6 Email Marketing Trends You Need to Be Aware Of

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From ReadWrite:

Email may not get as much love as channels like social media, but it remains perhaps the most important communication tool for marketers. That’s especially true when you consider that estimates indicate there will be more than 4 billion users by 2023.

But the only way for email marketing to be effective is to stay on top of the trends.

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1. It’s all about artificial intelligence. 

Considering that AI has completely changed the business world, this shouldn’t be all that shocking. In fact, one recent survey found that 85% of marketers are already using artificial intelligence. They believe the technology has the power to drive double-digit growth within the next two years.

Right now, AI handles a variety of sales and marketing tasks. This includes segmenting leads and customers, engaging and qualifying leads, creating more personalized recommendations, and predicting customer actions. When it comes to email specifically, AI can do everything from generating more engaging subject lines to automating optimized content. That can boost engagement rates, along with AI’s ability to determine the best times to send email campaigns. AI can also customize email promotions and fine-tune your retargeting strategy, decreasing your cart abandonment rate.

2. Interactive content will continue to rise. 

“I’m a firm believer in interactive content and I’m predicting it will continue to take off in 2019,” writes Kyle Henderick, senior director of client services at Yes Marketing. “Emails that contain games, quizzes, image carousels or simply ‘fun’’ clickability (my word for 2019) allow users to interact with the brand without leaving the email itself.” Other examples of interactive elements are clickable hotspots, navigational anchor tags, live social media feeds, and videos.

“The more brands allow subscribers to engage within emails in new ways — whether it’s a personality quiz or the ability to book hotels without leaving email — the more engaged and ready to purchase subscribers will be with the brand,” adds Henderick.

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4. Continue to think mobile-first.

The mobile revolution has been in full swing for several years. I’m still surprised, however, at how many marketers still haven’t completely embraced a mobile-first mentality when it comes to email marketing. This is even more mind-boggling when you consider that 61.9% of email opens occurred on mobile.

If you haven’t done so yet, it’s time to make sure your emails are mobile-friendly. The best place to get started is with the design of your emails. First, keep messages less than 102KB in size, and use single-column layouts. Utilize the subject line so the recipient knows why you’re emailing — and even who you are. And perhaps easiest of all, segment your messages according to users’ time zones so you’re emailing at a time when they’re likely to receive your message.

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6. Data privacy needs to be top of mind. 

Cybersecurity needs to be a top concern for both marketers and their audience members. After all, 91% of all cyberattacks are a result of phishing emails, and 92% of malware is delivered by email. What’s more, in 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect in Europe, and California introduces a similar law in January 2020.

If you want to build trust with your audience members, you need to take their security seriously. The most obvious place to start is making sure that you follow cybersecurity best practices. However, you should also have a stricter subscription process, such as double opt-outs. Explain to email subscribers what data you’re collecting and how you’ll use it.

Link to the rest at ReadWrite

PG tends to be a tech-oriented kind of guy, but he thinks the OP emphasized tech solutions as an alternative to much more important email issues.

1. Know your audience – It’s not about what interests you, it’s about what will interest your readers. Your email has less than a giga-milli-tetra-second to catch the interest of the recipient. It depends to a certain extent what ereader the recipient is using, but the sender and subject may be all the recipient uses to decide whether to hit the delete key (the default key for most email users) or not.
2. Be reliably interesting – PG expects he’s not the only one who automatically deletes all emails from some senders because they don’t have much to say or they say the same things all the time. Yes, he might unsubscribe, but that involves hunting through the email for the unsubscribe link and, on a busy day, a one-click delete is quicker.
3. Don’t tempt recipients to hit the spam button – For an email recipient, clicking the spam button may be as easy as or almost as easy as clicking the delete button. Again, depending upon the email reader/service recipients use, if a recipient marks an email as spam, the email mothership may take note of that action. If enough people hit the spam button, the email mothership may classify the sender as a suspected or actual spammer. Depending on the email service, your email may arrive pre-marked as Possible Spam or simply dumped into a Spam folder for later examination by the recipient (On the Internet, later = never).
4. You can use more than one email list – This is a baby-step in the direction of artificially-intelligent reader segmentation. Some email subscribers may want notice when you release a new book. Others may enjoy monthly updates in which you talk about your WIP, your cat, etc. If you’re worried that too many of your readers will opt out of the regular updates and just want a less-frequent new book announcement email, you may want to consider whether your emails need improvement per items #1 and #2 above.
5. Don’t get skeevy – If someone wants to use your email list or have you send out an email promoting a new class, etc., think hard about why the subscribers signed up to receive your emails. Presumably, it was because of their interest in you and your books. If the new subject fits within that classification, great. If not, treat your subscribers with respect and put them first.