How Did These 2017 Email Marketing Predictions Work Out?

Were the email marketing predictions right?

Early in 2017, there were at least seven email marketing predictions made for the year ahead. Now it’s 2018; we want to look at whether these trends came to pass, or if they were completely wrong.

Here’s our verdict of what happened.

Prediction One: Data-Driven Marketing Will Rule

To be honest, this prediction was true even before the year had started. Data-driven marketing is not just good practice; it’s the only way to optimise your marketing, retain customer loyalty, and return the highest return on your marketing campaigns.

Data is valuable but only if used right. You should be looking at the behaviours of those on your list and determine what the next piece of relevant content should be for them in their customer journey. Then you should send only relevant content to them. Anything else is a waste of time, resources, and potential revenue for your business.

Prediction Two: Mobile Payments Will Come To Inboxes

While mobile payments have come to the email marketing sphere, they aren’t commonly used yet. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, security and privacy – consumers might be apprehensive about payment requests in emails because they look like malicious emails sent every day.

Another concern is cart abandonment. Is there a fool proof way to determine who is interested but not completing an order?

Prediction Three: A Revolution In Email Designs

Some predicted that email personalisation would reach a new level with the design of the email changing based on the subscriber and their preferences/behaviours. This is certainly a powerful trait if it could be realised, but there has been little adoption of this practice.

It wouldn’t take much to implement this strategy, so perhaps this will happen in the coming year? The biggest challenge here is those who view the email online who aren’t subscribers, or when a subscriber forwards an email on to someone else. Will the email change with the new user or will it look ugly with the heavy code it will need?

Prediction Four: Advanced Automation

Automation has been a key factor of email marketing in recent years, and technological improvements have allowed for the processes to get even better. Without automation, costs are high, but now automation allows your business to send emails based on simple behaviours and actions they’ve taken.

Not taking advantage of these can put your business at a serious disadvantage. Instead, you should look at expanding your automation to include the following activities:

  • Cart abandonment.
  • Email response behaviour.
  • Inactivity for a set period.
  • Landing on a page.
  • Viewing a product online.
  • Purchase

These are critical activities for customers and should therefore have an element of automation.

Prediction Five: Behavioural Data Will Shape Marketing Campaigns

This is one of the developments of 2017, with devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home being extensively used. While these devices have had issues, they are highly useful tools for marketers that can determine a user’s likes, dislikes, and consumer purchasing behaviour.

Other data sources can also feed into this information to give marketers a significant picture of how users live and determine what they need and when. Therefore, customers can be provided with the most relevant information at exactly the right time.

Prediction Six: An Email Address Isn’t Enough

Those who thought this was a new trend are certainly wrong. The more information you have on your prospects, the better you can give them the information they need to make an informed purchasing decision.

At the very least you need to collect their name and behaviour on your website. Also, you can collect other information such as interests, objectives, and who they’ve worked with before. This can be collected via a few different tools.

Prediction Seven: Email KPIs Will Not Just Include Open And Click Through Rates

Beforehand we always looked at how many people opened and clicked through from emails. These were benchmarks we all assessed email campaigns against. However, in today’s modern world, these aren’t enough, and there are other statistics we should be looking at to determine the success of campaigns and what the next stage in email strategies should be.

The main adoption would be ROI. However, other statistics will become useful including renewals, repeat orders, etc.

Conclusion

There were lots of predictions for email marketing in 2017. Some have already come to pass while others have not yet. In 2018, we are going to see more email marketing trends develop and the campaigns becoming more effective. After all, email marketing still reigns as the most profitable digital marketing sales avenue.

What changes have you made to your email marketing in 2017? What changes will you make in 2018?

Let us know in the comments below.

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