Over the last years, email marketing hasn’t undergone much visible change: we still receive emails in the format we did 5 years ago. However, don’t be fooled by the seeming stagnancy of the channel, as the technology behind it has also adopted many new approaches. And while targeted segmentation and personalization remain the holy grail of the digital marketing, their concept has broadened a lot.
Now, a customer’s name put in the email is no longer enough to make it personalized. To come up with offers relevant for particular audience, companies need to collect as many data, segment their contact base, use as many communication channels, and constantly update the email design.
Below, we’ll take a look at the recent email marketing practices that can help achieve these goals in 2020. They are not the ultimate success recipe though, and each brand will have to learn to tailor them to their own business needs. But when approached in a smart way, these email marketing tools can give you a big advantage over competitors.
AMP for Email
Google announced AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) for email back in 2018, but it was only May 2019, when the technology became available for all email marketers beyond the beta group. It allows to insert in emails different AMPHTML components (form, carousel, accordion, selector, bind, list as for now) that would help recipients dynamically interact with the message. But to start sending AMP emails, you first need to register with Google and get whitelisted as a dynamic sender.
However, it looks like the juice is worth the squeeze, as with AMP support, people can perform certain actions (RSVP to an event, leave a feedback, browse through extensive catalog information, etc) straight in the email without downloading and switching to extra pages. This kills two birds at once: provides more dynamic content and retains the customers who now won’t get lost on the way from the email to the website.
As for email clients, by far only Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Mail.ru. support AMP content. Microsoft has also announced that this option will be available for Outlook.com, and we’re waiting for an official release. Not all email providers can also offer this functionality – Litmus, eSputnik, SparkPost, and Stripo were the first to implement the technology in their systems; so for today they probably have the most ready-made solutions for the AMP design.
Although the AMP technology has only recently started making its way to Inboxes, it has great potential. How companies can take advantage of it will determine how competitive they’d be in the upcoming digital era.
Multilanguage
As email market has been turning into international email market, many brands have opted for multilingual approaches to reach customers in their own language. Major companies have started optimizing their websites, landing pages, apps and email campaigns for a global audience. Numerous research suggest that people would rather respond to an offer in their native language, which means the preferred language should become an important condition for segmentation.
Most professional and proven email automation providers have quickly updated their functionality, and now allow composing multilingual campaigns without extra strain. All you need to do is to come up with the copy and insert it into the template. Those not ready for such big shifts, may run a split test for one or two emails that don’t have much text, and require minimum linguistic editing. A subscription confirmation or welcome email is where you can get started. Due to short text and easy editing, web pushes also make good starters for multilingual experiments.
AI Support
Artificial Intelligence is another big trend for the whole digital world, and email marketing is no exception. Machine algorithms are used to determine the optimal campaign delivery time and frequency, pick up most relevant product recommendations, and even assess potential VIP priority.
Based on the user behavior analysis, such advanced segmentation allows to create targeted campaigns and send them to people at the time when they’re most likely to consider them. Email marketers also favor AI because it operates automatically, and doesn’t require additional segments or workflows.
If you send, let’s say, a promo to a segment of 500,000 contacts, AI would automatically split it into groups based on the last purchase, browsed items, average purchase value, etc, of each contact. Correspondingly, product recommendations for such categories as Recommended for you, You may also like, Staff pick, etc. would be set up individually for each customer, increasing the click and eventual conversion rate.
Geotargeting
Although geotargeting is thought to be employed by local businesses only, any company can benefit from it, if used wisely. The idea of geotargeting is to deliver more relevant campaigns to people based on their geographical location, which is determined by their desktop’s IP or app data.
To put it short, it’s more relevant to offer sales for the tickets London – Birmingham to London or Birmingham residents, or at least to England residents, than to the residents of Italy or Morocco.
As for sales in brick and mortar stores or local events, it’s also good to know whether the recipients of your message would be physically able to respond to the offer. For example, you run a one-day garage sales in one of your New York shops. Chances that people from different states or even countries would be able to commit are rather scarce, so it’s better to focus on people who currently reside in New Your, or are visiting the city.
If you’re afraid of losing a part of prospects, consider combining different channels for better coverage. A location-targeted web push can make a perfect partner for a more general promo email. Send all your customers a campaign with your new products or services, and complement it with a more specific push notification, describing its onsite advantages.
No doubt, 2020 would be an interesting year in terms of email design solutions. Companies will have to find new ways to reach their customers, many of which have already become immune to constant Inbox flooding. To stand out against numerous competitors, bands need to take advantage of the recent technologies, making their campaigns even more personalized and relevant and at the same time dynamic and entertaining.
Iuliia Nesterenko is a contributing writer at eSputnik. Her focus is on exploring current digital marketing trends and describing new strategies for email marketers.
