When it comes to getting new customers and keeping the ones you already have, one of the most important aspects of your marketing strategies is the emails you send out to your customer base. Sure, it’s important to know the best ways to hack Instagram and what the content writing trends of today are, but without a strong grasp on writing emails well and sending them to the right people, you’ll be missing out on a huge opportunity to build your number of conversions.
That’s why it’s so important that you understand the biggest trends when it comes to email marketing. If you want to learn how you can best attract customers via email marketing in 2018, read on.
1 Personalization in list segmentation
It’s pretty likely that you’ve already been working on personalizing your emails you send out to followers, but now more than ever, you’re going to want to personalize even more. The best way to do this is by completing your buyer persona profiles using strategies such as these and creating different email lists for different groups of people.
According to Martech Today, you’ll want to “keep an eye out for list segmentation in 2018, especially as standards evolve and organizations become more familiar with the methodology.” Considering that 65 percent of companies that exceed lead and revenue goals have updated personas within the last six months, you’ll want to update these personas constantly.
2 More interaction
An ordinary email, with only information for your readers to process, is now a thing of the past. Now, more than ever, as we’re spending four hours a day on our phones and are constantly connected, emails are going to be way more interactive.
According to Smart Insights, this means including features such as integrated forms and surveys, the ability to easily share your email on social media platforms, GIFs and videos in the email itself, the ability to search and navigate through emails, rotational banners and carousels, and countdown clocks for sales and promotions. By providing your readers with these options in the emails themselves, you make engagement possible without them needing to visit your website or social media page.
3 Content will be addictive
Now more than ever, with so many companies vying for customer attention, your content needs to be addictive. It has to be so good that the first thing readers do upon seeing your email is open it, craving the information you’re giving them.
According to Marketing Land, this means giving your readers “useful information that speaks to the intersection of their lifestyle and brand values. Gift guides, recipes, how-tos, related news, tips and tricks, outfits of the day and other types of sticky content are also useful for marketers...Subscribers will stay engaged with your brand if you make the effort to educate, entertain or find a unique way to incorporate lifestyle trends into your messaging.” The total number of business and consumer emails is expected to reach 319.6 billion by the end of 2021, so the better your content, the higher your chance of being read.
4 Main content of emails will be text only
Sure, it may seem counterintuitive considering how high-tech we’re getting and how information-hungry consumers are, but as email marketing becomes a more popular way of reaching readers, the content of emails will be primarily text.
According to the AWeber blog, this is happening in large part because text emails “feel more like a personal message and less like an advertisement. People tend to put up their guard when they think marketers are selling them something. Text-only emails...seem less like marketing and more like a conversation.” Remember that emojis count as text, too, and that subject lines containing emojis have a higher read-rate than those without.
5 Making your emails more accessible
Finally, in a world where we’re constantly becoming more progressive with movements such as #MeToo and becoming aware of inequalities in the US and other countries, you’ll stay ahead of the curve by making your emails accessible to everyone. For example, considering that Latinos make up 18 percent of the US population but only 4 percent of US lawyers, if your company provides legal services, you may want to release your emails in Spanish, too.
Additionally, you’ll want to make your emails accessible to people with disabilities, which means “using high color contrasts for the color-blind, avoiding flashing animation that can cause photo-sensitive seizures, having enough HTML text for screen readers used by the blind, and including such text in semantic elements,” according to Litmus.
By using these email marketing trends of 2018, you’ll attract more leads and keep the ones you already have, which is key to success in today’s business world. What other strategies do you use to attract more leads to your brand?