Looking for some email marketing predictions? We've got a few predictions in 2021 that might just come in handy. Five to be exact. And no, none of them predict email marketing is dead. Far from it. Read on to see our email marketing predictions for 2021.
The post 5 Email Marketing Predictions for 2021 appeared first on mailfloss.
You’ve made it through the worst in 2020, business-wise. You deserve two pats on the back.
Now, if you’ve been working with email marketing for some time, you’re already familiar with the little box of surprises that it is. Just like in SEO, you never know what news the next year will bring. The same thing happened all throughout 2020: we didn’t know what would come next. Would we lose our jobs? Would we be logging in and out of Zoom meetings for all eternity? We just didn’t know.
But we adapted. We trusted the predictions. And here we are, safer and sounder.
If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we should always be on the lookout for updates and best practices. Otherwise, we’ll be left behind. Your business depends heavily on conversions, and you’re already familiar with the crazy ROI email marketing brings to the table. So, if 2020 wasn’t your year, the time to switch gears and make email marketing a priority starts now.
Let’s make good use of a crystal ball, shall we? But this is by no means mere fortune-telling — it’s evidence. The following predictions are exactly what has been working like mad in the email realm, and what you should focus on for the year. All chewed up for you.
So here we go. Let’s see 5 email marketing predictions for a productive and profitable 2021.
Regardless of your age, you love to play around with interactive designs and seeing fun things move. Don’t lie to yourself. Switching colors and patterns is fun, and plus, interactive designs do one thing beautifully: they allow subscribers to get a “feel” for a certain product before purchasing it. That’s gold because it expertly eliminates objections the prospect might have before a purchase, such as “what will it look like when it arrives?”.
Here’s an example: imagine that you’re buying a new pair of sneakers, and you want to see what they'll look like in your favorite color and a bunch of different patterns without having to open another tab. With an interactive email design, you can. And you’ll love it because you won’t become impatient since it’s all in one place.
And by the way, interactive content makes for fun surveys. For instance, check out this email Harry’s sent to their subscribers about the art of scent-matching:
I don’t know about you, but even people who aren’t really interested in men’s products would want to take this quiz. Because...it’s fun. It’s colorful. There are illustrations. And, most importantly, you never know what you’re going to get in the end. And people are curious, so this will keep them entertained and delighted.
Sometimes, interactive email elements are simply fun GIFs that will have you dying to click on them and play like a child.
Jeff wants to be the first to know when a new product comes out, whereas Mary loves weekly informational content. Both subscribe to the same email list.
What’s the solution here? Personalization.
We’re not talking about stuff like “Mary, we have a surprise for you” as the subject line. In fact, subscribers are growing used to this personalization tactic. They want more than just someone calling out their name.
What they’re subconsciously claiming for is segmentation. It’s the act of dividing your subscribers into sections--pretty much like customer personas--and delivering exactly what they want right into their inboxes. Discovering each group’s pain points, age group, and preferences will take some work, but what doesn’t?
A dirty little trick that everyone knows about but not everyone employs is creating in-depth customer personas. You have no idea how easier your work will be down the road if you know exactly who your customers are.
Once you’ve sailed through the discovery process and created email content targeted toward each group, you’ll simply use your email marketing tool of choice.
These tools are rockstars and they save you tons of time you’d be spending with pointless guesswork. They’ll let you send segmented lists based on the pages your subscribers visit on your site, who has clicked on your CTAs, their sign-up dates, activity, age, location, and much more.
If you’ve been reading email marketing predictions for a while now, you’ve probably read that text-only emails are all the rage. And that’s true to some extent.
Text-only emails are fast, compatible everywhere, and mobile-friendly, which is great. As long as they’re clear, readable, and most of all, scannable, you’re good to go. But of course, sometimes you’ll need to add a little color for a change.
Lucky for you, designing responsive, mobile-friendly, and beautiful email templates takes little to no work on your part. A good email marketing platform (ahem, the ones mentioned in the previous topic) will help you with that. Really, a lot of them come with ready-to-use templates. All you have to do is switch fonts, colors, and hierarchy to your liking, so be sure to do it wisely.
Here’s to emails that look less generic and more engaging. Like this one from Grammarly:
By the way, make sure your template designs are responsive, so they adjust to any screen size without any issues.
Wanna see your number of subscribers shrink?
Launch a “we’ve updated our privacy policy” email. They’ll unsubscribe like magic.
Take yourself as an example. Have you ever clicked any of those emails, from whatever company? You haven’t. In fact, a lot of subs use those types of emails as gateways to unsubscription.
But hey, don’t blame the marketers. All they’re trying to do is follow GDPR-compliant guidelines. In simple terms, the GDPR is a regulation that aims to protect the privacy and personal data of EU citizens. Not complying could jeopardize European companies, as customers will often blame a company for data that’s been lost or hacked.
But GDPR compliance can go beyond just sending out annoying emails. It can start with a simple step such as giving subscribers the option to unsubscribe from your mailing list and making it crystal clear how to do it, which should have been a no brainer to begin with.
It's also a good idea to add your complete contact information to the bottom of the email (phone number, direct contact email, company name, and preferably a logo) so it’s easier for subscribers to reach out to you in case they want their data removed from your system.
It’s also smart to let them know why and where they’ve subscribed to you in the first place, otherwise your emails could be mistaken for those spammy ones. They don’t want that, and neither do you. One tiny slip and you could be accidentally losing subs.
This is probably one of the most important tips you can get when it comes to email marketing. Email automation makes the process less laborious. It makes you enjoy email, especially when you start reaping the benefits of your work.
Sending individual emails to each of your subs is out of the question, as you’d need at least 5 more hours in your day. The answer is email automation. Automation allows you to interact with all groups of subscribers in a personalized way while wasting much less time.
When automated, your emails reach your audience when they’re more likely to see them. Now, imagine if you had to lie in wait for the perfect time to manually send emails to your subs. That would be brutal. Thanks to automation, you can schedule your emails according to your segments and you’re done.
With automation, there are a lot of ways you can get your leads to finally respond to your CTA:
Creating a welcome series. You want to show subscribers your appreciation. After all, they’ve just added yet one more email list to their already jam-packed inbox. Creating a welcome series is the least you can do to thank them for their time, as well as let them know what to expect from your list and ask what kind of content they like best. And you’ll give it to them.
Sending trigger emails. Trigger emails are sent based on subscriber activity and special occasions such as birthdays. You could program a trigger email when it’s their birthday to show your appreciation, and then send them trigger emails whenever there’s a new product launch, for instance. If they’re active visitors to your website’s product pages, they’ll like that.
Nurturing subs with drip campaigns. Don’t assume subscribers will respond to your CTA in the first opportunity. Bluntly speaking, they have better stuff to do. Your job is to nurture them with content you know they’ll respond to, whether that’s updates, cool information, or a roundup of the most-read blog posts of the week. Keep them entertained, and you just might get the click.
Email automation works perfectly for both the brand new and seasoned subscriber. They all need their daily dose of attention, after all.
Not really sure what’s been going on last year, but if, like with everybody else, it wasn’t your most profitable year, then 2021 can change that.
That’s not to say you should ignore all of your marketing endeavors on account of email, but that you should prioritize email, instead. If you can’t do it all by yourself with the help of your tools, it pays to outsource, it really does. A professional content writer will seamlessly adapt your brand’s voice into every email, and write stellar newsletters while you get busy doing something else.
But the marketing automation platforms will help you the most. Without them, you’d have to do everything manually - -segmentation, automation, template design -- just like they did in the stone age. So you should be thankful.
What are your New Year’s resolutions?
Ours is to help you keep your email lists clean so your campaigns are more profitable.
If you’re looking for an ActiveTrail email verifier, look no further because mailfloss has you covered with our ActiveTrail integration. Email verification for ActiveTrail is important mainly for three important reasons, all related to maximizing your email ROI and profits. email verification helps you get your emails delivered to more real people because it increases […]
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If you’re using mailfloss for ActiveTrail email verification, you have five options at your disposal. Before explaining the five options, make sure you have properly connected ActiveTrail to mailfloss. You only need to do this once and from then on mailfloss will be able to automatically perform email verification for the connected ActiveTrail account. Here’s a screenshot of […]
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Getting started cleaning your email lists with ActiveTrail is easy with mailfloss. Once ActiveTrail is connected, you can let mailfloss automatically clean your emails lists with ActiveTrail going forward. Here’s how to do that. Step 1. Visit the integrations page Visit the integrations page by clicking on “Integrations” in the left […]
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If you’re looking for a VerticalResponse email verifier, look no further because mailfloss has you covered with our VerticalResponse integration. Email verification for VerticalResponse is important mainly for three important reasons, all related to maximizing your email ROI and profits. email verification helps you get your emails delivered to more real people because it increases […]
The post VerticalResponse Email Verification is here! appeared first on mailfloss.
If you’re using mailfloss for VerticalResponse email verification, you have five options at your disposal. Before explaining the five options, make sure you have properly connected VerticalResponse to mailfloss. You only need to do this once and from then on mailfloss will be able to automatically perform email verification for the connected VerticalResponse account. Here’s a screenshot of […]
The post VerticalResponse email verification options using mailfloss appeared first on mailfloss.
Getting started cleaning your email lists with VerticalResponse is easy with mailfloss. Once VerticalResponse is connected, you can let mailfloss automatically clean your emails lists with VerticalResponse going forward. Here’s how to do that. Step 1. Visit the integrations page Visit the integrations page by clicking on “Integrations” in the left […]
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If you're looking to build a relationship with your subscribers and future customers, you'll need to build affinity. One way to do that is to start a conversation, as if you were catching up with an old friend. In this article, we'll show you exactly how to write conversational emails and when to use them for maximum effect.
The post How to Write Conversational Emails appeared first on mailfloss.
How many emails would you say you receive every day?
And how many of those actually make you curious enough to not only open them but to read them until the end? And how many intrigue you enough to click their CTA?
As a user, you know how cluttered inboxes can get. Especially if you consider that an astonishing 293.6 billion emails are sent every day on a global scale.
That is a lot of competition, and it begs the question:
How can you make your emails stand out among so many others?
One strategy that many businesses have been adopting is the usage of conversational copywriting in their email marketing.
In today’s article, we’ll explore the what, why, when, and how of conversational emails. So keep reading to learn how you can create deeper connections with your audience and take your email marketing to the next level!
Before we get into conversational emails, it’s helpful to understand what conversational marketing is as a whole.
As the name suggests, conversational marketing is an approach that uses dialogue-driven tactics to engage with users and creating a two-way experience. This is where the interaction with the brand’s customers and prospects is the main focus.
It differs from other digital marketing strategies because it’s about more than what you, as a brand, have to say.
Rather, it’s about developing a trustworthy relationship with each user over time, through the power of conversation and, ultimately, convert them into leads.
Conversational marketing is often associated with chatbots, but there are other ways you can use it.
One is, of course, by writing conversational emails - and next, we’ll get into all the reasons why you should do it!
Email is a conversational medium by nature.
It was created so people could communicate in a natural, quick, and easy style. And that’s what most of us use it for, whether it’s at work or in our personal life.
Branded emails, on the other hand, are usually sales-focused.
They’re about the brand and what it has to offer. And they rarely include an attempt to start a conversation or to actually engage with the subscriber.
“20% off our new line for 24 hours!”
“Discover our new products!”
“Sign up for our webinar today!”
You get the drill.
However, there’s no reason why brands shouldn’t use conversational copywriting in their emails.
On the contrary, there are many reasons why they should:
We mentioned before how busy people’s inboxes can get.
It’s a real obstacle for most businesses, but conversational email is one way of overcoming it.
Think about it. In a sea of emails trying to sell, sell, sell, and sell, if you see one that isn't selling, it's refreshing. If it's trying to learn more about you, it will grab your attention, won’t it?
As you’ll soon learn, one of the main rules of conversational email is that you should avoid using complex words and sentences.
Any technical jargon or industry buzzwords is a no-no.
As such, it’s easy to understand why conversational emails can help you convey your message in a much clearer way. No matter what your message is, conversational emails work.
When you use conversational marketing, you’re not expecting users to convert right away.
The goal, as discussed before, is to create a conversation and, over time, become closer with your prospects. It's a good idea to do this so that they trust your brand and consider transacting with you in the future.
The great thing about this tactic that you’ll have the opportunity to address each user in a much more personal way. You'll also be able to show them your brand’s personality.
You’ll become a friend, rather than just another brand, and believe us when we say that this will translate into more sales.
As beneficial as conversational emails can be, it’s important that you learn when it’s appropriate to use them. And when going for a more professional, formal route is the right choice.
In short, you should use conversational copywriting when:
💡 Pro tip: Remember - conversational emails are about the back and forth. As such, you need to determine the next steps a prospect should take after they reply to your initial message. Otherwise, the interaction won’t continue and your efforts will go down the drain.
According to Drift, the marketing platform that coined the term ‘conversational marketing’, there are three main steps to this strategy.
They’re typically referred to as the Conversational Framework, and we can apply them to conversational email as well:
First things first, you need to engage the prospect in the conversation.
The main goal here is to get them to subscribe, so that you can move on to the second step of the framework.
For example, let’s say you are a digital marketing consultant.
As a lead magnet, you could ask users if they would like to access a free SEO checklist.
In return, you’d ask for their email addresses, always being careful not to sound too sales-y, because:
Once your prospect is engaged in the interaction, they’ll start providing you with valuable insights about them. And it’s on you to listen and understand.
(Nope, it’s still not about!)
The first thing you need to figure out is who is a qualified lead and who isn’t. Then focus on the first group.
Then you’ll need to take the information that is provided to you and use it in order to build the trustworthy relationship. We've discussed this earlier.
Going back to the previous example about digital marketing. Once they’re in your contact list, you could ask them which areas of digital marketing they’d like to learn more about.
Finally, once you’ve gathered useful information about a prospect, you can start making recommendations.
(Yep, it’s finally about you!)
For example, let's imagine someone replied to your email saying they need help with email marketing. You could send them a list of articles you’ve written about the topic. And suggest them to schedule an email marketing consultation with you.
This way, you’ll be promoting your brand, while making sure that each recommendation you make is relevant and tailored to the prospect’s needs.
It’s clear that writing conversational emails can be extremely beneficial for your brand, and right now you’re either:
If you’re in the second situation, don’t worry.
This is an obstacle many brands face when starting out with conversational copywriting - especially brands in complex or technical niches.
If you chose a), awesome, make sure to write all those ideas down!
Either way, the following nine tips will help you make sure your conversational emails tick all the boxes for success. So keep them in mind!
Remember when we said that conversational emails made it easier for you to convey your message?
Well, that’s only the case if you avoid complicated words, industry jargon, or expressions that no one uses in real life.
The motto here is:
💡 Pro tip: Since we’re talking about what to avoid, sales language is also a no-no!
Although you may send out email blasts when you send out your branded emails, you don’t have to ignore the individual reader.
In fact, you shouldn’t.
Contrarily, the goal is for each of your subscribers to feel like you’re talking directly to them when they read your email.
Take a look at the following email, for example:
They could have used the expressions “surprise for all of you”, “Do you guys have” or “more value to our subscribers”.
Yet, they chose to be more personal, and it worked.
The conversational copywriting of an email shouldn’t just be used in its content - the subject line needs to match that tone as well!
When crafting a subject line and the preview text for a conversational email, make sure it reflects the type of communication style within the email.
Two great examples of this are:
Knowing your brand’s personality is essential for your digital marketing efforts overall. Especially when your goal is to get closer to your customers and prospects.
As such, make sure whatever traits best describe your brand transpire in your conversational copywriting.
Take a look at this excerpt from an email sent by a swimwear brand. They’re relaxed, friendly, and kind - and it shows.
As human beings, we know that the best way of keeping a conversation going is by asking questions.
Well, the same logic applies here!
By asking questions, you encourage your subscribers to actually reply. And you can get access to insights that can help you increase conversions.
So, ask away!
💡 Pro tip: Most users aren’t used to replying to branded emails. If you truly want them to, make sure your questions don’t sound rhetorical. You can even tell them specifically to email you back or if you want to take it one step further, reward those who do.
Once again, conversational means easy to understand.
As such, writing giant paragraphs that don’t even leave space for the subscriber to breathe is simply not the way to go.
Keep it short and sweet (ideally under 35 words). Yoga With Adriene does this in the email below. This ensures that readers will be able to follow your writing.
💡 Pro tip: To make your short sentences even easier to read, make sure you never use passive voice.
When we speak in our day-to-day lives, we don’t always follow the rules of English to a t.
Although it’s tempting to write all your emails that are perfectly written to the rules of the English language, it's not needed. When we speak about conversational ones, you can (and should experiment) let go a little, by:
The following email does a lot of what we just listed. It even uses an emoji! Yet we can’t say it doesn’t sound natural and friendly, can we?
Last but not least, it’s pivotal that you proofread your conversational emails.
However, you don’t just want to do it in your head.
You should always read your conversational copywriting out loud, to make sure it flows well and doesn’t sound “robotic”.
The entire email should sound like speech, like a part of a dialogue that you’d have in real life.
So read it out loud a couple of times and make any necessary changes until it is on point!
Conversational email helps you develop genuine connections with prospects and consumers. By not endlessly promoting yourself, you open your brand up to be more personable.
Now that you know about the what, why, when, and how of conversational emails it’s time to start including them in your campaigns.
Happy conversing (and converting)!
