With the vast majority of businesses and marketers leveraging email advertising tactics to attract, retain and engage customers, more helpful insights hit the presses on a daily basis. Consumer preferences and demands are constantly changing, meaning companies need to remain apprised of trends as they occur to effectively craft and execute email marketing programs. This is especially true for smaller firms that try to compete with the heavyweights in their respective industries.
Let’s take a look at some of the more recent goings-on in the email marketing arena and how companies should approach them.
Personalization reaching critical mass
Marketing Land recently published a blog post from contributor Len Shneyder who argued email advertising personalization is already a major factor but will define the industry in the coming years. Thanks to big data and, more specifically, the increasing use of these advanced analytics tools among marketers, the author believes it will take only about five years until maximum personalization will be achieve.
Despite the fact this trend is still growing and many companies are still trying to set a budget for such programs, he strongly urged leaders to find ways to get these projects in motion. Personalization impacts virtually every area of the marketing community, but email advertising might be the proverbial epicenter when it comes to using this approach to modern branding campaigns and those of the future.
Citing data from one Forrester Research study, Shneyder pointed out personalization and emails are sent when a specific online behavior is sensed are already in the works for 83 percent of businesses when looking at the next three years, while another 15 percent seek to embrace these trends. Perhaps the biggest implication of these trends is the transformation of campaign best practices, as the author suggested that “batch-and-blast,” or the process of sending out standardized content to as many audience members as possible, might be a thing of the past within the next few years.
Companies will need to slowly hit the brakes on these traditional campaigns and begin to invest in the technologies and services necessary to personalize their email ads and experiment with behavior-based automated sending in the near future.
Budget in the foreground
One of the greatest pieces of evidence that email is viewed as a central tool to marketing success is the amount of money businesses spend on relevant products and services. Email on Acid showed 87 percent of businesses look to put more budget into email advertising, with the lion’s share of increased funds directed toward technology.
Similar to the personalization trend, marketers are increasingly aware of the various advantages that come with enhanced analytics and management solutions specifically tailored to email ad campaigns. In the micro-perspective, the research also revealed about one-third of advertisers look to improve their strategies that dictate email marketing programs. Around that same rate are working to add context to campaigns and strengthen the actual content contained within mailings.
Leaders who properly manage the financial side of email ad campaigns will have a distinct advantage as the medium evolves in the coming years. While email marketing services and software are not necessarily more expensive at this point, the analytics and management tools needed to excel in the space will indeed demand more funds in the near future.
