Email Marketing Trends of 2015 that Spilled Over to 2016

Predictions are like opinions, everyone has them.  How are the 2016 email marketing trends turning out for you this year?

We, at Dundee Internet have found, this year, attention being placed on:

• Personalization, which is not limited to just saying “Hello Mr. Brown”, as Marketers are being more personal with:
  1. Dates: This includes sending an email for Birthdays, Anniversaries, Congratulations on their 365^th email campaign, Holidays,  “It’s been 6 months since you purchased your first Motorcycle” to sending dated invitations to local events.
  2. History: More marketers send triggered emails based on the past actions of the customer. For example, “We are sending you this coupon because you buy our chocolate every Halloween.”
  3. Actions: Emails are constantly sent to increase ROI.  “Mr. Brown, thank you for your recent purchase, do you need a carrying case for your new tablet?”
  4. Localization: Our Marketer’s use segments to send relevant, timely emails. Perhaps to a specific zip code, city or country; or maybe just to people with the last name Brown.  With built-in automation, these emails are sent at specific days and times with attention to geographic location.
• Sending one-on-one Emails:  Dundee Internet has software that allows our customers to use Conditional Content Commands. This allows blocks of text or graphics to be added into their messages. This creates unique, one-to-one emails tailored to the needs and interests of their recipients.
• Predictive Sending:  Marketers would like to know what motivates someone to buy and when they will buy again.   Our customers send surveys using our hosted software Lyris LM with pointed questions. Using the results, they study buying patterns and past buying habits to try to predict the next customer purchase. Email campaigns are tailored and sent based on their findings.

What we trends we see for content:

• Embedded Content: More Marketers tend to send out interactive emails. Some emails play music or a video when an email loads or show a special image. Some have great success with this, and some do not.  Marketers with recipients that have issues with loading images and other media, are segmented into their own group and sent the same email without embedded content.
• Devices on Board: The way email is sent remained the same. However the way the message is read, has slowly adapted to  smart phones, tablet and wearable devices.

While remaining desktop and laptop friendly.  All these devices influence the way our marketers send out campaigns, and this influence will continue way past 2016.  Eventually the same email message must be readable and interact with the all the different applications.

With Dundee Internet, when our Marketers create a “mobile friendly” email with our HTML editor, our list hosting software automatically creates a text copy. This will allow wearable users to read marketing email messages on those little tiny wearable device screens.

• Dynamic Content: Our customers can send the HTML content on their website, forms, and landing pages. Allowing emails to be customized based on the recipient. Lyris LM uses custom scripting to insert complex, dynamic content into their messages.
• Email Quality, that’s totally up to the marketer.  Most ESPs can give you the tools to create, send and deliver your emails, but the content is up to you.

You may have considered these trends and wondered what will 2017 bring.  We believe in 2017: Personalized emails will become the norm. Look for more automation and integrated features. With advanced email marketing tools,and analytical data, we believe there will be a greater interest in predict marketing.

We think the process of creating cutting edge emails will get simpler while being more robust. Finally, more companies will develop tools specific to Lyris LM using Lyris LM’s API.

What are your email marketing predictions for 2017?