwing good money after bad without an optimized, personalized mobile experience. Eisenberg Holdings says that companies typically spend $92 to bring customers to their site, but only $1 to convert them. Instead, make your money count twice by investing in a strategy that combines data from email marketing with on-site behavior for a comprehensive approach to optimization.

According to EConsultancy, 64% of companies would like to improve their personalization, 64%, their marketing automation, and 62%, their segmentation. The key is to unify these three key areas for a strategy that will keep your communications relevant and your audience engaged. Here, I’m going to share four ways your website’s optimization strategy can enhance your email marketing efforts, and vice versa! Let’s get started…

1. Use Website Data to Validate Email Segmentation

Segmenting your audience for email marketing is not an uncommon practice. However, the segmentation of your website traffic is often treated as a mutually exclusive effort.

Try This: Use your website data to validate predefined segments for email marketing campaigns with a URL parameter. By doing so, you can find out whether your segments behave how you expected them to with metrics that look at their behavior from first click to exit.

2. Use Email Marketing Attributes to Create a Better On-Site Experience

The data from email and websites can interact in either direction. One leading travel brand worked with Maxymiser, a website and app optimization solution, on an email campaign designed to bring users to the site by converting email prospects with a featured destination that best reflected their preferences (either collected or expressed.) Using Maxymiser’s optimization solution, the brand selected 36 destinations to offer and used each one as a specific variant of the test.

Try This: Segment visitors who came from email and determine which predictive attributes will make their visit the best possible experience. In the above instance, the brand took the attributes generated by an email campaign and used them to test and target on their site—and you can too.

3. Map Email Engagement and CRM

With the right tools, you can map the unique identifier to a CRM file and target specific individualized content to that visitor.

Try This: The data-driven marketer (you!) could place an individualized identifier in the URL of an email campaign. You can also match up an individual from the aforementioned unique URL to segments or visitor groups defined in the CRM file.

4. Test and Target from Email to Landing Page (Mobile or Desktop)

Using your optimization solution, you can test custom content on your predefined email segments by redirecting them from email to a specific landing page.

Try This: Optimize both your emails and landing pages in a single test and combine your analytics for a clear perspective on your user’s behavior. This might be a particularly interesting test to run on a mobile landing page.

In Q1 2014, more email was opened on iPhones (38%) than all desktops combined (34%). You can be sure that these percentages have only increased in the last 12 months. With that being said, if you’re hoping to convert a visitor with email, you have to optimize your mobile landing pages. A website optimization solution like Maxymiser can run the aforementioned desktop landing page test on mobile as well. A unified optimization and email marketing team could easily work together to generate a rich tapestry of insights by segmenting email audiences and testing the optimal experience on desktop or mobile, depending on where the user comes from.

So, don’t just think about the connection between email marketing and optimization; plan for success by aligning your strategy with a multi-channel approach like the one I have described above. On the road to becoming a holistic digital marketing organization, the marriage between email marketing and website optimization is one of the most valuable steps.

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15 Digital Marketing Trends You Should Know About in 2017

Today’s fast-paced, modern world has become increasingly reliant on technology. It feels like we are always looking at a screen!! Since we depend heavily on our laptops and smartphones, etc. to provide us with the latest information of this world, it is important for digital marketers to understand the latest in digital marketing trends. Here are some trends to keep you at the top of your game, and to help you connect with your clients:

1)The usage of the Internet is continuing its exponential growth.

 So over the years, the number of people using the internet has gone up by over 3 billion users (which is about half of the world’s population.) This is a positive sign for us as digital marketers because we can take advantage of this growth and market our products. But there is also more and more competition for our readers attention. So we have to be at our best!

2)Social media usage continues its tremendous climb.

So these statistics for the month of January alone show the extent of social media use. This is a major medium that can be used by digital marketers as it is inexpensive and readily available to anyone who has a working internet connection. I have made extensive use of social media for my digital marketing campaigns and they have proven to be fruitful.

3)The shift from PCs to smartphones.

This shift is of extreme importance as emails are also going mobile as well. This leads to new concerns, such as keeping subject lines short enough to be read on mobile phones. You can use Sendlane™ to create these short, attention grabbing headlines and reach your audience across devices. 

4)Personalization is becoming an increasingly effective marketing method.

It is a proven fact that personalization of emails to include things like a subscribers name or interests can improve your open rates. My subscribers respond more when marketing is personalized, and with the help of Sendlane, any digital marketer can achieve the desired level of personalization easily. 

5)Global Marketing is replacing Local.

So multilingual and globalized digital marketing is making a splash as international internet use and the increasing popularity of smartphones means that the whole world is your potential audience. I have experienced a greater amount of success by creating campaigns which appeal to the global community, instead of just a local one.

6)Influencer marketing is making a greater impact.

Contacting influencers (whether outsourced or in-company) to attract target audiences has the benefit of high efficacy as influencers would know the right way to handle audiences and have built up a large following and trust of their audience.

7)Marketing automation is making it easier for digital marketers.

With Sendlane’s automation services, you can make it easier to automatically handle your marketing content, customers, contacts, posts, etc.

8)Marketing content which is comical and entertaining is attracting the masses.

So making entertaining content is a skill necessary in the digital marketing field. Such content appeals to your target audience and it can make a digital marketing campaign a great success.

9)Marketing investment returns.

As a digital marketer, you need to move away from the classical metrics and on to sales funnels. Sendlane’s sales marketing funnel software is extremely useful in this realm and will help you save your precious time.

10)Ephemeral Marketing strategies are trending.

Due to its stunningly growing popularity, Snapchat has become a marketing platform unlike any other. From personal experience, connecting with Snapchat users is easy and simple using this social media service and this is why short and concise marketing content is gaining increasing appreciation.

11)Marketing based on engaging relationships.

Marketing has shifted from its short-term relationships with customers and clients to developing loyal long term customer bases. Strategies need to focus on developing a relational bond with the customers instead of just getting the one time sale.

12)The era of data sciences.

“Big technology” is available to the general population now and even medium and small-sized businesses are using data science to gain knowledge about their futures that they never thought was possible before.

13)Virtual reality and wearable technology.

From the Apple Watch to the upcoming release of the virtually realistic “Oculus Rift”, digital marketers will get the opportunity to provide their customers and clients with an unforgettable interactive experience.

14)The ever-growing popularity of blogs.

The detailed content marketing domain has gained a considerable amount of popularity over the last decade. People have started showing a preference for content marketing. So take this blog post as an example. You are reading this right now to gain knowledge on the latest trends in digital marketing. Hence, informed and interesting blogs should be used to pitch the product to the audience.

15)Paying for space on social media.

So keep in mind this one important detail: if you want to attract the audience, you will usually have to pay for advertisement and marketing space on social media. Gone are the days of free marketing, it is the era of “bigger is better” and bigger means spending cash to create a digital marketing campaign that would blow the minds of potential customers.

Also, comment below about any other digital trends we may have missed!

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Four Email Marketing Myths Debunked

 

Just like old wives’ tales, myths about what does and doesn’t work in email marketing can outlast unbelievers. We’ll let the medical establishment debate whether wet hair and cold weather gets you sick, but we think it’s time to set the record straight on some of the most common email marketing myths.

We sat down with Jerry Jao, the co-founder and chief executive of Retention Science, to clear the myth-filled air. His company helps small businesses keep customers around for the long haul by crunching marketing data. Jao says four myths seem to live on despite evidence that they’re not true and he’s more than happy to dispel them with numbers and facts.

Myth: Sending emails first thing in the morning is best

Many marketers insist that sending an email to a customer in the morning means they’ll open it as soon as they sit down at their computer. That has led to the general rule of thumb that the morning is the best time of day to send a marketing email. There may some logic behind the idea, says Jao, but it’s simply not true.

By combing though 100 million online transactions, 20 million user profiles and 100 email campaigns, Retention Science found that the afternoon is actually a better time to send an email. According to their research, most online shoppers are active later in the day but typically receive shopping-related promotional emails early in the morning. Other research supports this. At best, the rule of thumb about sending early is harmless. At worst, you’re killing your conversions.

Solve this conundrum by testing different times with similar or identical messages.

Myth: Emails sent on Mondays are the most successful

Sending emails on Monday is another rule of thumb that may have a logical underpinning but little in the way of convincing proof. Marketers assume that everyone has a case of the Monday blues. Since no one really wants to jump back into work, people are more likely to sift through their email on Monday, or so they think.

Retention Science’s data showed the opposite: Tuesday and Friday had the highest conversion rates. Test out different days to see if they make an impact on open rates and conversions.

Myth: More frequent email is better

If you send a bunch of emails to your customers they’re bound to open some of them, so why not send a dozen, right? Wrong. Jao says this is a common myth that needs debunking.

“It’s important to understand that less is more when it comes to email campaigns,” he says.

Of course, finding the right email frequency is tough. There isn’t a definitive number that works for every business, but Jao suggests testing your email frequency while watching unsubscribe rates to make sure you find the right balance.

Myth: Subject lines packed with info get opened

A subject line is important, no question about it. However, some people believe that packing a subject line full of information leads to high open rates. Untrue.

While you can squeeze about 70 characters into a subject line, that doesn’t mean you should. Rather than cramming the header full of words, focus on making the subject line conversational, Jao suggests.

“A subject line should sound like something a friend would say,” he says. “Don’t be wordy or pitchy, just be conversational.”

While there isn’t a plug-and-play formula to create a killer subject line, there are practices that you should avoid. Don’t use all capital letters, don’t be deceiving, ditch any symbols or emoticons, take it easy with punctuation and refuse to be boring. If you stay away from these no-nos, your open rates will improve.

When in doubt, A/B test your subject line to see what kind of wording works best for your customers. In fact, it’s a good takeaway message. Testing email content can give you statistics to back up your marketing moves, Jao says. It will not only give you an insight into the habits of your customers, but it will keep you from falling victim to marketing myths.

This post contributed by guest author, Lisa Furgison. Furgison is a media maven with ten years of journalism experience and a passion for creating top-notch content.

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The 5-Step Guide to Email Marketing Personalization

Personalization goes far beyond a custom name field. Personalization means relevance and that’s why it lies at the heart of effective marketing communication. In today’s article I’ll show you how to use marketing automation in order to send the right emails to the right people at the right time.

The shocking truth about the state of email marketing personalization

According to the State of Email Marketing by Industry report:
58% use personalization techniques
4% of marketers use layered targeting, incorporating informed and behavioral data to send relevant, personalized email messages to their audiences.
42% of marketers don’t segment and send the same message to all of their database

It’s bad news for the subscriber – there’s almost a 50/50 chance that the subscription program they sign up for isn’t designed to meet their preferences.

On the other hand, if you’re a marketer, this data shows you the way to keep ahead of your competition. There’s no time lose, so start personalizing!

I’ve prepared the following 5-step guide to email marketing personalization to show you how easy it is with marketing automation. You can use conditions, actions, and filters in order to collect valuable information about your subscribers and run highly targeted email marketing communication. Here’s how you can achieve relevance:

1. Establish business goals and target audience needs.

A personalized email marketing program delivers value to subscribers and revenue to the business. That’s why you should set clear business goals and thoroughly research your subscribers’ needs first.

Business goals usually boil down to increasing revenue and reducing costs – luckily, marketing automation can help you achieve both of these goals. You can easily track conversions, calculate the return on investment, and create a business case for more budget and resources.

As far as subscriber needs go, you can start with finding answers to the following question: what do my subscribers need in order to purchase my product or service? If you run a B2B business with a complex sales cycle the question might actually go like this: what do my subscribers need to know in order to make a decision to purchase my product or service?

If you want detailed insights into customer needs, you should develop buyer personas. According to the Buyer Persona Institute “(…) a buyer persona tells you what prospective customers are thinking and doing as they weigh their options to address a problem that your company resolves.” Actionable buyer personas reveal insights about your buyers’ decisions and help you answer their information needs at individual stages of the customer journey.

2. Create marketing automation workflows.

The relationship between business goals and subscriber needs provides context for automation workflows. You will clearly see the overall purpose of a whole workflow as well as its individual elements: webforms, landing pages, surveys, and emails. The context will help you choose the right CTA and get rid of the nonessential (perhaps unnecessary?) elements of each resource.




An abandoned cart workflow has a well-defined purpose.

3. Segment your list.

Use the elements of your marketing automation cycle as a series of touch-points that allows you to find similarities and differences among your subscribers and segment your email list accordingly.

There are a lot of ways to segment a list. For example, you can segment by:
demographics (age, sex, geography)
customer lifecycle
customer value
activity

A simple marketing automation workflow welcoming new subscribers and rewarding subscribers who opened the email with scoring points.

And when you want to send relevant messages, you should use multiple segmentation techniques. To learn more about layered segmentation, read the following article on email segmentation and targeting options.

4. Turn data into actionable insights.

Check your statistics and go beyond the obvious. For example, instead of relying on open and click-through rates, analyze what makes people open and click the links in your emails. Is this information relevant to a particular segment? What type of content is most engaging? What is the optimal frequency for these subscribers?




An email with links to several pieces of content. By checking the statistics you can see works best among your subscribers and use it to segment your list by interest.

5. Analyze and optimize.

As you well know, one of the essential skills in marketing is the ability to adapt to change. Marketing channels, buying cycles, customer preferences – everything changes over time. And the pace of change is constantly increasing. That’s why you need to stay focused on customers and constantly optimize your efforts.

Analyze your marketing automation workflows and see if they effectively convert prospects into buyers. Ask yourself questions like: What data do I need in order to send relevant communication? What conclusions can I draw from these subscribers’ behavior?

Run A/B tests of complete workflows, sections, or single elements (webforms, landing pages, emails, etc.) in order to find new ways of increasing conversion. In the case of email marketing processes, the sum of incremental changes can result in a massive performance increase.

This is how you can A/B test a preheader. What do you think, which leads to more opens?

Over to you

How do you personalize your email marketing? Would you add anything to the 5-step guide?

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Getting Smart With Email Marketing Segmentation

There is a fierce competition for attention in your subscribers’ inbox. Now! is the perfect time to make your emails effectively deliver more value.

Segmentation is a seemingly simple but extremely powerful mechanism. Many are already segmenting to some extent, but how about taking advantage of more advanced email segmentation?

Email marketing segmentation: The art of thinking in groups

Email marketing segmentation is the art of thinking in groups. You have to realize that your email list consists of different kind of people, with different behavior, profiles, and interests. But if your subscribers are so different, why treat them all the same? The solution is splitting your email list into groups that are alike (let’s call them segments).

Now we can approach each email segment in a way that is right for them. An insurance company, for instance, would have very different emails already only based on age, family composition, and car ownership. Each group deserves a different email stream, with proper content and offers. No need to talk about car insurance if you don’t own a car. That is what basic segmentation allows you to do, as long as you have the groups identified.

So far, so good; Email marketing segmentation is emailing to groups.

Better email marketing segmentation means that you look beyond what you think is obvious. For example, instead of making the emails fit with the current place of your subscriber in the customer lifecycle and what they are currently buying, it can also be made to appeal to their future or aspirational self; the person they want to be seen as – a tactic that has shown big success for many Luxury brands. Another example is using negative data, a preference in Brand or topic X that indicates a disinterest in Y.

The main business drivers behind segmentation

So what are the main drivers to start with smarter segmentation? Of course, subscribers appreciate getting better targetted and tailored emails. If an email is relevant, it makes for a better customer experience. But we also want to see business goals being met. More profit!

Segmented campaigns perform better. According to DMA, marketers have found a 760% increase in email revenue from segmented campaigns. This makes perfect sense: The more relevant the message, the more likely your subscriber is to act on it.

So, segmented and targeted email campaigns generate a much higher uplift compared to the results of a blanket, spray-and-pray email campaigns. This image from a research by Optimove shows how that works. Imagine segmenting and targeting all customers and then calculating the average customer value.

The segmented group had an average of $42 per customer, compared to $28 when unsegmented. What you see in this overview of (RFM) segmented groups is that the group VIPs is the most profitable with $150, very different than the “recently churned” group with $3. Not all groups are created equal. By naming the groups you understand that it is pretty silly to send everyone the same campaigns.

Because of email marketing segmentation, the average value per customer goes up. This results in a far more successful email marketing program. The research from Optimove found that the smaller the target group, the larger the uplift. For example, targetted campaign to groups with up to 150 customers had at least a $1.90 uplift per customer, while target groups of 1,500+ had an uplift of at most $0.50 (almost a 4:1 ratio). This makes me eager to Shrink my Segments, the ultimate goal of the elusive “segment of one”.

Look beyond segmentation for increased results

There is an overwhelming number of ways you can segment your list. Still, it is not only the segmentation that is going make the impact. If your marketing messages are highly segemented but badly executed, they will end up being highly segmented highly targeted lousy emails.

Segmentation Model x Execution = Combined Impact

Making your email segmentation more sophisticated is one of the ways to make a better match between your email campaigns and your subscribers. Crafting a sharper email or better use of the segmentation data (for instance more creatively) can be another. The end goal is to bring a plus to the bottom line, while retaining ROI. So the segmentation model needs to have enough impact and represent viable groups of sufficient size.

Pillars of Segmentation: Layered email marketing Segmentation Models

Email marketing segmentation doesn’t stop at selecting group A or B. Once you start layering segmentation criteria, the possibilities are almost endless. It is only limited by the available data. That is why we create segmentation models. All the data in your database – or even combined, derived or external data – can be used to create these segmentation models. There are what I like to call the Pillars of Segmentation – these describe the types of Data and Segmentation that can be used and then combined to create your models.

Segmentations can be based on all types of data, including:

Geographics (Location and related data)
Demographics and Profile (age, gender, social status)
Psychographics (lifestyle and AIO, meaning Attitudes, Interests, and Opinions)
Behavioural (Purchases, opens, clicks, website browsing, etc)

Attention all email marketers: If you have behavioral data available, it is extremely important not to let this go to waste. It might be a bit harder to get that data prepped for marketing purposes, but once it is set-up it can be a great indicator for future interests and behavior. By sorting past orders and purchases by category, price range, etc a whole new plethora of segmentation options opens up.

7000% increase in email marketing revenues

An example of huge increases in revenue by segmentation comes from Totes Isotoner Corp. They noticed that a lot of online shoppers repeatedly visited just a single product category: umbrellas, gloves, or boots. They decided to pitch these consumers with segmented email marketing campaigns focussed on the categories that were visited. The email offers brought many of the “lookers” actively clicking and buying.

Data can be combined or layered to achieve the level of targeting needed. For instance sending an invitation for a popconcert, we select the people that live close to the location and have indicated that they like that type of music. We add a focus on one of the artist that is performing at the concert if they bought a song or browsed the artist’s page recently. Of course we send a very different promotion to the group that is more interested in very different type of music.

Advanced email segmentation

More advanced email segmentation campaigns make use of combined or derived  data to go a step further. For instance segmentation on Customer Lifetime Value, crafting Buyer Personas or propensity modeling.

Segmenting on Customer lifetime value

For instance the customer lifetime value can be a segmentation criteria. It takes multiple pieces of purchase, costs and profile data to make such a calculation. But after you have calculated customer lifetime value it is possible to target your best customers, exclude your worst customers or craft specific campaigns for the part of the email list with the highest potential for growth.

Buyer Persona’s and customer behavior
There are different types of clients. Sometimes these buyer types are typecast as personas, but it can on a different (more practical) level too. By selecting the people that were high spenders and have seen a decline in spending the last months, you are looking to spending patterns. Looking back at previous behavior it is possible to identify and craft your messages to fit this group.

Predicting future behavior with propensity models

A group of statistical methods and scorecards that is used to predict future behaviour of customers. This behaviour includes the likeliness to respond to different types of offers, risk of churn, cross and upsell possibilities, etc. Now you might be thinking: how advanced and sophisticated should I make my segmentation? This differs from case to case. Let me give you an example.

An example of email marketing segmentation

An online fashion retailer for instance, can get great results segmenting on gender. Showing the men’s items to men and women’s’ items to women. But if they combine it with size and style preferences they can level up to even better results. Offering the right sizes on the landing pages and excluding sizes not in stock. Offering casual, business, and other styles the recipient is most likely to buy.

Adding the amount someone is likely to spend can furthermore increase results. Send sales emails to coupon clippers and VIP invites to exclusive high end shoppers.

Excluding the ones that just recently purchased and offering them an alternative makes those email more effective for that group.

Choose your segmentation model based on impact

Now which of those (or combination) has the highest impact per recipient effected? And which has the biggest impact on bottom line total revenue? Yes, some segmentations can be very costly to realise.  If you are playing around with segmentation models, try creating grid of segmentation options, costs versus their impact to find the “Quick win” and “build upon” segmentation models. Then test and improve upon it before making it your base and your running further segmented campaigns.

Segmentation as a part of the email marketing plan

Every time you select a group from your email database, it’s email marketing segmentation. This is a seemingly simple but extremely powerful mechanism. An email marketer can slice and dice his list and craft messages that fit the segments, ultimately lifting results. Segmentation should therefore be a part of every healthy email marketing strategy.

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The Future of email marketing – 2017 edition

Email is a mainstay in the marketing toolbox, but marketers need to continuously evolve their email tactics to cater to a changing audience. Join me in a leap forward into the future of email marketing in the 6th annual review of email marketing trends, changes, predictions, and constants.

Compiling this overview has always been a good excuse to highlight what’s happening right now, and taking a peek at what is just around the corner in 2017 and beyond.

So let’s jump in and see what marketing industry thinkers today have to say about the future of email marketing tomorrow…

Email marketing 5 years ahead…

How will email marketing evolve? Econsultancy asked brand side marketers: “Looking ahead five years, what do you think the single biggest change to email marketing will be?”

The following word cloud is the result. The biggest changes in the coming 5 years gravitate around Personalisation, Data, Automation, Devices and Content.

10 MarTech Experts Decipher the Future of Email Marketing and Marketing Automation

What will be the most interesting developments and trends? Ten industry experts came together on request by the emailvendorselection.com site and shared their views on what the future of Email Marketing & Marketing Automation will hold.

• Scott Brinker Marketers will rationalize technology stacks to achieve economy of architecture and Account Based Marketing (ABM) will remain one of the hottest categories.
• Pawel Sala Increasingly lower costs unlock a work-flow of data between web tracking, social media, BI solutions, CRM or ERP systems and email marketing. Making communication more personalized and relevant.
• Krzysztof Jarecki Artificial intelligence will take over campaign execution, especially for companies with large content libraries.
• David Raab Video is the up-and-coming functionality, easy creation will be accompanied by changes that make it easier to deploy and understand video content.
• Willem Stam E-mail systems move towards the data instead of other way around, senders will need more data-points to personalize communication that will drive user engagement.
• Benoît De Nayer Machine Learning will steer adaptive campaigns for smaller Marketing Automation platforms where AI will allow to continuously adapt campaigns to the individual customer journey.
• Jordie van Rijn The definition of MarTech will change as small market, ABM and dynamic content functionality comes together
• Tink Taylor Innovation will come from an explosion of machine-learning start-ups. For top-tier industry leaders, data is often in good shape, but it’s not all held in the same place.
• Assaf Ben-Asher Integration platforms are on the rise to extend the top marketing and engagement applications and increase service reach.
• Matt Hayes Iterative development on content automation in order to solve content production problems.

Read the full article with the complete and most juicy MarTech predictions here: 10 MarTech Experts decipher the Future of Email and Marketing Automation

What one learns from reading 134 mail marketing predictions

What happens if you read all the “Top email trends for 2017”, “Where is email headed in the year to come?” and “2017 email marketing predictions”articles out there? Gerald Marshall took the gamble and went through 134 email marketing predictions. My advice, don’t try this at home. And in one sitting, you’ll have a 100% chance of information overload!

The top 4 for 2017 are in the category data analysis, emails and ESPs, content and segmentation. The other big winners this year are email design and improved ESP platforms followed by video content and AI-assisted segmentation/ personalization.

AI is have email data analysis for lunch. The data analysis category includes artificial intelligence and bots with nearly half (15 of 33) of the category predictions dominated by that type of smart tech.

Have a look at the complete breakdown of predictions 

The Biggest Email Marketing Trends in 2017 Are…

Litmus asked 1.200+ marketers to rank the biggest email marketing trends for 2017. Chad White provided the context as Litmus’ research director and industry trend hawk-eye. The research shows that marketers are betting on Interactive email, Big Data personalisation and HTML 5 video in email to break through in 2017.

2017 will be the year of… Interactive emails
Email interactivity pulls some of the interactions from the landing page into the email. You can think about, for instance, Hamburger menus and other navigation, Carousels, Image galleries, and sliders, Offer reveals and Add-to-cart functionality.

By allowing more interactivity inside the email, it has potential to reduce barriers to engagement. It produces clickers with higher intent. The two biggest issues that still hold back adoption are 1: technical challenges around implementation and 2: Tracking and attribution changes.

2017 starts the half-decade of… Big Data personalisation in emails
Translating Big Data into actions for email marketers starts with breaking down data silos across channels. this means connecting the dots – which is no small technological or political feat. Marketers have embraced personalization driving most of the content in emails.

However, Big Data personalization is so complex and involved that it’s never likely to be a huge trend in any particular year. Instead, it’s probably truer to say that we’re in the half-decade of Big Data personalization.

2017 will be the year of… HTML5 Video in email taking off
Video in email is straightforward and easy for subscribers to understand — and for that reason is likely to be a catalyst in making both marketers and email users more receptive to other forms of interactivity.

With the launch of iOS 10, HTML5 video support is back! As of November 2016, more than 53% of emails were opened in Apple email apps justifying trying it as long as there is a fall-back for subscribers with email clients that don’t support HTML5 video.

2017 will be the year of… Automated and triggered emails
Marketers know the importance of automated emails. At some brands triggered emails, like welcome emails and cart abandonment emails, already generate the majority of email marketing revenue.

The outsized productivity of such a small percentage of email volume presents huge opportunities for brands to better engage subscribers.

More trends? Read the whole article including quotes from the experts on the litmus blog.

Experts on MarTech transformation of the email and marketing automation industry

With technology, marketing strategies and tactics constantly evolving, the eco-system is ever so important. We asked experts exactly what they think are significant changes and trends in the role of agencies, 3rd party technologies, and vendors in relation to each other? Find out below what these global experts had to say about the transformation of MarTech

• Roland Pokornyik agencies will be forced to bring the creative spice and become fluent in Automation, otherwise advanced DIY (do It Yourself) tools will be eat their lunch.
• Pawel Sala Integrated systems and data makes that triggered emails will fill in a larger share of email efforts and a be a big driver behind positive email marketing ROI.
• Matt Hayes Content Automation is the must have for marketers to save time and personalise at scale. Must-have innovations will come from 3rd party platforms and agencies.
• Krzysztof Jarecki The Chatbot Space will impact email and marketing automation. You might be subscribed to a Chatbot in the near future. With APIs making integration between email and chatbots seamless.
• David Raab Strong movement towards channel-independent data and decision systems. making it easier to share resources and coordinate customer treatments across channels.
• Fabio Masini Demand for on-premise and Hybrid email (MTA) systems grows due privacy concerns and wishes for data control.
• Willem Stam Deliverability trends will shape campaign types and ask for new complementary measurement of Deliverability
• Benoît De Nayer No more BYOMT (Bring Your Own Marketing Technology). Market Consolidation will accelerate, while new players enter the game.
• Jordie van Rijn ABM will start to appear in every (B2B) platform.
• Tink Taylor Migration back from the single marketing suite to a connected marketing stack.
• Kath Pay Specialist 3rd Party suppliers are on the rise, adding to the services provided.
• Gerald Marshall Productising AI will affect email marketing agencies and brands.
• Scott Brinker Account-based marketing (ABM) and the rise of “Smart Outbound” as a counterpoint to inbound-only.

Read the full article with all the MarTech prediction trimmings here: 13 Experts on MarTech transformation of the email and marketing automation industry.

Email marketing trendbook 2017

What are the most interesting trends that could play a bigger part in your email marketing strategy in 2017? Email marketing experts Krzysztof Jarecki, Aleksander Heba and Adam Ambrożewicz from Expert Sender discuss it in their Email marketing trendbook 2017.

1. Expect Chatbots to run e-commerce email marketing
   Customer behavior can already trigger automated emails. Expect chatbots to start doing the same. They’ll run automated workflows; send confirmation emails, abandoned cart emails, create newsletter sign ups, all personalized with data from the chat session.
2. Email will shrink
   Mobile phones are now the most common devices to access emails. According to 2016 research, the sweet spot for email length was between 50-125 words for optimal effect. With less space and minimal attention spans, expect email content to get shorter.
3. Eye-tracking is back! and now for kick-ass email
   Are you looking at me? Eye-tracking was mainly used for websites, but is now being used for testing email creative. It uses focus groups with real end users. Thanks to more affordable hardware, it’s now possible to run fast and inexpensive email eye tracking tests.
4. Context makes real-time email
   There’s going to be a whole lot more emails using contextual data, in real-time. Content will be based different sources including for instance geo-location, device, weather, time, (twitter) trends and stock levels. Based on real-time variables the emails will be generated at moment-of-open (not send).
5. Predictive lead scoring is picking up
   More businesses choose to have integrated models that are employing Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to generate lead scores automatically. This is what we call predictive lead scoring. A predictive intelligence layer on the top of the marketing automation we will hear more about in 2017.
6. Email will have a more conversational tone
   Keep it real, be honest, don’t take yourself too seriously, write like you talk, ask questions that encourage your customers to respond. A casual conversational tone will help your customers better relate to you and by extension to your brand, thus, creating a personal connection.
7. Machines will match subscribers with content
   Segmentation and personalisation produce better-targeted emails but are often too time-consuming. We crave a way for content to be matched with our customers automatically. With so much data and content, marketers will look to machines for content matching.
8. Cross-channel data will fuel the customer view
   Channel data silos are going to be less prevalent. We’ll see behavioural, demographic, contextual and transactional data used across campaigns to give us a single customer view. Push emails with the right content with right timing to always-on devices.

Download the trendbook here.

5 Email marketing trends to consider for your email communication strategy in 2017 – and a few things to safely ignore

The heart of (email) marketing remains the same. It is about providing customer-centric experiences. Don’t expect 2017 (or 2018… or possibly ever) to see technological perfection for getting the right message/person/time combination. So how is this mantra translated into the reality of the day? Tim Watson shares his 5 trends to act on.

1. Email Targeting
   Capturing user interests with preference centres is dead. Brands not using behaviour in 2017 will be brands stuck in the past. I expect to see more medium sized brands of scale adding behavioural driven content blocks, such as recommended items.

2. Customer Data regulation and privacy
   Permission is getting stricter; what marketers can do with data is going to be more tightly regulated. Within the next two years, the requirement for unambiguous consent looks like it may end the practice of pre-ticked check boxes for email permission during a purchase.
3. Blended and supplemented Automation
   Many brands already have some automation included in their email programmes. In 2017, they will be supplementing existing email activity and blending in automation programs to add to their broadcast activity. A few adventurous brands will try out innovative approaches to decisioning of what emails to send to each contact.
4. Deliverability, Inbox placement and email bombs
   Indiscriminate and illegally sent email has been beaten, the bar is rising on standards for B2B brands to get to the inbox. Poorly permissioned, third party permissioned or sending on opt-out basis is going to be an increasing challenge for B2B.
   Seed list based inbox monitoring tools no longer give usable inbox placement results. The trend of email list bombing we have seen at the end of 2016 is going to lead to more use of reCAPTCHA on subscribe forms and double opt-in processes.
5. Email Design and creatives
   Expect to see the trend for use of animation and video to continue in 2017. The key is to make the animation support the message and capture imagination, not just add a pointless decorative element.
   Pushing the Enveloppe
   Some brands experiment with interactive emails featuring push the envelope – email design techniques, such as creating carousel elements, hamburger menus, and interactive features in their emails. However, these design innovations still are largely unproven in value.

Are smart watch users, Google Home Assistant and Amazon Echo things we can safely ignore? Read the full article here on SmartInsights: 5 trends Email marketers need to stay on top of and a couple you can safely ignore…

Email Marketing Innovation

According to Econsultancy research companies intend to innovate their email marketing this year with more creative uses of behavioral triggers (66%), greater use of dynamic elements and marketing automation to reach one-to-one communication.

Agencies expect to see a bit less innovation for their clients, except for content messaging apps and the use of email as identifier on external platforms. Such an identifier can be used for for instance retargetting or profile enrichment.

7 email marketing predictions for 2017

Top minds in the email marketing industry have come together for some crystalball gazing over at Campaign Monitor. With predictions about what the future holds for email marketing in 2017 and beyond. Below a short summary. Read the full article here: 7 email marketing predictions for 2017

1. Chad White of Litmus: Data-driven marketing will rule.
   Data science is making email marketing smarter by powering better automationand personalization. But It isn’t “set and forget”, Marketers will zero in on the data points and behaviors that lead to value.
2. Alex Williams of Trendline Interactive: Mobile payments will come to inboxes.
   A native, fingerprint-based integration for inboxes on mobile that will allow 1-click payment from email in 2017.
3. Matthew Smith of Really Good Emails There will be a revolution in email design.
   With sets of modular templates and meaningful content components. Less time will be needed in the design of emails. Focus will shift to creating more meaningful content rather than constantly designing and creating the “container”.
4. Daniel Codella of ZURB There will be an evolution of marketing automation.
   With more options to fine tune automated campaigns like advanced segmentation and time optimized sending. Secondly, there will be more g pre-packaged customer journeys to help move the needle.
5. Andrea Wildt of Campaign Monitor: Behavioral data will help marketers dominate their competition.
   As consumers welcome smart devices into their homes and lives, marketers can integrate consumer usage data like sites visited, apps downloaded, or games played.
6. Jordie Van Rijn of Email Monday Email: Marketing is reinventing itself by acknowledging Person + Profile + Purpose = Performance. I think this is profoundly influenced by tactics advocated in B2B marketing automation. It is changing how everyone (including B2C) looks at their audience value. I think we will see a rise of (predictive) lead scoring and matching.
7. Ros Hodgekiss of Campaign Monitor: As we see email further integrate with other marketing and analytics platforms, I predict that more marketers – and not just engineers – will be able to determine ROI, but also see how email is influencing repeat purchases, renewal rates, feature adoption and more.

2017 will be the year of the savvy emailer

Josie Scotchmer of Mailjet declares this year’s theme “Start practicing what you preach”. Not a bad idea. In her post Email: the trends for 2017, she encourages to get the basics right, stop talking about what you’re going to do and start putting practices into action. Let’s take that as a five-step program.

Step One: Personalization… closing the disconnect between brand and customer
Every year we talk about personalization, yet so many marketers still think this ends with adding a first name to an email. Yikes! To connect with your contacts by taking a look at your data, to find true segments and personalize our messages based on the needs of each segment.

Step two: Build an emotional connection through Brand Storytelling
To be truly great at brand storytelling, you need to first understand your customer journey. An evocative story is both true to your company and your customers’ lives. Use the story to uncover the hidden treasures you have in your product catalog.

Step three: Use Transactional Emails as a part of marketing
Marketing teams tend to govern marketing emails, whereas transactional emails often sit under IT departments. The space within your transactional emails can help you to connect your customers with their wants and desires. Even if they didn’t know they wanted it. Give your transactional emails the same brand feel as your marketing emails for a consistent experience.

Step four: Trust The Machine, marketing automation
Wow, 48% of SMBs are not using any form of marketing automation. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is getting smarter and more intuitive, so, yeah, 2017 is the year to put your faith in technology and trust the machine, especially for capturing them when they are in the moment.

Step 5: Make Email an interactive experience
By now, you’ve mastered crafting beautifully responsive emails (well, hopefully anyway). So let’s make your subscribers love them, by making them interactive. Perhaps you’re looking to increase conversions, allowing your customers to shop directly in the email.

Read the whole article here on the Mailjet blog.

Email Marketing in 2020: 3-Year Outlook On Email Marketing for Small Business

Clate Mask, CEO at Infusionsoft, looks ahead to 2020 from the doorstep of 2017 and notes that the near future will see some powerful trends, especially in email marketing. The rapid shift over the next few years will have serious implications for small businesses trying to keep pace:

• Bulk email marketing dies (It’s nearly dead now). Small businesses can no longer hammer inboxes with impersonal email.
• Email marketing will keep growing. Right now, the number of emails Infusionsoft sends on behalf of our customers is growing faster than the growth of our customer base. This means more emails per customer year over year, which reveals a continual high demand for email that we expect only to increase.
• Small businesses won’t be able to compete in the email marketing space on their own. Any business that wishes to compete must use automation software.
• Seamless CRM integrations will allow for a focus on personalization, powerful reporting, and improved sales.
• Small businesses will be able to implement highly sophisticated marketing campaigns without having to understand how they work. The automation will be that good.

The year 2020 used to sound so distant, but now it is right around the corner. Email marketing will be as important as ever, but it will also become increasingly difficult. Small businesses working with ESPs will be able to take advantage of all the powerful new tools and resources that the future holds.

Read: Email Marketing in the Year 2020

Top 5 email marketing trend predictions in 2017

So what does 2017 have in store for email marketing? One thing is for certain, it’s going to be another very exciting year for email says Jenna Tiffany of Communicator! Here are her Top 5 email marketing trend predictions in 2017:

1. Back to Basics means smiling customers and more Automation
   Research showed that consumers respond well to brands that get the basics right. As a result of optimizing the basic elements, the adoption of automation will grow. This technology currently isn’t being fully used. Optimizing from the ground up with be vital in 2017, so evaluate the basics you configured many moons ago.
2. Strategy is driven forward by Machines that Learn
   Email marketing comes from a history of tactical implementation. Over 60% has an email marketing strategy but the majority is at a basic level. AI and machine learning will drive your strategy forward in three areas: Sophisticated segmentation, Lifecycle marketing optimization and Intelligent personalization
3. Email Content comes to life
   Finally, cat videos in our inbox! Email marketing content can be more interactive, it can be more engaging and start to reflect more and more what a website can display. And don’t forget real-time optimization and functionality like including live shopping carts in the email.
4. Data quality & trust
   Trust is important. Make sure your existing marketing practices are compliant because the GDPR will come into effect May 2018. By taking an active stance on this, you can truly demonstrate the value and respect you have for using and storing their data. It’s never too late to start building trust.
5. Modular Design builds a library of partials
   Email marketing has now got to a place where the majority of a design can be dragged and dropped. Modular designs mean less time is spent on designing the email. Designers are still needed to build your library of partials – no matter if they are locked in a cupboard or not.

Read the whole trendy article at the communicator blog

10 Email Design Resolutions

Have you thought about your email design resolutions for 2017? Kelly Shetron at the BeeFree blog reached out to email marketing experts to get their resolutions for the new year. They weighed in on everything from improving design techniques for headers, GIFs, CTA buttons, and more to Inspire your own email design resolutions. As this email from Daniel Wellington says, the best time for new beginnings is now. : )

1. Add Cinemagraphs and Dive Deeper Into Geo-Targeting – Priya Bransfield, Email Consultant
2. Increase Interactivity With Engaging Photography and Bold CTAs – Melanie Kinney of G3 Communications
3. Make Sure to A/B Test More Design Elements – Shannon Crabill Email Developer at T Rowe Price
4. Include Fun Animation (No Matter How Small) – Kathryn Grayson of Everyday Health
5. Experiment With GIFs for an Animated Email – Leo Thom, Freelance designer and developer
6. Rely on More Data-Driven Design Decisions – Annett Forcier of Hootsuite
7. Grab Attention With CTA buttons and Avoid Gimmicky GIFs — Kiandra Plummer
8. Use Emoji to Encourage Emotional Impulses – Nick Haby from RevSquare
9. Improve Rendering Across Gmail, Outlook, and iPhone – Belinda Blakley, DeVry Medical International
10. Focus on Content-First Strategy Principles – Courtney Prebble, Digital Designer at Bronto

Read the full article with all resolutions: 10 Email Design Resolutions for 2017.

The future of email marketing is already here

Is your Email Marketing manager already a Director of Essential Engagement? Len Shneyder shares why the future of email marketing is already upon us, although the rules of email marketing are still about to evolve in ways we won’t even notice until well after the fact.

Companies must have the vision to realize a logical step as personalisation of each message and say goodbye to Batch-and-Blast like Pinterest did. But what about Big data and Artificial Intelligence? Unlike Ultron, this AI will want to sell you something.

Len lays out six steps to get to a Big Data and AI powered email scheme:

1. Get your Big Data house in order
2. Lay a Plan
3. Think 1-to-1
4. Explore the provider landscape
5. Pay for performance
6. Elevate email in your marketing mix

Email marketing won’t change through radical leaps like jet-packs or better email technology. Instead through improvements to the ways that companies gather and leverage customer data and the systems’ ability to make automated inferences about user behaviors and needs

Read The future of email marketing is already here

Email marketing in 2017 – Gurus reveal their predictions…

At the close of every year, the email marketing gurus of Striata get together and discuss their predictions for the year that lies ahead.

• Mia Papanicolaou – Interactive email will be huge and everywhere (with increased support for CSS), email will start to mimic our online experiences.
• Sheryl-Lynn Omar – Emails and digital content that adapt to a user’s age will take relevance and user experience to another level.
• Stergios Saltas – Less use of stock images. ‘Real’, ‘in the moment’, ‘slice of life’ type images are going to appear on email and websites.
• Alex Papadopulos – More synergy and dialog between the email designers and the email applications. Changes to Outlook and Gmail lead to a better inbox.
• Ross Sibbald – Going forward it will be about the quality of the customer’s experience within the communication and not the quantity of emails you send that will differentiate you.
• Adam Q. Holden-Bache – we are now seeing a shift towards using data to predict what a recipient wants, and delivering that to the inbox.

Read Email marketing in 2017 – Gurus reveal their predictions…

Four Unexpected Investment Areas For 2017

In the coming year, marketers plan to focus on building a better email marketing program mix and better messages. But it is more interesting to hear what email marketers are not saying when talking about their strategy and plans.

George Bilbery president of Return Path urges marketers to consider adding the following fundamental areas where major investment doesn’t appear to be planned for 2017:

1. Increase the subscriber list size
2. Increase list quality
3. Improving inbox placement
4. Finding the right email frequency and cadence

Read Four Unexpected Investment Areas For 2017

5 ways email will evolve in 2017

There’s been quite a bit of transformation for email in recent years. April Mullen, strategist at Selligent, lists a wave of changes for our beloved email channel to watch out for.

1. The customer journey will become a crucial focus.
   Customer experience will be the single most important attribute that brands live or die by, and your role as an email marketer will be to develop programs that touch various parts of a consumer’s journey with your brand.
2. Reporting will begin to shift from campaigns to consumers.
   Deeper development of customer journeys will bring a change in how marketing efforts are evaluated. Brands will look at the effect their marketing orchestration has on individual customers.
3. Delivering to messaging apps will become apart of an email marketer’s job.
   Apps are the new inbox opportunity to send hyper-focused, opt-in promotional messages and service notifications. And email marketers will be tasked with developing the strategy and executing these programs as they are direct marketing experts.
4. Shared IPs will become more prevalent. 
   We may start seeing major email service providers/marketing clouds offering a shared IP option to clients of all sizes. With major changes in recent years in how reputation is established, dedicated IPs aren’t as critical as they once were.
5. We’ll see leaders test in-email conversion buttons. 
   Given that email is a universal app with a lot of flexibility, one-click conversion technology is ripe for someone to implement it. What brand will be the first? I can’t wait to see it hit my inbox.

Read the full article on Mediapost

Email Marketing Trends 2017 from Industry Leaders

FreshMail asked key industry leaders what is their “must-have” email marketing trend that will be extremely relevant in 2017. Here are their answers:

Turning deliverability into a KPI 
Laura Atkins of Word to the Wise: We must start treating deliverability as a valid way to measure our campaigns. Not because failure to reach the inbox means our campaign has failed, but because we can improve inbox delivery by improving our marketing.

Acquisition is #1 priority for all marketers 
Scott Cohen of InboxArmy: You’ll see the embrace of address collection and the channel in everything marketers do. Greater investment and resources will be devoted to email as the channel will get its due as the hub of digital marketing and customer communication.

Improving sender reputation 
Guy Hanson of Return Path: Subscribers are more likely to provide a primary email address when they trust the sender, and over 80% of all email reads are generated from these addresses.

The era of Mailable Microsites 
Jaymin Bhuptani of Email Monks: The use of innovative elements like Hamburger Menu, Accordion, Carousel, Search, Slider, Rotating banner, Flip effect will catch momentum and enhance user experience.

Becoming a strategist In 2017 
Kath Pay of Holistic Email Marketing: Email marketers will increase their use of personalization, automated lifecycle programmes and intelligent testing to deliver an improved customer experience and reap the rewards accordingly.

Email Content Automation 
Jordie van Rijn of Email Monday: Pull content, products, and information from your site or database into the email. Add a bit of logic and segmentation (no AI needed) and you have the foundation for a homemade recommendation engine.

Going back to basics 
Jenna Tiffany of Communicator: It’s important to get the basics right because this is what consumers want and voted Amazon as the brand that does email best. For Amazon, it’s not about just including the latest tech, it’s about defining a clear email strategy that optimises the customer’s journey.

Dynamic personalized product emails 
Rob Allen of Smart Insights: Marketers will turn product emails into ‘micro-stores’ where customers are able to do more than just look at a list of product options. That means more engagement and better conversion rates.

We will see the complete ecosystem of data work-flows
Pawel Sala of FreshMail: With the relatively lower costs of big data technology, it seems that finally we will be able to see comprehensive ecosystems with the work-flow of data between web tracking, social media, BI solutions, CRM or ERP systems and email marketing.

Read the whole article and check the infographic at the Freshmail blog

Email Marketing: The Best, The Worst, and What’s Next

What does the future of email hold? Since they don’t have a crystal ball, Aweber asked five email marketing experts to share their predictions during #Emailchat. Some highlights:

This is what we predict for 2017
Data will play a bigger role than ever
More personalization, more relevance
Holistic email experiences

The email design trends we saw everywhere
Interactive content, i.e. live Twitter and Instagram feeds
GIFs and emojis
Minimalist templates
Mobile-friendly design

And these brands killed it with their campaigns
Collaborative Fund’s magazine-style newsletter
Spotify’s “Most Listened to”
Movember’s fundraising campaign

Read the full article, #emailchat 140-character style, here.

The greatest 2017 email marketing predictions of all time

The fundamentals of email haven’t really changed in the last 10 years, in truth, Elliot Ross of ActionRocket doesn’t expect a sweeping change to happen and a lot of innovation is in improving boring things. But one day… So what is the direction we would like to see it go?

Easy segment of one marketing – if it works
There are some amazing things able with hyper personalised email, but only after we know when and where to use it. And the ESPs makes it simple..
Fixing the email production process.
The process of making a marketing email, from managing it to producing content to QA to personalisation, is disjointed and inefficient. Fixing this will enable everything else.
A focus on brands and experiences, not tech.
If we use technology to improve our emails, it’s imperative that it improves the experience — so we need to think in those terms. Technology for the sake of it achieves nothing.
Truly considering mobile.
Aside from tweaking the design, what do we really think about when it comes to mobile email? Mobile changes the entire experience, also because so much of it is shaped by social media cues.

Read The greatest 2017 email marketing predictions of all time

The Top Email Marketing ROI Trends to Watch in 2017

Marketers should be careful not to rest on their laurels when it comes to this “oldie but goodie” marketing tool and keep up with changing trends. Email may be a long-established communication format, but today’s email marketing strategies can’t afford to be old-fashioned.

Live and breathe mobile first
The rise of mobile means all age groups are using their smartphones to check email, with Millennials leading the charge. Marketers should experiment with sending emails in the early morning or late at night for this audience subset. Brands absolutely must think mobile-first or risk alienating the users that live and breathe with mobile.

Channels add further degrees of details
Email marketing can work in tandem with larger campaigns across channels. If you’ve got a great campaign happening on social channels like Facebook or Instagram, email can further describe the campaign with supplemental, relevant details.

Taking visual impact cues from social
When targeting email for Millennials especially, brands should take their cues from social. Optimizing emails for great visuals and using emojis strategically will appeal to an age group that increasingly relies on visuals to communicate.

Read The Top Email Marketing ROI Trends to Watch in 2017

Future Trends in Email Marketing for 2017

“In 2016, we experienced a surge in use of interactive emails, more mobile-friendly and email automation, and a loooot of emojis”, says Kevin George from the Email Monks. So, what should email marketers look forward to in the coming year? The struggle to STAND OUT in the inbox will accelerate; all you need to do is think out-of-the-box.

Use context for Superior Segmentation
Beyond the regular profile-based segmentation. Now make it more contextual, individual. What time of the day do your subscribers generally open your emails? Some like higher frequency while some like just a few and specific type. Understanding the interest of the person you are sending an email to is the need of the hour; it will help you segment better.

Taking Personalization to a new level
Personalization will now surpass the basic stage. Algorithms applied to behavior of subscribers will help to find out what they will do next. Geo-targeting can prove useful in delivering custom branding offers to subscribers. Demographic, firmographic, behavioral and psychographic data can together help in building a buyer persona, a trend that is likely to pick speed in 2017.

Mobile Optimization for Optimal emails
It will thus become quintessential for email marketers to think mobile first; there is no option but to create responsive emails (single column template is the best solution). The content of the email, too, should be written with mobile users in mind.

Bringing Social content into email
Sending emails about the campaigns you run on your social channels like Facebook can supplement your marketing efforts in 2017. Another trend is the use of live social media feeds in your emails. Channels like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. This way, you reach out to a broader audience, making sure no one misses out on any of the fun.

Bring life to Your Emails with Interactivity and animation
Interactivity has already made a grand debut and it is the future of email marketing. Innovative elements make today’s emails truly engaging and helps to offer more content compressed in a short and user-friendly format. GIFs have brought that fun element to emails. Video is bound to make a comeback in 2017. Thanks to Apple’s iOS10 supporting videos in email.

Think about intereactive items like a Live Shopping cart, Countdown timers, Rotating Banners and Sliders, Scratch Effects and Menus, Accordions, and Flips

Read Future Trends in Email Marketing – The Monks Predict

Four predictions for email marketing in 2017

What is the future of email marketing? Expect nothing to change with email in 2017, until marketers start acting on the trends and rethink their email strategy. Ryan Phellan hopes to see more marketers become “first-person” marketers. For these active marketers, he crafted this must-do, must-look-into topics list based on his predictions and trends for 2017.

1) In 2017 more email marketers choose first-person marketing.
System, budgets, company structures and internal politics often won’t allow to make big leaps. So first-person marketers work hard for incremental changes. Change one thing at a time and build on that progress. Each customer is an individual, and every email gets them closer to marketing to their customers as individuals, not just another email address in a database.

2) First-person marketers will focus on wearable devices.
Don’t obsess about email rendering on a smartwatch. Mobile devices are all about notifications of information rather than the information itself. Marketers need to figure out what customers expect and perceive information. What will eventually evolve the email industry is how the consumer uses that information.

3) Marketers will catch up to mobile-first consumers.
The first-person marketer will look at how their customers consume information, not just if they did.

We are in the mobile-first age; maybe even mobile-only. Email proofs on our desktop computers, we’ll look first on phones to see rendering and behavior. For email marketers, the issue has gone beyond using responsive design. Developing metrics and KPIs for mobile is what’s important.

4) Global privacy comes to the forefront.
The “private right of action” of Canada’s anti-spam law goes into effect in July 2017. Individuals and government agencies can now initiate complaints. Marketers will start reviewing their data gathering and protection practices to comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which goes into full effect in May 2018.
The privacy debate is important to trust and relationships with their customers and subscribers.

Read: Four predictions for email marketing in 2017

What’s Ahead for Email Marketing in 2017

Keep these email trends in mind to guide budget and planning of your email marketing strategies in 2017. Six current and continuing trends.

• Improved Automation
  More companies will use emerging technologies to better automate the creation, distribution, and management of email content. Email automation is expected to help save businesses time and money.
• Machine Learning
  With machine learning, marketers can mine data more effectively. These tools are key for everything from email automation to better personalization and targeting.
• Mobile Optimization
  Chances are that your target audience will access their email via mobile devices. This means your emails need to be optimised and easily readable on a mobile device.
• Visual Content
  Yes, visual content is super important in email marketing too. Document a well-researched visual storytelling strategy around the ongoing delivery of valuable information through visual media.
• Integration of marketing channels
  Integrate your email campaigns across channels. Email is a great tool for supporting campaigns on social and other channels.
• Compelling Writing
  From subject line to the body copy. It is all about compelling, creative content that tells a story about your brand and your products and services.

Read What’s Ahead for Email Marketing in 2017

Key Predictions for email marketing in 2017

Orchestrate sees email coming back with a vengeance. Cognitive of the benefits of email marketing they predict what they see as the trends email marketing is most likely to follow in the year 2017.

• The rising adoption of responsive email design is increasing the conversion rates on smartphones.
• Automated emails become important to address the need for a better personalised customer experience.
• Innovation in triggers for automated emailing make campaigns more timely and relevant to the subscribers.
• Integrating email marketing with CRM and ERP will bring that elusive one-to-one communication with customers closer.
• Modular templates make running campaigns much more accessible and can drive adoption of email automation.
• Drag-and-drop technology will make email marketing simpler and more convenient.
• Kinetic email makes it possible for marketers to develop engaging and eye-catching campaigns that are much more distinct a recipient’s inbox.
• By applying machine learning and data mining, marketers can use their email marketing toolkit to improve results and drive profits.

Read Key predictions for email marketing in 2017

Looking back at the Future of email marketing

Do you have the 1.21 Jiggawats it takes? Technical development in email and marketing automation has been spectacular in the last year. And I have the feeling that in this quickly-evolving world we are nowhere close to seeing the end of technical possibilities and creativity.

If you could go back to the future, what would you say to yourself? These are the previous “future of email marketing” predictions.

The future of email marketing 2016 edition
The future of email marketing 2015 edition
These Trends show the Future and Evolution of Email Marketing (2014)
The future of email marketing 2013 edition
The future of Email marketing 2012 edition 
Email marketing insights for 2011

PS: As more and more future of email marketing articles are published, I’ll be updating this list. If you have any additions, comments, questions or just like to say HI, do post it below.

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