Email Marketing Trends: Tips To Stay Relevant

Chances are the “Promotions” tab in your Gmail is full of brand outreach, offering you a discount to complete checkout or inviting you to participate in a 24-hour flash sale. Welcome to the world of email marketing. Email marketing is one of the earliest forms of digital marketing. But the digital landscape nowadays is worlds apart from what it used to be, and if you’re not on top of the latest trends and tips, your audience probably won’t even open your emails.

In the new world of ever-shrinking Google storage space, your emails must stand out to make them worthy of opening, reading, and converting passive consumers to active buyers. Although it might seem difficult to master, email marketing comes with plenty of benefits that extend beyond just reaching out to your audience. Emails provide a space for long-form content or research, they can announce exciting updates for your brand, and they can improve sales by personalizing content and using metrics to align with goals. We’re here to help you stay relevant with your email marketing by showing you how strategies like design, customer segmentation, and enticing copywriting can engage your audience in new ways. Let’s discuss.

Play With Mixed Media

While copy is important for emails, the first thing someone sees when opening your email is the design. No one wants to read large bodies of text with no break. There are no rules when it comes to email marketing, so use this opportunity to be as creative as possible! Add artwork, play with colors, embed videos, recommend songs, and find various ways to grab your audience’s attention. Some people struggle to pay attention to just words, and research shows that most people are actually visual learners, so don’t risk alienating a large part of your audience with no visual experimentation. 

Categorize Your Subscribers

While you’re probably sending mass emails to your audience, it’s important to consider separating your audience into buckets that will better help personalize your messaging. Most commonly referred to as subscriber segmentation, this is a handy tool to differentiate your audience to cater your marketing to them effectively. For example, how you talk to your 40+ clientele will differ from how you communicate with your Gen Z audience. The former might include verbose sentences with a more sophisticated and sleek design, while the latter can have loud colors, memes, and TikTok humor. Research what your audience likes and tap into it.

By tailoring your email content to match a specific audience’s interests, you can significantly increase the rate of subscriber engagement. Additionally, when your audience finds personal value in the emails they receive, they’re more likely to take the next step—visiting your website, buying a product, or hiring your services.

Offer Something New

While you might have a content calendar that uses specific themes or campaigns, there is no point in simply regurgitating content you already put out on your other social media platforms in your emails. Emails are a space to offer something new to your audience that might not work elsewhere. They are an opportunity to build more of an interpersonal connection between your brand and customers and show your audience that you are giving them a reason to visit your website and purchase your product or service.

When you reuse content in your emails, you run the risk of annoying your audience. They might feel like you have nothing more to offer and can get frustrated when they see the same stuff over and over again—making them more likely to unsubscribe from your emails. Instead of this, you can look for new and exciting ways to have fun with your audience and expand your brand personality. For example, you can offer exclusive discounts and freebies—thereby incentivizing users to sign up and pay attention to the emails they receive from you.

You can also get creative: perhaps brand-themed newsletter crosswords or AMAs with exciting people in your industry. You can even summarize the latest news in your field or bring them curated articles from other sources to show that you respect their time and attention. Overall, if you are in a time crunch or simply don’t have the bandwidth to create new content, it might not be worth to use email marketing as a tool.

Use Copy Wisely 

While design and content are both important for email marketing, well-crafted copywriting can capture your reader’s attention, inspire emotions, and effectively communicate the brand tone and product you’re trying to sell. Excellent writing can motivate your audience to keep reading and visit your website, but most importantly, it helps increase your open rates for future emails. This is especially true when you consider how noisy and cluttered the current digital landscape is. In a world where every brand is trying to do as much as possible to captivate its audience, good writing can slice through the haze and reach the eyes of your customers. 

On the other hand, poorly written content or spammy emails (in terms of frequency, content, or language) can lead to unwanted outcomes, such as being marked as spam, unsubscribed from, or ignored entirely. In the competitive business world, compelling copy drives successful email campaigns, enhancing brand visibility and ultimately boosting the return on investment.

Find A Way To Increase Interaction 

Lastly, the entire point of email marketing is to engage and interact with your users.The first step to increasing interaction is figuring out what your ultimate goal with email marketing is. Do you want your audience to buy products? Do you want them to follow your social media? Do you want increased website traffic? Or would you want them to visit your in-person store? 

Once you have narrowed down your aim, you can increase your user interaction through email marketing. For example, imagine that you are a beauty brand promoting a new holiday eye-makeup bundle. The emails you send out can have exclusive beauty tutorials using only the bundle, photographs of influencers and celebrities with similar makeup, or even a listicle with all the reasons why your bundle is the holiday gift of the year. Suppose you’re using the last marketing strategy for an older audience (remember subscriber segmentation?). In that case, there is a high chance that they will be influenced by your email strategy and buy the bundle for their nieces, nephews, cousins, and kids. That is an example of how smart email marketing can work wonders for your sales and brand. 

Now that you have the tools and trends you need to succeed in email marketing, remember that it’s key to listen to feedback, experiment often, and stay true to your brand. Play around with the length of emails, the time they’re sent out, and the day of the week they’re delivered to your consumers’ inboxes. Based on audience analytics, you can see what’s working and what isn’t to plan for the future and boost your open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. Email marketing is here to stay — and together, we can find the best strategy for your brand.

Always in your corner,

The Content Queens