There’s an enduring misconception in some areas that email marketing should be consigned to the past. A quick google search reveals a string of telling articles that question the relevance of this powerful tool. Is email marketing effective? Is it dead?
We know from experience that email marketing is thriving in the wake of GDPR, and expect it to continue yielding results as we step forward into 2019. As such, we thought it would be worthwhile highlighting a few of the trends that will characterize email marketing throughout the year.
ROI
Email marketing resulted in an average of 4400% ROI and $44 for ever $1 spent in 2018, and we expect this to continue in 2019. Optimizing your emails and landing pages for mobiles should already be an essential business practice to improve conversion rates – but if you needed another reason; the average order value on mobiles, in particular, is expected to increase during the year.
Personalization
Personalization is paramount if you want to maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign. You want to ensure that you are delivering the right content at the right time. This is critical for winning new business and growing existing customers alike, as more and more businesses begin to adopt this holistic approach.
The number of automation platforms also rose in 2018, and this looks set to increase further in 2019. These platforms are robust tools for personalizing and distributing your emails.
There has also been a steady decline in the overall number of email campaigns, yet this has very little to do with their effectiveness or relevance and more to do with a marketing culture shift. Businesses have shifted from quantity towards quality, as they interject highly-personalized email marketing into the customer journey to ensure subscribers receive timely content that’s right for them.
Living with GDPR
In light of GDPR, we’ll see a continuing trend from companies to become more transparent about their email policy. Authenticity will be a big factor. You will need to convince subscribers that you’re not just GDPR compliant but also using the most advanced data protection systems.
Gaining trust and carefully mapping the customer journey to offer better value will be key.
AI - Smarter Spam Filters
The increasing use of AI and machine learning will allow the big email clients to get more sophisticated with their spam filtering. So more than ever it’s important to make sure you’re sending content you know that your customers or prospects want.
Social Media
AZoInsight
Email marketing resulted in an average of 4400% ROI and $44 for ever $1 spent in 2018, and we expect this to continue in 2019.
Although social media in-mail options offered by the likes of Linkedin will not replace quality email marketing lists, it does show that these platforms are providing more options for B2B marketers.
Google offers similar functionality via their ads platform and Facebook with their lead generation ad options.
Trust is key!
A well-managed quality email list is precious to any business. We expect email marketing to be one of the most cost-effective and successful ways of engaging your audience, leading to more sales and revenue for marketers who are keeping up to date with the trends in 2019.
