The COVID-19 crisis has brought about many shifts in the way businesses and companies operate. As the world enters into the new normal, it’s safe to assume that things will never be the same again.

Digital has taken center stage in the past few months as more businesses shift to online marketing strategies and ecommerce to survive or even thrive in the pandemic. And as we enter 2023, it’s essential to know what’s hot and what’s not in the world of marketing.

This year has been challenging, but there are pockets of promises for businesses everywhere. One example would be the rise of open email rates and click-through rates during the crisis.

Email marketing trends show that the power of email marketing has increased in 2021, and there’s reason to believe that businesses can still maximize on the growing trend, even if entrepreneurs and marketing professionals do it right.

Here are seven email marketing strategies that will drive results in the new normal.

#1. Hyper-personalize Emails

As technology continues to improve, marketing becomes more personalized. One key to a better email marketing success rate is to create more personalized email marketing campaigns. 

Email marketing personalization entails using customer data to develop contextualized and targeted marketing messages. With the proper use of personalized campaigns, emails have an astronomically higher chance of grabbing a reader’s attention.

Marketers can customize an email based on a user’s geographic location, age, gender, career, civil status, or any readily available information. Email marketing tools can even include personalized tags that automatically add a recipient’s name, email address, birthday, purchase orders, and so on into an email.

#2. Create Omnichannel Strategies

Omnichannel marketing is another trend on the rise of post-COVID-19 lockdowns. If you’ve been into ecommerce, there are high chances to come across this term.  

A lot of people mistake omnichannel strategies for multichannel ones. While both strategies use multiple channels, including social media, email, SMS, and other platforms, omnichannel creates one unified message instead of various ones. 

Omnichannel strategies rely on over-communication strength and remind customers through various touch points about deals, offers, cart entries, subscriptions about any particular brand.

While email is considered the most effective way to market in the digital age for digital marketing, it always helps to pair it up with other channels to strengthen the recall of specific messages and campaigns.

Arne Stamer, eCommerce expert at My Package Tracking, adds:
“Omnichannel doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to be everywhere but that you should actively watch out for new channels that are used by your target audience. Test and master them one by one.”

#3. Boost Up on Text-Only Emails

Most companies like to leverage visually appealing newsletters and posters to catch the reader’s eye. While graphics do help, overdoing them can often be detrimental to an email campaign’s effectiveness.

Successful marketers have mastered creating compelling text-emails that deliver mainly through the quality of their copywriting.

Email services like Gmail have been programmed to push image-heavy emails into the promotions tab or even spam on some occasions. This outcome happens mainly because text-only emails appear more authentic and less like a promotional blast out.

Text-only emails are not only more likely to land on the primary tab. It also gets better responses on occasions. Statistics show that text-only emails can have up to 17% higher click through rates, a 99% statistical significance. 

There is no harm in including a photo or two now and then to your email newsletters and send-outs, but mixing it up with a text-only email increases email campaigns’ performance overall

#4. Utilize Automations and Drip Marketing

An increase in drip marketing strategies and automation is more common email marketing predictions amongst marketing experts.

Drip marketing through email creates a system that funnels and segments email recipients and sends individual emails based on their actions. 

Let’s say you have an email subscriber that clicks on a particular product on your online shop. An automated drip marketing sequence will send a string of emails that talk more about the product they clicked on and even offer a discount coupon on it at some point. 

The power of automation has allowed digital marketers to work smarter and more efficiently. Saving time and energy from manually shifting through emails and sorting them according to specific segmentation strategies.

Drip marketing and email segmentation automation run like clockwork with no supervision. You set it up once, and it pretty much runs on its own. 

#5. Build Long Term Customer Relationships

The unrealized beauty of email marketing is that marketers and business owners can speak to people as long as subscribers remain on their brand’s email list. Sadly, many companies only market to customers once and let the relationship die off with time.

This practice has many brands leaving money on the table. When a customer purchases from a business, the statistical likelihood of a follow-up purchase goes up the next time. 

That means marketers can create long-term relationships with customers by deploying email campaigns to follow up, get feedback, and even upsell other products to them.

Service as a software (SaaS) companies who offer subscriptions on their products can also create automated sequences that send reminders every time a customer becomes inactive on a platform or has a service that’s about to expire.

Marketers should create more emphasis on building on customer lifetime value and not just one-time relationships.

#6. Bring Value, Value, Value

Email marketing software is popular for many businesses, the most common being tools used for sending out an email or email threads. This software can be used to bring immense value to a company’s subscribers and followers.

Growth trends examples have shown time and time again that the best way to keep a subscriber engaged is to add value. For the past few years, marketers have used lead magnets to attract customers to subscribe to a mailing list.

A lead magnet often comes in a freebie like a PDF guide, ebook, online course, or any learning material. Some professionals have also used gift cards, coupons, and limited access circles. 

But as consumers get smarter and realize bait when they see it, marketers have to keep evolving. One way to keep people subscribed and interested in one’s brand is to keep adding value. Re-engage people with new content or better deals.

This way, email subscribers stay actively engaged with your brand and keep the relationship and conversation going.

#7. Get a conversation going

Speaking of conversation, marketers should always keep in mind that email is a two-way communication platform. The more a subscriber responds to an email, the higher the level of engagement. 

It can help spark conversations with audiences by asking highly engaging questions or getting them to respond to requests.

Whatever strategy one deploys, marketers and entrepreneurs should always view email interactions with followers as the two-way conversation that it was always meant to be. 

It also helps to contract a team to respond to emails to keep the conversation hot and on-going. The longer the thread, the greater the trust your brand builds with others.

The Future of Digital Marketing through Email

If there’s one thing that the pandemic has taught us, we can never truly know what will happen next. But some likely trends can help marketers and business owners on top of their game. 

In 2019, companies sent over 293.6 billion emails every day. That number is most likely to go up as 2020 comes to a close. And it’s most likely that come 2021, that number will follow closely behind or even grow. 

Regardless of what digital marketing’s future looks like, email marketing is here to stay for another year for sure, and for many more years after that. Marketers and entrepreneurs would be wise to maximize it while it’s around, no matter how long that may be.

If you’re searching for an e-mail marketing job, please explore the current openings at Jooble.