Marketers must build campaigns based on data to ensure they are effective and engaging for their subscribers. Key performance indicators like opens and click-through rates allow marketers to refine their content strategy over time.
Embracing automation tools like AI-powered ESPs allows brands to personalize content and create dynamic, relevant communications for their audience. This is accomplished by segmenting lists to target specific audiences.
Personalization
Email marketing is a powerful tool that can be used to build strong relationships and nurture customer loyalty. Using personalization in your emails is one way to make them more relevant and engaging to your subscribers, increasing engagement and conversion rates.
In a time when there are an estimated 1,700+ advertisements sent to the average inbox each month, it’s essential to stand out from the competition and deliver email campaigns that are both relevant and engaging. By including your subscriber’s name and tailoring content to their needs, you can communicate that you understand them as individuals and that they are valued as customers.
Using a personal touch like addressing your subscribers by their names in subject lines and throughout the content of your emails can make them feel as though you’re speaking directly to them. Additionally, using action-oriented language in your subject lines can create a sense of urgency that will motivate your audience to engage with your email.
If you’re unable to collect your subscriber’s names at the point of lead capture, you can still use a variety of other data points to personalize your email content and experiences. For example, if your subscriber abandons items in their shopping cart, you can follow up with them and send them an offer that will encourage them to complete their transaction, not discounting the vast array of other possibilities to use email intelligently.
Using data such as a subscriber’s location, previous purchases, browsing history, and more to personalize email content is essential in 2024. It allows you to deliver targeted and engaging campaigns that are relevant to your subscriber’s interests, which ultimately increases engagement, conversions, and ROI. By taking advantage of advanced personalization techniques, such as using data points to trigger automated workflows and dynamically generated content, you can ensure that your emails are always relevant and engaging for your subscribers.
Automation
Email automation is a powerful spell for business growth, but wielding it requires a thoughtful strategy and clear goals. When used to connect with subscribers in the right way at the most relevant time, email automation can yield impressive results, from welcoming new subscribers to re-engaging those who haven’t opened your emails in a while.
Smart marketers use automation tools like email list segmentation, triggered emails and dynamic content to target their audience at scale, increasing email engagement and conversions. They also leverage AI insights and predictive analytics to identify the optimal moment to engage their audience, creating more personalized, relevant experiences that lead to better relationships.
In 2024, we’ll see more brands focus on data privacy, requiring explicit consent from email recipients for the collection of personal data and strict security measures to protect it. This will have a direct impact on email marketing practices, as brands will need to update their email automation workflows to ensure subscribers only receive the emails they want to.
Another important change is the move towards a more robust authentication infrastructure for emails, with DMARC (Domain Key Identifier Mail) and Sender Policy Framework (SPF) becoming mandatory. This helps to improve email deliverability, build trust in subscriber inboxes and prevent emails from being flagged as spam. For example, Gmail and Yahoo now require that your email authentication include a DMARC record to ensure the inbox provider can verify you as a legitimate sender. This has a significant impact on email campaign performance because it prevents unauthorized parties from sending emails on your behalf. This can boost the credibility of your brand and ensure you get a good return on investment from your email campaigns.
AI
Keeping up with the digital landscape is one of the most difficult tasks for marketers. As the world changes, embracing trends quickly can be beneficial, but it’s also crucial to focus on long-term strategies to remain competitive. In email marketing, this means incorporating new technologies as they develop and integrating them into existing campaigns and automations.
Artificial intelligence has become a major player within the digital marketing space, and email is no exception. It can help create dynamic content and personalized experiences, automate repetitive tasks, and optimize subject lines and automation triggers based on data. It can also improve the design of emails by analyzing content and images for better color balance, layout, and structure.
In 2024, it’s important to integrate AI into your email strategy to take advantage of its advanced capabilities. This includes using a specialized language model to create human-like text generation, defining patterns, optimizing cadence for individual subscribers, generating email designs, and tracking big data in real time.
Another way to leverage AI is by implementing interactive elements into your email campaigns. These can include surveys, polls, and quizzes to encourage engagement with your brand and collect valuable data on subscriber preferences. It’s also a good idea to use gamification in your emails by adding wheels of fortune, scratch cards for coupons, and other fun interactive elements that will separate you from competitors, leave a lasting impression on your audience, and generate conversions and leads.
A new feature available in many professional ESPs is BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification). This email authentication protocol allows you to display your brand logo next to your email in customers’ inboxes, which will increase email credibility and boost subscriber trust. It will also help prevent spoofing and phishing attacks, and it’s already in use by many top email service providers.
User-Generated Content
Adding UGC to your campaigns allows for more authentic content, and it’s a great way to promote engagement. Encourage subscribers to share images of themselves using your products or services and include them in your email marketing campaigns. This adds a sense of credibility and authenticity that’s often lacking in traditional marketing campaigns, as well as gives your brand a more human voice. In fact, it’s been shown that UGC is re-shared 24 times more than professionally branded content, according to social media marketing expert Neal Schaffer.
The best part about this kind of marketing is that it’s free, and with a little time and effort you can find tons of user-generated content that will work for your brand. Whether you’re asking for direct submissions, encouraging customers to tag your company in posts or searching for hashtags that mention your brand name on social media, it’s easier than ever to find and use the content you need.
Another thing to keep in mind when creating a campaign with user-generated content is that you’ll need to have permission from the creator before reposting their creation. Even if they’ve tagged your company in their post or used your hashtag, make sure to reach out and ask for permission before you start reusing their content. This will help you avoid any potential issues with copyright infringement and maintain a good relationship with your subscribers.
With all the changes happening in email deliverability, it’s essential that you take steps to protect your brand’s reputation with the email providers. This includes maintaining a clean list, engaging with your audience, and ensuring that you’re following all the rules and regulations. Additionally, consider implementing DMARC and BIMI, which will allow your subscriber’s inbox to display your brand logo alongside your emails, making it easier for them to identify and recognize your messages as legitimate.
Two-Way Communication
Having two-way communication with customers means fostering an arena for feedback on your products and services. Whether it’s a feedback survey, comments section on a blog post or chatbot, the ability for customers to express their views and preferences is key in building trust and maintaining customer relationships.
Unlike one-way communication, two-way communication requires a response from the sender of information. This ensures that there are no misunderstandings and can boost accuracy of information. This type of communication may take longer than one-way communication, but it can be more effective in terms of establishing customer trust.
In addition to ensuring technical settings like SPF, DKIM and DMARC are in place, email marketers need to focus on building trust with their subscribers. Providing relevant content, being transparent in what data you use and keeping your unsubscribe button easily accessible are all great ways to do this. Using AI insights to identify optimal moments for engagement is also key. AI-powered cross-channel platforms, such as Iterable, enable marketers to build their campaigns with the optimal timing for each subscriber in mind.
Likewise, it’s important for employees to feel that their ideas are valued and that their voices are heard. Having two-way communication with your staff can help you come up with better business ideas and increase the likelihood of innovative solutions. Whether it’s a company newsletter, weekly meetings or Slack communities, make sure you have a variety of channels that cater to different employees’ communication preferences. For example, IM might be the most useful tool for service technicians on the go, while a head-office-based project team might prefer an intranet forum. You might find that one channel receives a lot of participation from your staff, so it’s worth spending more time there to encourage further discussions and promote two-way communication.