With the layers of analysis and personalisation available in modern multi-channel marketing, to some people email marketing can seem like yesterday’s technology. In many ways, they’re right.
The opportunities of free mass emails were too good to resist for marketers brought up on expensive direct mail and telesales. It was obvious where that was going to end. Consumers set their spam filters to max and their inboxes became bearable again.
But still, people subscribed to email lists, and continue to do so to this day. Why? Because opt-in email is a win-win for senders and receivers alike. Consumers get the news, the deals and the notifications they want, and organisations have an easy and cheap way of sending it out – and monitoring which parts are successful.
Challenges for email marketing in the 2020s
That’s not to say emailing customers is a nailed-on route to success. You still need to do it with sensitivity and intelligence, and every email must have a purpose. Here is what you’re up against with modern email marketing in the near term.
Machine learning
First, machine learning will grow in prominence, meaning computers could well be deciding whether or not your email gets seen. Spam protection has been intelligently filtering out unsolicited email for years now, and it’s largely based on algorithms that flag specific messages, senders, hidden data and so on. This will probably become more personalised. Individual customers’ actions will determine whether your emails are shown in their busy inboxes, not mass user information. You’ll have to keep the message compelling if you don’t want it to be auto-binned.
More mobile
Mobile will continue to dominate, and as 5G grows in prominence, marketers will feel free to push the boat out a little, incorporating high-definition video and all sorts of exciting interactive elements into their email marketing. Smart marketers will know their audiences and whether this will be a turn-on or a turn-off, so keep those analytics whirring away in the background.
New devices
Will there be new devices coming that will influence the future of email marketing? Nothing revolutionary seems to be in the pipeline, but there could well be branches from the evolutionary tree from time to time. Email looks very different on a smart watch and the edge of a foldable phone, for example, so we could see ourselves taking an excursion back to the days of super-focused subject lines, regardless of how rich the content is within.
The main takeaway from all this is that just like any form of marketing you have to be good at it to succeed. There will be pitfalls for those who don’t pay attention to a changing marketplace, but that was always the case.
Good design will always play a part
As we’ve already written, a well presented email goes a long way towards being read, and can even keep those bounce rates low.
That’s exactly where the team at Gooey can help. We can create custom HTML email templates that you can use to give your business a consistent, professional and on-brand appearance. Why not get in touch so we can start to future-proof your email marketing?
