3 Email Marketing Trends You'll See in 2018

Email as a tool, is the very essence of marketing, no matter how older it is. It has the power to directly speak to the customer and yet leave them with a personal touch at the same time. Each year marketers are coming up with more and more email marketing strategies that help them stay a step further from their competitors in the market.
 

Statistics suggest that 81 percent of the businesses claim email to be the major force behind their customer acquisition and engagement.
 

David Newman has correctly said, "Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable, personal touches – at scale."
 

Email marketing thus remains one of the most successful old school marketing tools in present times.
 

There is no denying the fact that technology brings changes each year to the marketing world. Similarly, the year 2018 is all set to witness remarkable transformations with new age tools and practices coming up for businesses.
 

Here are 3 Email Marketing Trends You'll See in 2018:
 

One thing that will take the marketing world by storm in the coming years is automation. And going by the trends, the year 2018 is all set to witness a rise in the marketing automation. Automation has not just made the lives of business people easier but also reformed the customer experience.
 

Gone are the days when marketing people had to manually write each and every email and compile the data for these. With automation to the rescue,  a lot of time is spared for the businesses to think on other business critical issues.
 

Action based triggers are yet another type of automated emails where the customer is sent an email based on the action they take on your website.
 

For example, if they sign up on your website they will automatically receive a welcome email in their inboxes. This works similarly when they make a purchase, abandon a cart or do some other activity on your website. This is providing a better experience for the customers and on the other hand, managing the task of businesses without having to bother any person.
 

Automation also lets you create the template based on your campaigns that you can send to many customers and need not start from scratch to send it over again and again. It comes handy when you have to create a list and share a piece of content with them.
 

In other words, automation is all set to take the email marketing a step forward in this year.
 

Image source: LinkedIn
 

Artificial intelligence is the next big thing that is hitting all the industries irrespective of what they are selling. Undoubtedly, technology is each year giving us major new tools and measures to achieve success and move forward with our tasks. And artificial intelligence is making most of this possible in our day to day lives.
 

The year 2018 is all set to see artificial intelligence penetrate into email marketing and take it a step closer towards the ultimate goal of customer satisfaction and earning profits in business. The email lists will be segmented in a much better way along with more personalization for these segmented lists of customers.
 

Consider your meeting to be fixed with the client without having to check schedules, since artificial intelligence is here to do the job. It will not only dig into your busy schedule but also check with the customer if they are free for the suggested dates.
 

It will also set reminders and inform both the parties to avoid any chances of a missed opportunity.
 

Artificial intelligence is all set to bring big data to industries. Earlier mass data from satellites was accessible just to big enterprises who put in a lot of money into the market research. This left small scale companies behind in the race and limited the utility of the big data.
 

But with AI to the rescue, this data has been able to reach to small businesses that are utilizing this for better product research and customer research. With easier access to cloud computing devices more and more business have access to the big data coming from enterprises.
 

2018 is thus, expected to be the year where this data will be finally put to use by machines to segment the customers in a better way and personalize the brand’s content according to that. This is going to prompt the marketers on how to draft an email in a better way for different types of customers in the market.
 

The exposure of people to social media is increasing with each passing day. This is transforming the type of content on the Internet as well as intimidating people to spend more time on the social media.
 

On one hand, interactive content is creating more and more engagement in the people, while on the other hand, it is reducing the friction between the brand and user experience of their customers. And as fascinating as interactive content looks like, it is equally amazing to build up. Basically, it is the type of content that leaves user talking about it and gathers response in return.
 

Interactive content includes a wide variety of visually catchy content such as videos, GIFs, search bars, countdown timers, quizzes and surveys, image hover and rollover functionality etc.
 

So, in this age where content is becoming the king of the marketing world and the whole Internet is filled with interactive content, how can email lag behind in this race?
 

Interactive content is all set to take over the old school emails and transform them into eye-catching marketing campaigns that will not just drive conversions for a business but also bring revenues to your doors.
 

Since, email subscribers have always had a hard time viewing videos or different types of content in the email by clicking on some embedded link, interactive content in emails is all set to take email marketing to a new level in the coming year.
 

The idea is to add interactive high-quality content directly to emails without having to set them up through the means of a link. The build in connectivity will not just make the email experience better but also provide a chance to the marketers to experiment with different types of interactive content and decide what works best for them.
 

So, expect GIFs and video thumbnails directly when you open your emails in a coming few days.
 

These trends when efficiently realized in a business have the power to transform the working experience of the business as well as the engagement of the customer. And since the ultimate focus remains customer satisfaction, businesses must not forget to build their content around the customer.
 

Ann Handley has correctly emphasized the point,

"Make the customer the hero of your story … and … good content isn’t about good storytelling. It’s about telling a true story well.”

So, ride in the upcoming waves of email marketing and analyze what works best for you.