As they say, “change is the only constant”. Everything changes and evolves with time and the same holds true for email marketing. The way email marketing is done now is entirely different from how it was done 10 years ago.
With time, marketers keep finding issues with the existing practices and improving them for better conversions. It is important that you keep up with the changing trend in the market otherwise you will lose your customers to your competitors.
Technology has played a huge role. Customers are no longer reading emails on the big screens of their computers. With the growing use of mobile devices, the marketers need to create email layouts that fit perfectly on all screen sizes. Let us have a look at how email marketing has changed in the past 10 years.
AI and Automation
Artificial intelligence is changing every field and email marketing is not untouched by it. AI tools and algorithms not only help marketers derive better future strategies but also help in improving the existing ones. The best thing about AI is that with time and data it is capable of learning from its own mistakes to improve itself.
The more data it accumulates the more precision you get which reflects in higher conversions. With the help of AI, you can find out the best time to send emails, track the number of opened emails, automate the emails to save time and money.
There are several email marketing tools like Mailchimp that offer such services. You can even try some of the Best MailChimp alternatives that provide more features and better pricing.
Personalization
Personalization is a very important part of email marketing now. Personalization matters. People do not open generalized emails from random brands anymore. Even worse, they might report you as spam.
Do you notice how Facebook creates a personalized feed for you based on user behavior, likes, and dislikes? It makes the audience more engaged.
Personalization in email marketing means targeting your marketing campaigns to sets of specific customers and engaging them with a personalized email that relates to them. It boosts the customer’s interest and increases the email opening rate. Create personalized email by using customers’ name, address, city, etc., and serve content based on their interests.
Rich Graphics
Gone are the days of texts and links. Let’s face it, plain texts are boring. Even you won’t read a marketing email till the end if it’s only text.
Eye-catching graphics are in trend now. Many times, there is no text, only graphics, and infographics and they get very high conversions. You should create a graphics-rich email that keeps the reader engaged till the very end and prompts them to take some action (using CTA buttons).
Graphics can help you maximize the impact however, there is no right amount. You must experiment with different settings, positions, and the amount of graphics in your emails to work out what works best for you. Make sure you use only high-resolution images with appropriate alt tags but at the same time the size of the email should not get too big. Also, use the formats supported by the popular email clients.
Re-Engagement
Earlier, when the subscribers would lose interest, the marketers would start giving up but now the marketers do not give up that easily. They use a multitude of re-engagement strategies.
The purpose of re-engagement emails is to get back lost subscribers. You reach out to your least active subscribers and pique their interest. In order to gain back the interest of your inactive subscribers, you must offer them something of value that they can’t say no to.
The first step is to identify your inactive subscribers. Now create an email with a catchy subject line. This would prompt them to open the email. The next step is to create an email that offers some incentive to the reader. Some examples are offering discounts, birthday offers, extending an offer, advertising a sale, special offers, limited time offers, etc.
Even if you do not get as many subscribers to open your emails, do not lose hope. Re-engagment is a process. You do not stop at just one email campaign. You need to send them a series of emails before giving up. This would definitely increase your chances of getting their interest.
Tracking Metrics
10 years ago, the marketers could only track the email open rate, conversion rate, and a few other metrics but now we have a whole range of metrics that can help the marketers devise strategies, create algorithms, find out the effectiveness of their campaigns and make a deep analysis.
Some of the most precise and usable email marketing metrics are – open rate, bounce rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, spam complaints, forwarding rate, engagement over time, mobile open rate, mobile click rate, revenue per email, overall ROI, revenue per subscriber, list growth rate, unsubscribing rate, etc.
By analyzing these metrics, marketers can now create better and more engaging emails and send that at a time that will give them more conversion.
