Email is not dead. It is still very much alive and well as a key
marketing element, but only if adapted to the new realities. Or, as Simms
Jenkins asks in "4 Email Marketing Trends," is your email still being
delivered as if iPhones did not exist? Reading email is the number one thing
people do from smartphones but they will only read yours if you prepare it for
the iPhone era and not the fading Blackberry world. Marketers will need to
rethink how they communicate with subscribers.
In the column, Inbox Rising, it is covered how email was poised for
another big year as the central hub and heartbeat of any conversations and
conversions happening in the digital world. Now, let's look to see what trends
may emerge that will likely surface and cause each and every email marketer to
adapt in a meaningful way.
- Major Creative Overhaul
Whether it is an automated
message that IT created and hasn't updated in years or your key revenue-driving
promotional templates, these are calling for optimization and often, throwing
out the window for new and more relevant creative. Strategic creative changes
can often have the most dramatic and quickest impact to your email program.
- Mobile
First let's connect to the
previous item. The best thing that's happened to email marketers in the past
five years? Apple's iPhone (and its followers and clones) thankfully beat out
less HTML email-friendly smartphone makers like RIM's BlackBerry. This has led
email to be the number-one activity that consumers perform on their omnipresent
smartphones. So those beautiful emails will render much nicer on the iPhone
than a draconian device.
But this goes beyond email creative and
toward rethinking how we communicate to our subscribers. Think more right time,
right place messaging (and remember that 76 percent of smartphone users in the
United States read email on their phones, according to Pew Research). We now
need to not only drool at this prospect but plan how to trigger email to a
subscriber after they check in at one of your locations, acquire a new
subscriber through a new experience like an app or social network, or the best
way to serve up the right email coupon so your offline staff can handle and
track it in the most efficient manner.
- People
Unsung heroes of any marketing
department (it's not the media or technology, it's the people!), email folks toil
in near obscurity yet are the ones making or saving their employee a
substantial amount of money. It's not the email machine driving millions of
leads and dollars but the people and partners behind (and in front of) of any
technology. With the economy showing a modest recovery and email's proven ROI,
serious digital marketers will stock up to find the right teams to help move
their email program from one that manages and delivers emails to a versatile
and strategic one that becomes adept at moving the business forward not just
the campaign message.
- Integration
Both from an internal and external
perspective, email will become more in sync with what's going on within your
company and outside it. This means coordinating deeper teamwork and education
with the groups that power email's wingmen (search and social) to e-commerce,
technology, and offline efforts. If your email program lives in an isolated
existence, you must seek a way to break out of this silo. You will be doing
yourself and your company a major service.
What else is on the horizon for your email marketing program this
year?
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