Since it’s humble beginnings 40 years ago, it is predicted that in just 2 year’s time, over 246 billion emails will be sent and received every single day!
The constantly growing medium is a vital channel for marketers due to the ability to quickly deliver messages to consumers at scale. However, this often leads to easily frustrated consumers with heavily flooded inboxes full of marketing messages. So how can your brand push the envelope with email marketing to continue driving results?
Email marketing has become an essential component of an online marketing strategy and a reliable method to connect with consumers. In fact, recent studies by E-consultancy shows that email marketing campaigns typically generate a return on investment of 73% or more, which is significantly more than methods such as content marketing and SEO. This figure can often misguide marketers to continually send multiple email marketing campaigns, leading to the sending and receiving of irrelevant messages to consumers.
A recent UK study further confirmed this and ascertained that 61% of consumers receive over 21 branded emails per week, with 85% of consumers identifying that more than half of these emails are irrelevant and do not interest them. That being said, the same study identified that consumers, in fact, prefer brands delivered content through email and argued that this perception could quickly change and influence the high ROI of the channel if too many irrelevant messages are continually sent. However, there are many methods and upcoming marketing innovations that can, in fact, push the envelope to engage audiences, improve customer relations and upkeep email ROI such as personalisation, machine learning and inbox purchases.
Personalisation has become a crucial and fundamental concept within marketing in recent times due to changes in consumer perceptions and behaviours. As many marketers grasp the challenges of communicating with constantly changing customers, some fail to meet the needs on this front by using the outdated email marketing best practice of “batch-and-blast”. While this method successfully delivers unprecedented efficiency for marketers, it often fails to truly engage audiences and meet the consumer’s desire for one-to-one communication. Furthermore, some marketers misconstrue the idea of personalisation and believe that addressing the customer by their first name in an email will suffice. Through using these techniques, marketers are failing to use email marketing to its full potential.
Nowadays, marketing technology and personalised email marketing software has become sophisticated with data and automation that can help marketers add value to a customer’s experience by identifying patterns that will help determine relevant messages. Successful e-commerce show retailer, Style Tread recently discovered the value of email personalisation in which used email marketing providers with machine learning techniques and capabilities that analyse customer interactions to improve the relevance and timeliness of emails for their consumers. It resulted in over $500,000 of revenue from the one channel and has seen a 10% increase in consumer engagement.
Innovations in email can also help create more personalised and engaging consumer experiences. In fact, many brands have begun experimenting with providing customers with the opportunity to purchase directly from their inbox with payment providers such as Apple Pay and PayPal. By incorporating this feature into email communications, there is the potential for marketers to create more convenience for the consumer, as well as potentially increase engagement. By including the payment feature in the email, the need for consumers to click links and visit multiple pages is eliminated, shortening the path to purchase and making the shopping experience more integrated, mobile, immersive and convenient.
With over 91% of users checking their email at least once a day, it is understandable why email marketing platforms are beneficial. By continually looking at ways to improve and develop a customer experience strategy through personalisation, machine learning technology and innovations such as inbox purchasing, the email platform will continue to be a viable and profitable marketing channel for years to come.
At RGC Digital Marketing, we pride ourselves on staying up to date with industry advancements. Our talented team understand that electronic direct marketing is a beneficial way to connect consumers to brands and is confident in applying practical solutions that get results. To find out more about our email marketing services, please contact Richard on (02) 8883 2988 or email richard@rgcadvertising.com.au
