Is Email Strategy Still Effective in 2018?

 

 

Many professionals point to the premeditated death of email marketing due to the growth of social media and their consequent investment by companies.

However, those who share the opinion that email marketing is no longer effective, forget when this strategy does not work is because the content of the email does not meet the interests of the recipients.

Although it is sometimes difficult to get information about the segments, according to Ascend, 51% of marketers say that the success of this tool is often limited by the lack of relevant information about their contacts.

Another corporate failure is tireless sending of emails, 78% of its recipients claim to have canceled email subscriptions because they are receiving too many.

Email marketing has many advantages associated with it. When used properly, it can leverage sales, generate new customers and help in their retention.

Through email marketing you can opt for various communication strategies, they are the following:

 

  • Commercial:These strategies are considered to be the most traditional and are intended to increase impulsive behavior, when announcing promotions or a new product.
  • Loyalty:In order to retain customers, this type of campaigns aims to promote their relationship with the brand or company, in order to generate more sales.
  • Informational:These campaigns are intended mainly to inform clients, for example about future events or to get feedback on a particular service or product.
  • Location:This is a strategy used to inform people about the location of the physical store, so that they can go in it and become customers.

 

In social media, content is filtered by viewers and do not reach people as Email marketing which is shown to be up to 40 times more effective than its counterpart, according to a study done by McKinsey & Company. The same study also shows that the buying process happens 3 times faster than in social media.

 

Along with these statistics, 2018 shows new opportunities for email marketing:

 

Automation and AI technologies will make emails more human

Artificial intelligence continues to be a hot topic in marketing circles. Although the implications of AI and the scope of its marketing applications are still somewhat vague, in 2018, marketers will continue to ramp up experimentation with automated plug-and-play applications.

A major benefit of AI technologies is that they make emails feel more human. By providing more personalized user experiences through data, AI can help create deeper connections with your subscribers and invoke more emotion with its language (or emoji) usage.

Content optimization is an obvious target for AI solutions. A lot of applications are fighting in this space that enables marketers to evaluate audiences and generate content using language and emotion tailored to specific segments while learning as more data comes through.

 

Kinetic email will change the look, feel and experience of email

One of the more interesting trends of 2018 is kinetic email. Designed to make emails look and feel more like a website experience, kinetic emails introduce a new layer of interactivity to the email experience. As ISPs like Gmail continue to adopt these functionalities, it will make the experience in the inbox more fluid and quicker to the register.

The best examples of kinetic email include hover buttons, hotspots, add to order carts, image carousels and other features. The upside is that these emails are not only more attractive than traditional email, but they’re also more effective for encouraging subscribers to engage with the brand and its products.

Although marketers are still working out the kinks (Microsoft sent a kinetic email that didn’t work on Microsoft email clients), Taco Bell, Burberry and Nest are examples of brands that are using interactivity in the inbox.

The main threat to Email marketing seems to reside in the upcoming GDPR (General DATA Protection Regulation). Indeed, is a European legislation that will force businesses to protect the data and privacy of European Union citizens. Slated to go into effect in May 2018, GDPR impacts transactions that occur within EU member states and will inevitably impact any brand that sells to European markets.

 

To conclude,  in the year 2018, email marketing is far from dying and brings with it advantages and potential to be explored by companies. With good practice and a well-planned strategy, developed by a digital agency such as Ads Bulgaria, the results will be out there.