Email Marketing has maintained its spot as one of the most popular and cost effective channels for digital marketers. With this in mind, it should also be noted that with the popularity of email comes competitiveness. Organizations have to constantly fight for inbox priority and attention. According to a 2021 report conducted by Litmus, nearly 37% of companies intend to increase their investment in email overall in 2022.
With the rise of increasing email spend year over year, it’s important to ensure that you’re getting the most value for your dollar and actually reaching your intended audience. Below is our round-up of how organizations are working to boost delivery results and inbox placement.
The power of personalization is going nowhere. Not only are personalized emails impactful, but irrelevant emails tend to annoy readers and increase risk of unsubscribing. According to SmarterHQ, 70% of millennials are frustrated with brands sending irrelevant emails. While nearly 8 out of 10 marketers are personalizing by first name, utilizing various data points allows for smaller segment pools for deeper connections through content, calls-to-actions and more.
Personalization beyond just the name can include past email interactions, geolocation, expressed interests, website behaviors and more. The goal is to maintain engagement with your subscribers, so continuing to drive that deeper relationship is a great way to increase metrics.
While previous years have brought trends of adding large visuals, AI, and more, we’re seeing brands move away from the distractions and utilize a minimalistic, sleek design for emails. While still maintaining a consistent look and feel across all marketing channels, the use of short plain text emails are beginning to rise as an effective way to grab attention. The idea here is less is more while still providing the value. You’ve got an average of just eight seconds to grab the attention of your reader, so why not get straight to the point with a clear concise CTA for a next step.
While this doesn’t mean every single email needs to be plain and straightforward, finding a good balance can be key. Having that understanding of your segmented audience may give you an idea of when to go big and when to go simple.
Social proof is basically utilizing your community to influence based on real experiences. While we can write content to try and persuade our audience to engage, social proof has proven to be extremely effective. This goes way beyond your typical quote inclusion. Providing reviews, images, video reels, etc. that highlight real people and real experiences is a great way to peak interest. Positively influencing your audience through the use of these materials is a sure way to increase click conversions and overall results.
How can you collect valuable social proof? Our best recommendation is to simply ask for it! Create a campaign speaking directly to your community and give them an outlet to share their story or experiences. You might offer something in return but more times than not, many will be willing to share their positive experience for simply making them feel appreciated.
Another great way to utilize social proof is to celebrate and vocalize your numbers and wins. When you hit a big milestone, let everyone know! You’ll find your audience is encouraged by your success and can be influenced to be a part of that.
When was the last time you did a deep clean of your email subscriber lists? Bad data and inactive subscribers can support landing in the spam folder. It’s important to maintain an email marketing best practice of keeping your email lists clean, with up-to-date data.
Invalid email addresses increase your email bounce rate, which in return can run the risk of being flagged as spam. Having too many spam flags will make you at risk with spam compliance. Additionally, inactive subscribers will bring down engagement rates, so there’s no reason to keep them around. If they aren’t opening send after send, inbox providers will likely start to filter and tag your content as irrelevant. Filter those subscribers out, and move on!
So how often should you be list cleaning? Implementing a recurring monthly clean-up is an efficient way to maintain clean, accurate lists.
In 2022, it’s vital that your emails are optimized for mobile as a poor mobile experience makes 52% of users less likely to commit to a company. Preparing your emails for multiple different screens is not technically a trend to stay on-top of inboxes but it’s a must have best practice. Ensuring text and images will be adjusted based on screen size is important, if your audience can’t read the email on their phones, they likely won’t read it at all.
Additionally, now with the widespread usage of both light and dark mode, you want to make sure you are using high-contrast text and visuals that work with both. A recent report highlights that almost 82% of users use dark mode on their phones, so we need to ensure we are taking this into consideration when designing.
While the overall goal is to increase odds of inbox delivery as well as open rates, you always want to maintain a positive experience for your audience. As the trends and tactics continue to evolve throughout the year, we’re excited to see how organizations adapt and grow in order to boost desired results.
Last Updated: Apr 21, 2022 11:00 AM
