How to be King of the Email Marketing Jungle

Nerd Digital discusses some of the top email marketing trends that can help your business swing from the top of the marketing trees.

Most of us have made a sneaky purchase after opening an irresistibly-titled email that’s shouting “25% off” or “LAST CHANCE to buy” at us. Or perhaps, whilst having our tea-break, we’ve taken the opportunity to sit down and devour our favourite newsletter after it was emailed to us that morning. Certainly, email marketing – with the help of software such as Mailchimp – is a powerful tool.

So, what is email marketing?

Before we start ooh ooh aah aahing about these trends, let’s knuckle-walk our way back to 1971. Then, a man named Ray Tomlinson invented the first electronic mail. Since then, email has steadily grown into this amazing and efficient digital mail system that’s still evolving – and email marketing plays a huge role in this evolution.

Email has become a popular marketing tool for businesses largely because it forces the user to act. If you think about it, an email will sit in the inbox until it’s read, deleted, or archived. It therefore allows you to build a relationship with your audience while also driving traffic to your blogs, social media, or anywhere else you’d like folks to visit.

You can even segment your emails and target users by demographic so you’re only sending people the messages they want to see most. Email is also one of the most cost-effective tools available. In fact, a 2020 study by Statista found that for every £1 spent, email has an average return on investment (ROI) of £35.

With that in mind, it’s little wonder that email marketing remains one Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ulamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.of the most advantageous marketing channels out there in the marketing jungle. Put simply (and chimply), it’s a form of direct and digital marketing that uses email to promote your business’s products or services.

This strengthens your customers’ awareness of your latest items or encourages them to go bananas for over your newest offers. It can also play a pivotal role in your marketing strategy with lead generation and brand awareness. By using different types of marketing emails, you can also help to build relationships with your customers or keep them engaged between purchases.

You heard it on the ape vine – the top email Marketing trends for 2023

To help you unpeel the email marketing trends and move your business forward, we look at those strategies that are flying high and swinging your way.

1. How to Use User-Generated Content in Email Marketing

User-generated content (UGC) is a powerful tool that can help you add credibility and social proof to your email marketing campaigns. When potential customers see that other people are enjoying your products or services, they’re more likely to do the same.

There’s several ways to collect UGC from your customers. You can ask them to leave reviews on your website, post photos of your products on social media, or participate in contests and giveaways.

Once you’ve collected some UGC, you can use it in your email marketing campaigns in a variety of ways. For example, you can:

Use UGC in your email headers and subject lines to grab attention.
Feature UGC in your email body to show off your products or services.
Use UGC in your email calls to action to encourage readers to act

When using UGC in your email marketing campaigns, it’s important to make sure that it’s high-quality and relevant to your target audience. You also want to make sure that you have permission from the customer to use their content.

2.Hyper-Personalisation

Personalisation that looks beyond just the consumer’s first name is another growing trend. Hyper-personalisation is all about looking at customer behaviour, and how we can link that behaviour to driving business.

SurveyMonkey found that almost six in ten consumers would make a purchase based on past buying history. This sort of data is very significant and can be beneficially utilised.

But beware! When personalising your emails, it’s important to make sure that you’re not being too spammy. You want to make sure that your emails are still relevant and useful to the customer.

3.Use Interactive Emails

Ditch the boring emails! Interactive content is a great way to capture your customers’ attention and keep them engaged. Drawing on no.1, using a combination of the fashionable user generated content, quizzes, polls, and surveys are also all great examples of interactive content that you can use in your emails.

Top tip – not a lot of people know this, but in platforms like Mailchimp you can insert surveys and polls into your copy with relative ease. Using the personalisation merge tags, there are codes like *|POLL:RATING:x|* and *|END:POLL|* where you enter your question in the middle and hey presto an interactive polling question appears, with easy to find results. Click here for the full instructions.

Here’s what you users will see…

Interactive content also helps you to collect valuable zero party data about your customers, which you can use to improve your future marketing campaigns.

When using interactive content in your email marketing campaigns, it’s important to make sure that it’s relevant to your target audience and that it’s easy to use. You also want to make sure that the content is engaging and that it provides value to the customer.

4.Mobile Marketing and Evolving Email Design

More and more people are using their mobile devices to check their email. In fact, a recent study found that over 50% of all emails are now opened on mobile devices. To ensure that your emails are seen by your customers, make sure they’re optimized for mobile devices.

From an email marketing design perspective, get up to speed with the three clear email design concepts for 2023:

Interesting: play with beautiful illustrations, animate, and spread the gift of GIFS.

Adaptable: pair imagery to your audience – one person’s evening wear is another’s casual. Show all possibilities.

Accessible: how we use the internet is always changing, as approximately 70% of consumers prefer to do their research online, instead of asking people in person.

So ask yourself, how can I optimise my mobile friendly marketing?

5.Privacy Conscious

As GDPR is still an important issue that’s arguably bigger than the jungle, 2023 sees a growing concern about how our data is used. Focus, therefore, on enticing and transparent ways of collecting and storing customer data.

6. AI for Email

There is a new monkey in town. Hello chatbots! AI and machine learning combine to develop email chatbots; automated emails reaching out to consumers with human-like interaction. AI is no longer a buzzword but becoming the everyday expectation. As well as bots, AI can aid email segmentation – streamlining your marketing and targeting niche audiences. AI is growing so watch this space!

How to Track Your Email Marketing Results

It’s important to track the results of your email marketing campaigns so that you can see what’s working and what’s not. There are several tools that you can use to track your email marketing results, such as Google Analytics and Mailchimp. By tracking your results, you can adjust your campaigns to improve your results. Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

To close, here’s a quick low down on the best email marketing platforms for 2023