Email marketing is constantly evolving, in order to stay relevant in a marketing landscape that is largely dominated by social media, and an age of information where people are saturated with calls to action. Meanwhile, competition within the inbox is also increasing and marketers are constantly on the hunt for a competitive edge. So, with that in mind, we thought we would share with you some upcoming marketing trends to gear up for.
Personal data:
If you’ve been following our blogs, you already know about the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). The major change the GDPR is going to cause from an email marketing perspective is third party data. Although the GDPR will only be enforced for EU citizens initially, most countries are likely to follow suit as big corporations revamp the way the maintain people’s personal data. No longer will companies be able to sell their data to a third party without the knowledge of its owner.
Interactive emails:
Formally known is mailable micro-sites, they seek to draw the attention of the reader and call them to action through interactive engagement. This means watching videos, browsing products and yes, even completing a purchase will be possible in most email clients - on all devices.
Personalisation:
Machine learning is invading just about every industry on earth and email marketing is no different. Soon artificial intelligence (AI) will be smart enough to catalogue and segment your subscribers list based on their likes and dislikes. This is already happening to a small degree but look for this trend to grow. This is highly important as emails often kickoff the customer experience journey.
Humanisation of emails:
It's safe to say people have gotten used to the generic mass emails that fly through their inbox. Whether it’s a response to a job application or another shameless promotion, these emails always lack the human touch that make people feel like those words, or that content, was made for them. Not to be confused with personalisation, humanisation of emails will aim to bridge this gap by creating a one-on-one feel when you're engaged with an email.
The main thing to take away from these trends is the necessity for relevancy and conciseness in email marketing. Email technology - and technology in general - is evolving at such an accelerated rate and failing to keep up could be detrimental to your ROI.