Staying ahead of the game in the email world can be challenging. With marketers busy planning their 2019 email marketing strategies, we thought we would take a look at the email marketing trends and predictions marketers can expect to see more of this year.
So without further adieu, here are five email marketing trends to keep an eye on for 2019.
1. Allowing artificial intelligence to determine more email content.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes it possible to individually tailor email send times, product suggestions and many other elements at an extraordinary scale.
Mike Nelson, Co-Founder of Really Good Emails, says, “We are still far off for AI-designed emails, but the software will play a larger part of autonomously inserting content into already designed emails with specific rules developed by senders.”
“Marketers should look to how they can use AI as a way to understand what content a potential customer is consuming.” says Lisa Matherly, VP of Content Marketing at McAfee, “which will allow for more personalised customer experience and high customer satisfaction.”
With the help of AI, you can quickly generate combinations of content based on what will the platforms AI determines will perform best.
Do your users click through and convert after reading customer reviews? Or do your consumers convert when you highlight your product benefits and value? Either way, AI can look at your content to see what is performing best and offer up new combinations.
For example, after evaluating your click-through and conversion data, AI might suggest combining customer reviews and your product benefits to create a unique email campaign explaining the benefits of your product and how customers fell in love with it.
Alternatively, AI can create new segments based on behavioural patterns that marketers might not have identified. See the example from Canopy below that is directed towards a particular segment that could be hard to identify without the help of AI.
(Image via reallygoodemails)
With AI creating a buzz for email marketer’s in 2019, we’re sure to hear a lot more about this in the year to come.
2. Increased Personalisation
It’s not a secret that highly personalised and segmented emails outperform those that aren’t. Hubspot has revealed that personalisation is the number one email marketing trend for 2019 with a focus on dynamic content due to the rise of AI. This powerful combination will allow more tailored email content on a scale and level of detail that has been previously impossible.
Recently we conducted The Australian Email Benchmark survey, asking over 400 Australian businesses how they used personalisation in their email campaigns and the results were overwhelming.
In fact, businesses that personalised their emails received a 32% higher click rate and a 28% higher ROI than those without.
See how Uber Eats uses personalisation to include recommendations based on the users’ location:
(Image via reallygoodemails)
So in 2019 make sure you personalise, personalise and personalise. You will not regret it!
3. Using More Gifs or CSS Animation
Movement is eye-catching, and it’s an increasingly common email design element. Many marketers find that by incorporating well-positioned animations (GIFs or CSS), they can drive increased engagement and interest to their email campaigns.
Animations can attract subscriber attention and support the brand’s main message when done well. It’s also a fun, unique and easy way to break up content sections, walk users through an app or website, show multiple products or show visual data.
The below email campaigns are great examples of brands who have taken the extra time to make animations that enhance their email design and captivate their audience.
(Image via reallygoodemails)
(Image via reallygoodemails)
(Image via reallygoodemails)
In 2018, 56.6% of email marketers said they were using animated GIFS in some of their marketing emails, and that number will most likely increases in 2019.
4. Creating More One-Off Unique Email Designs
Email templates are great for building and maintaining brand consistency. However, brands are more frequently creating custom email designs for special messages, such as significant announcements or major seasonal campaigns, i.e. Christmas.
“Template system adoption has been good for consistency and efficiency, but to increase performance, you will see designers zag to stand out against the rest of the inbox,” says Alex Williams, SVP of Trendline Interactive.
“You will start to see designers move away from completely flat and boxy designs and add more depth and asymmetrical patterns.”
With the proliferation of WYSIWYG email design tools, there is a temptation for marketers to take the easy route and use the inbuilt stock standard template designs provided by their email campaign software.
However, with a little help from the design team at The Orchard you can avoid looking like every other email that lands in the inbox and elevate your campaigns with a fully custom email design to help cut through the clutter and stand out from the crowd. Ask us how.
5. Live Images and Data-Driven Content
When creating personalised and relevant campaigns in 2019, we can expect to see more live and data-driven content integration.
Live content is images, animations, or video-based content that is conditionally displayed in an email using data that isn’t known until the receiver opens the message.
An example being a sports team selling tickets to an event. When the receiver opens up the email they can see how many seats are still available at the event and what the current pricing is for those seats.
NiftyImages has many tools that assist with taking your email personalisation to the next level through tools that can add names to images or integrate live countdown timers to encourage urgency in emails.
Below you can see that Harry’s integrated a live countdown to when shipping ended to create a sense of urgency.
(Image via reallygoodemails)
This is just one part of creating a personalised experience that is integral in the email industry right now, and we will continue to see live content integrated with behavioural targeting and predictive targeting in the future.
6. Privacy
Elizabeth Duffey, the Services Team Lead at Campaign Monitor, says that permission will be huge in 2019.
“With GDPR and inboxes getting more sophisticated with their algorithms, it’s harder than ever to get in and stay in the inbox. You should never trick people into signing up for your emails or assume they want to be on it, instead, offer a valuable incentive and commit to providing helpful content to people that choose to be on your list,” she said.
Asking permission will go a long way towards maintaining a healthy list and a successful email program
From Artificial Intelligence to Dat-Driven content, 2019 looks like it will be an exciting year for email marketing. As you’re planning your marketing strategy for the upcoming year, keep these key trends and predictions in mind when sending email communications to your consumers.
What a year it’s been and what a year we look forward to! If stepping up your email marketing game is part of your plan for 2019, make sure you get in touch with The Orchard Agency. We’re always here to help!
