Email technology dates back to 1971, but it somehow keeps getting bigger and more influential. People send and receive billions of emails each day, making it one of the most powerful business tools of our era. At the same time, reports show that almost 50% of customers don’t mind receiving promotional emails from their favorite brands every week.
The real question now is how to make use of these facts. After all, everything changes and so does email marketing. Are you aware of the hottest trends for 2019? Do you know which email marketing tactics to use next year? If not, keep reading to learn everything you need to know about email campaigns in 2019.
The Benefits of Email Marketing
Just in case you are still wondering whether email marketing is the right way to go in 2019, we prepared a list of its five fundamental benefits. Without further ado, here they are:
- Accessibility: Email is a global phenomenon, so you can reach almost every prospect around the world.
- Reliability: People consider email to be a natural extension of traditional mail, which makes it well-accepted and trustworthy.
- Accuracy: Email campaigns can target audience extremely precisely.
- ROI: For every dollar invested in email marketing, the average return is $38.
- Measurable: Every platform has intelligence tools to help you measure the results of your campaigns.
7 Email Marketing Tactics to Use in 2019
Okay, now you know that emails still rule the marketing world, so it’s time to concentrate on the real reason why you are reading this post. We present you seven email marketing tactics that will be dominant in 2019:
Segmentation
Recipient segmentation is not a new thing in email marketing, but it will become even more important in the year to come. According to the study, segmented email campaigns have an open rate that is almost 15% higher than non-segmented campaigns.
The goal of this strategy is to micro-segment subscribers so as to form completely different prospect groups. For instance, you can divide subscribers into these segments:
- First-time customers
- VIP clients
- Low-end customers
- Abandoned cart groups
This is just a simple example, but it clearly shows how you need to approach this process. The ultimate goal is to tailor content that resonates with the needs of each group individually.
More mobile
As the number of smartphone users keeps getting bigger, mobile optimization is becoming increasingly important for all channels of communication, including email marketing. You must optimize newsletters for multichannel communication, from desktop and laptops to smartphones and tablets. It’s a huge topic that requires a post of its own, but the basic mobile optimization philosophy is to go easy with images, use a responsive template, keep the content brief and effective, and use buttons instead of links.
Chatbots
Chatbots completely revolutionized customer service, but now it is also making an impact on email marketing. How come?
Firstly, you can use chatbot technology for email subscriptions: your digital assistant can ask users what type of content they’d like to read and how often. Secondly, you can add chatbot buttons to the newsletter. Doing so, you will encourage subscribers to initiate conversations and ask a chatbot to answer their questions or inquiries.
Don’t sell but educate
Another important trend is to stop focusing on you and your brand and start writing educational and informative emails. Subscribers read emails because they want to learn something new and discover the latest industry trends, so don’t bother them with that “look at me!” attitude. Instead, you have to prove the status of a key opinion leader who can teach the audience and let subscribers feel like real persons, not consumers.
Mix the schedule
Most marketers send newsletters regularly, following one- or two-week cycles. While this is good because the audience gets used to receiving your emails, it also becomes boring after a while. This is why you should mix the schedule in 2019 to make things interesting.
We recommend you create a calendar with important dates such as holidays, seasonal activities, and industry events. The majority of your emails should still follow the same pattern, but this small change will make your campaigns much more exciting.
Focus on one action exclusively
As you keep micro-segmenting the audience, it will be easier to concentrate on one activity only. What does it mean? It means that the new trend is to add only one call to action to your newsletters. Don’t confuse subscribers with multiple choices, but rather stick to just one action that you consider the most important at a given moment. This will make your campaigns more effective and increase conversion rates in the long run.
Keep testing
The last tactic to keep in mind next year is to keep testing emails to discover how your audience changes over time. There are no universal rules in the digital marketing universe, so don’t forget to analyze different solutions time and again. That way, you can react quickly and adjust strategy almost instantly.
Conclusion
Emails may be one of the oldest marketing channels, but they are by no means inefficient or obsolete. On the contrary, this channel of communication still generates a substantial ROI, so you definitely want to embrace state of the art trends in this field. Our post showed you the top seven email marketing tactics to use in 2019. Make sure to remember these hacks – they could take your campaigns to the whole new level next year!
Written by Warren Fowler
Warren is a blogger and content writer best known for his work at Assignment Holic and Best Essays.