These are exciting times for digital marketing. The rules of the game are changing, giving marketers more agility, and our customers have a higher expectation of us because of it. They want better, more engaging experiences with your company no matter if they are in the store, or using their computer or phone to browse your website, read email, or surf the web. The “connected consumer” wants you to know them and cater to them, but also wants to strike a balance between what you know about them and making it personal for them. A lot of advancements have been made in website and advertising technology to take advantage of behavioral targeting and such, but what about email?
Email is the only channel where consumers raise their hand and say “yes, please market to me.” But only one in five will open promotional email. What gives? We know that when we send more email, we make more money. But is that the answer? According to the 2013 edition of an annual consumer insights study conducted by the e-tailing group, only 22% of consumers are willing to be contacted by email more than four times during the month after visiting your site. Yet 74% say they want to receive email during that time. In April 2014, Redshift Research discovered that 39% of consumers will opt-out if they are sent email too frequently. Yikes!
Keep sending email, but it’s time to send better messages. Email needs to adapt and respond to what is happening in the moment, where a consumer is, and what device they are on. The same e-tailing group study shows that that 3 out of 4 consumers want to receive personalized messages that do just that, and not just in newsletters, but across the buying lifecycle, especially in abandonment and transactional email. This notion is further supported by Harris Interactive’s 2014 work that shows that 81% of US Consumers shop more frequently in the store and online as a result of targeted emails. The answer is to strike a good balance between what you want to say and how often you want to say it.
It’s clear that consumers want “better email” from you. How can you provide it? eMarketer recently released the top email marketing tactics used today in our industry. Over the next few weeks, we will provide you new and innovative ways to address them including content development, real-time testing and targeting, social integrations, mobile optimization, streaming live content into email, and overall creating better email at scale. Keep coming back to the Movable Ink blog to learn more about how you can market in the moment, keep email fresh by responding in real-time to your consumer, and ultimately drive more sales throughout the year.