Email Marketing Predictions for 2017; Ok, so it’s a new year, we’ve all got bigger sales targets than last year. We all want to use whatever technology is available to make hitting those targets as stress free as possible.

In this article, we are going to look at some of the innovations and trends that may come along this year.

Ok, let’s get started:

Popular email browsers will be able to render web styling techniques effectively

For years, email browsers have been at the back of the queue when it came to rolling out updates to the engines that render our emails. This means that design for email HTML templates had to use techniques that web design left behind almost ten years ago.

This often-caused issues as web designers, often keen to show their prowess as cutting edge designers would code designs that worked well on the web, but in email format just didn’t work.

Well, hopefully that’s all going to change this year. Some big updates are planned for the popular email browsers. This means that they can support design using CSS styles more effectively, this opens the door for better more exciting looking designs.

Simple shopping carts and payment processing inside an email

This is being cited as the next big thing, instead of providing click though links to a website – you’ll be able to make a purchase directly from an email.

The big payment providers have all been looking at this and rumour has it, the first of them is going to go live this year.

This could be a huge revelation for anyone with a website currently selling products. Having a simple cart and payment options inside an email means you can really capitalise on those impulse purchases.

Email databases will hold a profile – not just an email address

Currently, our marketing databases are generally lists of email addresses, often with the inclusion of a contact name and company name. Typically though, this info is very brief.

So, wouldn’t it be great if you could also hold more information, perhaps a history of how that viewer has interacted to previous marketing that they had received.

Info such as: how many previous campaigns have they read, how many times did they click through to your website, have they purchased before, what did they purchase.

Well, all of this is coming; …profiles…..each subscriber has this information attached to their record in your database in the form of a profile. This makes it much easier to highlight the right people for the right marketing.

Email Browsers will play video from an email

Currently, the rendering engine of the popular email browsers will not support the playback of video. Some are starting to but overall most don’t.

This means that if you want to use video in your marketing, you currently must create a ‘watch my video’ link inside your mailer. This link then directs the recipient to a hosted video location, such as your website or YouTube.

Whilst this isn’t terrible – it would be great to deliver everything you want to in an email with asking viewers to click through to different locations.

Content will shrink

When we say that content will shrink, we are referring to the amount of text used in your marketing.

This is because mobile devices are now our preferred method for receiving communications, we are all using our smart phones and tablets to view emails before any other device.

This means that big bodies of small text don’t work on a 5-inch screen. Mobile devices mean that we are on the go – and need to receive and digest digital content in a split second.

This has lead marketers to rely on images and short simple calls to action to deliver a message quickly. So no more chapter and verse – keep in short and snappy.

Intelligent engines will match subscribers to content

If we are storing profiles or user history against our subscribers, then we need a way to quickly segment groups of people based on their history – or profile. This means we can send different messages to different data segments

Sifting through thousands of subscribers is not something that can be easily done. This problem is already being addressed and will likely see the light of day this year.

An intelligent engine that will match content to subscribers. The process of creating data segments based on historic behaviour can all be automated, making highly targeted marketing easier than it ever has been.

Send volumes will get smaller

Large scale spammers are now really a thing of the past, and they have taken with them the idea that email marketing is all about shot-gunning as many people as possible with a generic message.

Over recent years we have all really started to grasp how email marketing works.

Email marketing is the most effective way to retain loyalty and build business with people who have asked to receive your mailer and are well qualified as fitting your client profile.

This means that sends will get smaller, as we have all the tools in place to match the right message to the right person. No more shot gunning and hoping for the best.

So, there we are our email marketing predictions for this year.It’s going to be a great year for digital marketing and we’ve got some great innovations and techniques coming our way.

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