“Email marketing is here to stay”, is a cliché but, we need to understand how it will transform and change to make marketing more focused and engaging? As we leap into future, technology will drive the world of email marketing like it has touched all spheres of our life.
Paradigm shifts in the world of email marketing
Data gets focused:
Understanding consumer behaviour through deciphering and analyzing data is the catch. The future of email marketing is going to be about digging data in a manner that will help marketers reach the customer effectively and just the way they expect to be reached.
Data will show you the web browsing history of a consumer. Triggered email marketing campaigns will become common based and real time marketing will be the preferred way to attract customers.
Personalization is the way to go:
A lot of companies haven’t yet adopted personalization or triggered emails based on consumer behaviour in their email marketing campaigns. This fact gets evident in the study conducted by Forrester, where they found 66% marketers thought their efforts in the direction of personalization where excellent, while only 16% captured data on consumer intent and were focused on real time marketing. It is quite a revelation that 40% consumers said most promotions didn’t interest them.
Marketers now need to overcome lethargic and mundane ways of gathering and using consumer data. Artificial Intelligence will not replace human interaction with consumers but, it will help understand complex workflows along with managing long consumer conversations. They will give cues from context sensitive conversations resulting in more personalization and dynamic content.
Observing consumer behaviour:
Deciphering data helps email marketers to understand the kind of content consumers are interested in receiving and also when and where they open messages. You can know when a consumer has opened the mail, track previous opens, clicks, and segment them along with his geographical location.
Engagement comes with focused and tailored marketing efforts. Users through their behaviour and responses tell marketers what kind of messages they want; email, social networking messages or SMS.
Integrated marketing:
Email marketing doesn’t work and exist in a silo anymore. Now consumers can be reached through varied channels. Through emails, marketers can drive consumers to social media. Some of consumers’ attention will be shifted to mobile digital channels but, email will always remain the most affordable and reliable way to reach customers. Email is a gateway to social media and drive consumers towards it.
Redefining an email marketing campaign:
Marketers today are working hard to send the right content at the right time to the right consumer. Technology will enable this process on a scale which was impossible in the past. This new scale is difficult to manage since it’s massive and complex.
As different aspects of consumer behaviour that are captured increases, using the primitive flow chart approach just won’t help to create sequences that are automated. A time will come when email campaigns will be designed differently. Consumer data and content will be divorced from each other. Algorithms will come to the rescue to identify which content should be delivered and when; this will give a one on one experience to the consumer.
Where are you heading as a marketer?
Make a plan
Why wait till change happens and you are totally shocked to react? Keep a plan in place in association with your marketing leaders about how your email marketing will evolve with changing times.
Individualism among millennials
Shift from looking at subscribers as just names on your emailing list to ‘individuals’. Service oriented approach is what is expected by millennials from their interaction with brands.
Data is big
Use data effectively and efficiently to engage your consumers.
Result oriented approach
Wean away from CPM based approach and move towards choosing vendors who you pay on the basis of actual results.
Embrace technology
May it be analyzing data or using Artificial Intelligence to drive customer engagement, use technology to your utmost benefit.