Hey guys, let’s take a look at some of the trends happening and what we can expect in the future of Email Marketing. Email can be viewed as the gateway and most reliable way to reach people. We’ll be continuing this topic in future posts, so check us out.
- Big Data Segmentation
Advances in Big Data have recently enabled brands to create highly personalized and effective campaigns by analyzing detailed consumer data. Current most Email marketers can already utilize Big Data to segment their audiences based on past purchases and Web browsing history.
- Triggered Messages
In the future near future, advanced triggered messages will occur in real-time. Triggered campaigns make sense for mobile devices that consumers canny and check multiple times per day. A lot of triggered real-time marketing will likely occur geographically in a personalized and automated fashion. This is when that Big Data will actually be working for us, we’re not there yet, but we are close. This will work with mobile phones, smart watches, smart glasses and increasingly bring to life what is known as the “internet of things”.
- Towards Predictive Analytics
Contextual behavioral predicts take a lot of variables and use machine-learning and predictive analytics (algorithms) to match what type of content and what type of personal are likely to be the best fit for each other. This WHEN-WHAT factor goes through all the Big data on the consumer, client, user or prospective client and is able to send them the right content at the right time, in theory.
There are various ways of doing this, some based upon scoring systems and keywords profiling.
- Behavorial Data Unleashed
By knowing the history of a user’s responses, e.g. when they have opened Emails in the past, a smart automated system is able to schedule sending of the Email Campaign and customize the content to be sent all in one motion. The machine learning behind new predectictive software is getting smarter each year. As the algorithms are trained on your data, they can perform better and increases your sales.
To illustrate this point, watch this video on Machine learning in the visual recognition field:
I was impressed with Fei Fei Li’s presentation and how closely it mimics the AI child Ethan, on the show Extant
Machine Learning topics 2010 - Present
But I digress, what else is on the horizon?
Multi-Channel Integration
In the future marketing will be automated and in real-time and responsive to the behavior and location of the consumer. Email will be completely integrated with other marketing channels. Email will still be the most relaible way to reach consumers.
Meta-platforms that automate the varions channels of Campaigns will arise, and more applications to see the analytics of these in one glance. This will be an increase in the intelligence of Big Data and it’s predictive analytics and the ability of algorithms train themselves on your data.
Improved Analytics
The ability to see analytics from all channels simultanely is lacking. Having an Email Campaign service that has good analytics and is integrated into your CRM and POS is key. But it’s what you do with those reports that will really matter most in the coming years.
“Reporting is the new key to maintaining high delivery rates,” said Seamas Egan, manager of revenue operations at email marketing service provider Campaigner. “The new MO at Internet service providers is interaction rate.
“Campaigns should consist of multiple steps, with different email content based on the actions of the reader,” McGowan said. “If they didn’t open your original message, try sending a different subject line. If they didn’t interact, then try changing up the offers and calls to action. Marketers need to utilize the data available to connect with their readers effectively.”
This requires creative marketing managers, adept content copyrighters and software tools that put it all together towards a system that is:
1) Automated
2) Uses predicitive analytics
3) Uses trigered Emails that are smart, contextual and based on historical behavioral data for each Email.
Responsive Design
It’s worth noting here, that all your Campaigns and pages of your website have to be responsive to the device the end-users are using. A/B testing has to include how the content will appear on mobile phone, tablet, PC, wearable and also by Email provider that the user opens it with: Outlook, gmail, hotmail, outlook.com, etc….
Content that isn’t geared to mobile viewing is missing out on a lot of click-throughs, ROI and sales. Moreover, data from the U.S. Consumer Device Preference Report revealed that 65 percent of emails are being opened on smartphones, making it more important than ever to use an email marketing service that offers this feature. Because if a customer can’t read your email properly the first time, or if they have to bother with zooming and endless scrolling on a small screen, it will likely be trashed and future emails will probably be ignored.
So you will want an Email Campaign service that has responsive design integrated or at least have pre-built templates that are.
I hope you enjoyed this feature, how do you envision the future of Email Marketing?
