Here are seven email marketing trends that will help you build strong relationships with your customers in 2023.
Statistics
In 2022, 59% of marketers said email marketing is twice as effective as PPC or social media advertising at generating leads. The survey was conducted by our colleagues at Sopro.
In 2023, email remains an effective marketing channel. According to Mailjet research , small and medium businesses believe that email marketing will provide the highest ROI among communication channels during the economic downturn in 2023.
The same trends in the popularity of email marketing are confirmed by statistics based on aggregated anonymous data from 2 million users of the SendPulse marketing automation platform from all over the world.
In particular, from January 1 to December 15, 2022, 370 thousand users used the SendPulse email newsletter service . Of these, 75.2 thousand made at least one newsletter and sent more than 9 billion emails. The SMTP gateway was used by 11 thousand users who sent 654.5 million transactional emails .
Trends in Email Marketing
We will tell you about current trends in email marketing and how to create strong relationships with clients using it.
Hyper-personalization and relevant messages
Personalization in email marketing is the use of subscriber data in the letter. Thanks to this, you can send unique messages and offers to each recipient. The data is taken from the address book and automatically substituted into variables that you add to the subject or body of the letter: {{name}}, {{city}}, and so on.
Personalization strengthens the emotional connection Italy Phone Number List with a brand , helps maintain audience engagement, and reduces unsubscribe rates. According to Zippia , addressing a user by name in the subject line increased the open rate by 29% in 2022.
Due to the information “tsunami”, users cannot keep their attention on one thing for long, which encourages them to be more selective about information. Therefore, the offer you send in the letter should be as relevant and valuable as possible – otherwise, the user may unsubscribe or mark your letter as spam.
How to make emails hyper-personalized:
- Collect information about customers . You can put pop-up forms on the site according to scenarios that appear only after the user’s target action. Or customize the form fields and ask subscribers for different information – gender, city, field of activity, availability of a car, and so on.
- Divide your audience into segments and then offer products or services. Send different letters to men and women, residents of big cities and small towns.
- Use smart personalization in the subject and body of the email – this is setting up conditions for variables, depending on the fulfillment of which, different information will be sent to subscribers in one campaign.
Automation of mailings
Automation in email marketing is the automatic sending of a letter or a series of letters to subscribers according to a set schedule or in response to certain actions. For example, a customer left an item in a shopping cart, placed an order, subscribed to a newsletter, and so on.
This tool has always helped save time and money, and in wartime conditions the need for it grows exponentially. For example, it allows not to lose clients when the manager cannot answer the request due to a power outage or air raid alarm.
In addition, automation does not exclude an individual approach to the client. It can be combined with personalization by sending trigger and transactional letters.
To make your emails seem alive, think about the design, and show empathy and care for the user in the text. To avoid annoying readers, do not overuse FOMO offers, from the English fear of missing out – fear of missing out. And do not forget to add an unsubscribe link to the email .
You can automate email newsletters using the Automation 360 service : here you can create message chains and set up events on the basis of which they will be launched.
To increase your reach and audience engagement, combine email newsletters, SMS, web push and instant messaging in one chain. SendPulse marketers have created ready-made chain templates for different niches for you — you can edit any of them.
Sales Funnel Automation
Combine CRM, web push, chatbots and email newsletters into a single system to improve the stages of contact flow through the funnel
Open rate: it’s complicated
Open rate is the percentage of emails opened in email marketing. This metric is used to analyze subscriber engagement. However, since last year, due to Apple’s privacy update, marketers can no longer rely on it.
Apple’s privacy features prevent senders from tracking information about people who open their emails, and give iOS15 and iOS16 users the ability to hide their IP address and email address. So marketers can’t see when an email was opened, geolocation, or device information.
According to the Litmus platform , at the end of August 2022, Apple Mail Privacy holds the confident lead among email clients – 51%. Gmail is in second place – 28.5%. Outlook is in third place – 4.2%. These figures show us the enormous impact of Apple’s privacy policy on email marketing.
How to Adapt Your Email Strategy in 2023:
- Change the way you measure the success of your campaigns — focus on clicks, bounce rates, unsubscribes, and conversions. If your account is connected to an online store, purchases should also be considered a key metric.
- Build an audience of non-Apple users . After all, you can still get reliable data from Google or Microsoft. At least until they go after Apple.
- Conduct a survey using chatbots or pop-up forms to get customer feedback and learn about their interests, needs, preferences, and location.
- Add UTM tags . They will help you find out what happens after the email is opened.
Artificial Intelligence, Chatbots and Email Marketing
Chatbots can answer 80% of customer questions in seconds, improving engagement and support. They describe products, receive payments and donations , advise on the status of shipments, and schedule meetings. And all this 24/7, without breaks, sick leave, or vacation. And with the advent of artificial intelligence, virtual assistants have learned to give even more detailed answers.
Chatbots complement email marketing. They can:
- Be the first point of contact in lead generation . For example, offering help with products or services and asking for an email address or other contact information.
- Help with audience segmentation . They help identify user needs through questions or prompts. This allows for a better understanding of customer preferences.
- Subtly ask for any personal information that can be used to personalize your emails. Given Apple’s privacy update, this is a big advantage.
Using virtual assistants in 2023 has its own peculiarities. Yes, this year SendPulse implemented chatbot integration with OpenAI. Now you can connect GPT-3 to your chatbot in SendPulse , customize the bot instructions and provide users with even more advanced, automated responses using artificial intelligence.
You can use artificial intelligence when generating ideas for mailings, writing texts, or selecting topics. But don’t forget about your own style — readers can quickly guess that the letter was written by a robot, not you.
Unfortunately, OpenAI is not yet available for users from Ukraine. You can use a European phone number to register for this service.
Chatbots for your business
Set up auto-responses and sales funnels on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and Telegram with the visual bot builder
AMP-lists
AMP comes from the English Accelerated Mobile Pages. This technology allows you to create interactive letters with the ability to change content in real time directly in the letter, that is, without going to the site.
AMP is supported by Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo Mail, so you can add AMP elements to emails for most subscribers. If such a newsletter is received by a client of an email service that does not support AMP technology, they will see an HTML version of the email.
AMP has advantages:
- You can add several products to one letter in the form of a compact carousel . This way, long letters will look more compact and not tire the client.
- The content of messages can be updated directly in the email . This could be webinar dates, available tickets or order status, which are updated in real time and make the emails highly personalized for each subscriber.
- Saving users’ time . The technology allows them to buy, book or register directly in the email. This reduces the number of steps the customer has to take to convert.
- Low Competition : Even though AMP technology has been available since 2019, it still takes time for marketers to get the hang of it.
To send AMP emails, you must complete all mexico phone number library authentication protocols as a sender and be whitelisted in Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or Outlook. And while authentication can help improve your chances of getting into the inbox. It’s not necessarily guaranteed.
The IP address, domain and sender reputation, frequency and volume of emails sent, and so on all influence whether emails reach your inbox.
Emoji in the subject line??
Emojis save space when viewed on mobile devices, which only display the first 50 characters of an email subject line, making them a great way to tell your subscribers more with less text.
Emojis also attract attention and improve the visibility of emails. Even if the recipient does not open the email, they will still notice your brand.
The most popular emojis in email subject lines in 2022:
- straight vertical separator bar — |;
- fire – ?;
- collision or explosion – ?;
- present – ?;
- finger pointing to the right – ?;
- face with loving eyes – ?.
Sometimes marketers notice a connection between the use of emojis and emails ending up in spam. But more often than not, it’s not the emojis themselves that are the problem, but how they are used. For example, if you overuse emojis or use inappropriate ones, such as “??? What’s new in our store???” , subscribers may mark such an email as spam.
Also, overuse of emojis can cause accessibility issues for people using screen readers. Yes, a robot can read subject lines like this: “Peach peach peach New arrivals in our store fire fire.” So use emojis in moderation and only select ones that are relevant to the content of the newsletter.
Lead Generation and Churn Rate Reduction
In email marketing, Churn rate is a measure of customer churn. In Ukraine, it is growing. because of the war. Customers could lose income, close their businesses, go abroad, and so on. Now we will tell you how to minimize Churn rate in 2023.
Generate new leads . Add CTAs to blog posts, encourage social media followers to subscribe to your newsletter, offer exclusive content in exchange for subscribing, give site visitors a promo code for their first purchase for subscribing.
Send regular newsletters . Regular and relevant communication will help you stay in touch with your customers. This is necessary even if they have left Ukraine and cannot buy again now.
Check your database for inactive contacts . Sending to such addresses worsens the sender’s reputation – letters start to end up in spam. Track the subscriber rating to segment the database and send relevant offers to newcomers or regular readers.
Yes, hiding the unsubscribe button will reduce unsubscribes. But it may encourage subscribers to mark your emails as spam. Therefore, you are jeopardizing your brand image and trust.
You are also in breach of the GDPR , which requires you to bmb directory provide people with an easy way to opt out. If you have customers in the EU, this could be costly.
Each letter sent via the SendPulse email service must contain an unsubscribe link. Even if the sender forgot or did not add it, the service inserts it automatically.
To retain a customer, create several unsubscribe conditions, for example, to refuse mailings:
- with news.
- with discounts.
- all mailings.