Is email marketing still effective? Of course! 99% of users check their email every day, or even several times a day. Despite what you may think, people keep reading emails and are ready to interact with interesting content being shared with them.
Sure, there is a widespread belief that social media and chatbots have pushed email marketing into the background. However, in reality, there is no full-fledged alternative to the power of email newsletters.
The situation is also influenced by the ever-evolving email industry. Marketers are regularly introducing new methods and email strategies that continue to push engagement and results, maintaining email marketing as the most reliable channel of communication with customers.
In this article, we’ll dive into new email marketing tools and trends so you can ensure 2022 starts off on the right foot.
Trends to Develop and Optimize Your Email Campaigns
Let’s analyze what email campaign methods will be relevant in 2022.
AI Technologies
While artificial intelligence is developing, many experts are skeptical about it. Indeed, for all the promising nature of the technology, it shows rather modest results. However, AI already has an important area of its application.
Data. There is so much that no person is able to process all the information. On the other hand, AI can do it. How can artificial intelligence be used in email marketing? Here are some ideas:
- Conducting surveys, analyzing the results and preparing optimized reports
- Performing analytical forecasts of results
- Processing large amounts of customer data
- Creating Email templates
- Optimizing email send times
- List scrubbing and deleting spam accounts from your email list
- Reorganizing campaigns
Using AI will increase the speed of working with data. Moreover, the system can be entrusted with all the routine and time-consuming tasks. However, do note that the technology can be expensive, making it less available to businesses without large budgets for marketing and software.
Optimization for All Platforms
Mobile optimization is extremely important for any email strategy. You need to make sure that all of your customers get the same email experience – no matter what gadgets, operating systems and email clients they have.
Ideally, mobile and desktop versions of emails should be identical. What matters is ease of access, readability, design uniformity, and the absence of technical errors in interaction. To achieve this result, you may need to contact a specialized company.
Artificial intelligence can also help in this matter. With the help of AI, you can personalize email content depending on various factors, modifying the content for specific recipients.
Design Simplification
Modern consumers don’t mind a minimalistic email appearance. There’s less clutter and less noise to sift through. Your message can remain clear and when your message is clear, your CTA is clear as well.
If you’re worried that a simple email design will infringe on your creativity, then try incorporating infographics or decorative fonts. Both are a great way to walk the line between simple and engaging.
Another solid tip is to maintain as much white space as possible between key elements. This helps readers to separate the visual parts of your email easier.
User Content
This is an easy and affordable way to increase organic traffic and attract new customers. All you need to do is include user-generated content in your emails. There is a good chance that customers will trust the brand more if they see recommendations from different groups of people that have already worked closely with you.
User-generated content has a major advantage – it’s free and can be used for any marketing purpose. Increase audience confidence by including customer reviews, survey results, or photos of your customers in the process of using the product in your campaigns.
Add a CTA button to your email to receive requests from interested customers that are willing to offer their experience with your brand. This will help you collect user-generated content for future mailings. You can also encourage customers through social media by having them share their photos and reviews using a particular hashtag. That way, you can easily find these posts and add them to your email marketing strategy.
Maximum Personalization For Each Customer
Modern users do not want to feel like a cog in a wheel. They want to be appreciated. They expect this from their favorite brands too. Therefore, template, depersonalized automated mailing lists no longer work. Personalization comes first.
This is where complex personalization for email marketing comes in.
You can use website forms to collect data about your customers, gathering key information so you can understand who they are better. Just make sure you obtain consent so that you align with GDPR guidelines.
When analyzing data, take into account the habits of your users. Take note of their preferences regarding your goods and services, the percentage of email opens, and other email marketing metrics to help you determine your future strategy.
For example, if part of your audience puts purchases in their cart but appears to be in no hurry to place an order, a personalized email offering a discount on the items in the cart could encourage them to complete the action.
However, for brands to stand out in 2022 hyper-personalization is key. Here is how this can be done in email marketing:
- Recommend content or products to each individual segment of your audience
- Generate individual messages for each of the segments
- Recommend personal content or products to specific users based on product pages they’re visiting or actions they’re taking on your site
- Reward user action with personalized bonuses, gifts and offers
Best Email-Marketing Tools
Dedicated email marketing software is much more than just email sending tools. They can be used for audience analysis, list building and segmentation, optimizing marketing channels, business development, and revenue growth.
Here are some recommended tools:
Benchmark
Benchmark Email is one of the best multifunctional email marketing platforms. It provides features that are relevant to most types of business, but at the same time is easy to use. The advantages are:
Stripo
This is an email template builder, with the ability to edit clean html code. The advantages are:
- Automated email creation
- Tools for creating interactive emails
- Ready to use complex templates
- High-quality customer support
The main disadvantage is a complex configuration that takes time to master.
Litmus
Litmus is a set of tools that allow users to organize and run a commercial email campaign with the ability to test and obtain data for further analysis. The advantages are:
- The ability to edit html online
- Flexible customization of templates
- Conducting spam testing
- Checking the IP and domain for blacklists
- Demonstration of the number of opened/read letters
- Geolocation and other tracking activities
The service is universal and recommended if you need to have a large selection of email templates with full access to the settings.
BenchmarkONE
BenchmarkONE is software that ties marketing automation, lead generation, and CRM into a simple-to-use format. Advantages include:
- Email marketing along with landing pages and popups to grow your list
- The ability to track customer email and site engagement
- Marketing and sales dashboards
- Tracking the entire customer journey to purchase
- Tagging capabilities for better list segmentation
Convertkit
This platform is called the ideal solution for content creators. The advantages are:
- Ease of use
- High level of automation
- Integration with various services
- Availability of a free trial version
- Quality support
It does come with a higher price tag, as well as a lack of advanced customization of templates.
Conclusion
The key to email marketing is to run your campaigns in line with the upcoming trends. 2022 will be all about using technology to your advantage as well as hyper-personalization and user-generated content. Make sure you start mapping out your plan today!
Author Bio
Dmytro Leiba is a marketing specialist at Logaster, an online brand identity builder. He has hands-on experience in marketing and branding. In his spare time, he enjoys reading about business, marketing, branding, and sharing his knowledge with others. Find him on LinkedIn.