Are you starting to plan for 2017? A lot of business people do start thinking about the new year in early December, making plans for the new year with anticipation for what the future may bring to your business. This is especially true for anyone who does a great amount of business through their email marketing efforts and lead generation channels.
With hopes for the future, we are reminded that, as entrepreneurs and business managers that much of what happens in the future is up to us. In other words, it’s all in the planning the work and “working the plan,” as the old saying goes. When it comes to email marketing, it’s important to have a plan that works. To assist our fellow entrepreneurs with that goal, here are some interesting email marketing trends that you may expect to see in the coming year.
Emphasis on Segmentation
Segmentation is a process that is becoming more popular among business owners and marketing managers. That’s because it takes the email content that you want to share with your target audience and segment it into more meaningful parts. This means more targeted campaigns by a variety of means to achieve your goals. (Hubspot)
It is predicted that we will see a stronger emphasis on segmentation of email marketing campaigns in 2017 that also factor in lead data and triggering events that increase your conversions.
The Psychology of Selling
Along with segmentation and differentiated email marketing plans, you should also take into account the psychological components of selling. the behavior of people who visit your site should start to take center stage so that you can creative some predictive analysis of what they may do next. this level of dissecting your key population may seem a bit uncomfortable to some, but it is needed to determine the best way to direct your visitors to the next step in your sales funnel.
Some of the factors involved in this step include geo-targeting, demographics, firmographics, behavioral and psychological factors, and previous shopping behaviors.
It is expected that the new year will bring more detailed cross-segmented analysis of your target audience so that you can dissect the population from a more scientific perspective and better control the results.
The Personal Factor
Individual factors such as age, gender, or social status may help you to predict a certain level of accuracy, the behaviors of your visitors or clients. However, it’s important to remember that people are people, not machines. They have a free will and the power of individual choice and thought. This means that just because people are close to the same age or geographic location, for example, does not mean that they will behave in the same way or like the same things. There will be commonalities, but each person is an individual who makes their decisions, regardless of the category you place them in within your research base.
By the same token, it’s important to remember to treat people with the personal touch as well. Addressing customers with their first name, being friendly and casual within the emails, and other techniques have often been successful in turning a skeptic into a customer and a customer into a brand evangelist.
Hubspot mentions some of these factors in their article on this topic and one of the points they bring out is that people often respond due to their position in their job or other more individual factors rather than some random demographic group you may place them in.
Always keep the individual in mind and the type of job or position they hold and consider that as a priority over their age, gender, or marital status and you are likely to get much better results from your email campaigns.
Combining Emails with Social Media
Another trend you are likely to see come to the surface more in the coming year of 2017 is combining different platforms to produce the result you want. For example, sending out email campaigns with an attention-getting message may be one option. But when you combine this with a powerful social media campaign, such as Facebook customized ads, you are going to double the effect you have with customers and prospects.
More Mobile-friendly Emails
Let us not forget that the trends to cater to mobile customers are likely only to get more intense in the new year and beyond. Mobile users continue to multiply as the world becomes more mobile. It is estimated that by 2017 and beyond, there will be over 2 billion people on mobile devices. Other statistics also echo the importance of creating mobile-optimized content that can be read across several devices. This means that more people will be accessing the internet for everything including their email.
Most people with smart devices already have some email program on their phones so that they can receive emails from either their home desktop or their mobile device. With that in mind, it is important to remember your mobile users and make your emails mobile-friendly. This will become increasingly important in 2017.
Include More Media
Another trend you may see more of in 2017 is the inclusion of more media in campaign emails. People want to see pictures and video. Statistics show that people access media through their smart devices and enjoy seeing media such as photographs and videos. In fact, it often results in a much higher open rate. (Huffington Post)
Including media and video or podcast links and photographs within your marketing emails is a great way to increase your response rates.
Email Interactivity
How do you make your emails more engaging? Increase the level of interactivity. Emails that require the opener to do something such as click on a link watch a video or download an eBook are much more likely to result in some positive action on the part of the receiver. This is all part of the ‘call to action process‘.
If you send an email of information, the client may appreciate it. But you may never know. When you insert interactive surveys, links, and other assets within the video, you will be able to track their behaviors and actions. This will allow you to analyze what happened in each of these situations, even when it does not result in a sale.
Some good examples of interactive elements are live shopping carts and countdown timers. Amazon.com is an example of a site that has a live shopping cart. It doesn’t bother the customer at any time, except to tell them when an item in their shopping cart has changed in price. However, if the customer looks at the shopping cart icon at any time, they will see a number that symbolizes the number of items that are in the cart at that time, reminding them they should either buy it or save it for later.
Countdown timers are another good option. They remind the visitor that there is a limit to the time that they have to take advantage of a good deal and that they may lose their opportunity if they wait too long. Creating a sense of urgency is always important when making a sales pitch.
Native and Influencer Marketing
Content Marketing Institute, which has their finger on the pulse of the marketing trends, states that they think native advertising and influencer marketing will be among the biggest trends in 2017.
Native advertising takes the content that someone is already reading and puts in similar content for the reader to look into, which contains an ad that is related to the content.
This is an attempt to match the reading content to the buying preferences of the customers and assumes that they read about what they are considering buying.
Influencer marketing takes the view that people can be persuaded to purchase based on the knowledge of the person and the people they consider as experts. It uses the influence of the powers that be to create hype for a brand or a product. This goes back to the drilling down portion about knowing your market, but it also includes orchestrating a specific plan to carry it out.
Well, these are some of the email and marketing trends we are likely to see in 2017. I’m sure there will be much more as customers get more mobile, companies get more competitive, and the world continues to evolve and change.
How to Master Inbound and Email Marketing
It doesn’t matter what year we might be moving into, the core basics of doing business on the internet and always finding success with email and lead generation is always the same. The core principle is that you need to provide value, find your audience and then convert them into paying customers and subscribers for life.
While the process of this might be simple enough in itself, it can also be quite time-consuming. Creating content, waiting for SEO and getting new sign-ups on your site is ideal, but it’s definitely a timely process.
To speed things up and start seeing engagement and ROI numbers increase like never before, it might be time for you to start investing in opt-in email sign ups. This is exactly what AfterOffers does for thousands of companies and brands on the internet today. Through our premium partner sites, we can start sending you hundreds of verified and clean opt-in subscribers every single day. Contact us now to get started with your first campaign.