The Future Of Email Marketing: Looking at 2019 and Beyond.
Increased use of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have added to the overall connectivity digital marketers and email marketers poses with their audience.
We are living in truly exciting times for email marketing. We have seen many advancements in this space over the last ten years. Changes that include Automation, the use of rich media in emails, the global adoption of mobile email applications, and many more. Increased use of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have added to the overall connectivity digital marketers and email marketers have with their audience.
In spite of these many technological advancements, experts believe 2019, and beyond will bring even newer features and technologies to the Email Marketing, and Digital Marketing environment. We expect to see monumental developments and new ways for marketers to reach their desired audiences.
Interactive and Text-based Emails
Email marketing software providers are expected to try to keep up with the fight for consumers' attention in 2019 and beyond. Experts expect to see many of these companies start to offer tools to help marketers stay connected to consumers. We expect to see the introduction of a slew of interactive tools in the email space. Tools that would help consumers take actions in a more seamless manner.
Marketers are also expected to take actions to shift from the traditional practice of sending long, media-rich emails to plain text-heavy emails. Ones that will seek to mimic emails consumers would typically get from a known acquaintance or family member. This shift will be due to the many different devices and screen sizes being used in the marketplace.
Advances in mobile
We have seen a large shift in the way consumers and b2b clients read emails. Most folks, now read most of their emails on a mobile device. Fifty-five percent of emails are opened on a mobile device -- an increase from 29% 2012. Almost 80% of mobile email opens occur on iOS, quadruple the number of mobile opens on Android devices.
Mobile is here to stay and consumers and audiences alike will continue to opt to do most of their email reading and writing while on the go and on mobile devices. Marketers, big and small, are expected to devote more resources in 2019 towards this trend. Creating mobile-friendly email marketing campaigns will be a must going forward.
Storytelling in email campaigns
To boost email marketing engagement numbers in 2019, savvy marketers will also start to include storyline emails in their email marketing strategy. The use of storytelling has been found to be effective in grabbing viewers’ attention and influencing their behaviors. Storyline emails seek to communicate, in a fairly dramatic way, solutions found by others who share your target audiences' experience, predicament, or needs.
The idea is to walk your recipient through a story that seeks to use emotional triggers to drive them to take the desired action. Storyline emails will become more prevalent in the email marketing space as we move forward. Various scientific studies show that humans are more engaged with an idea when it is being communicated through creative storytelling. The most effective storyline are ones that have a hero and a villain. Stories that tell a story of how an underdog, unlikely hero perseveres and ends up winning, vanquishing the "bad guy(s)".
