2018 Email Marketing Will Continue to Engage Consumers
Why Email Marketing?
Research show that more than 34% of the people worldwide are active email users which account for 2.5 billion population. It is predicted to increase to 2.8 billion in the next 2 years. The Group's statistics also states that of all the email transactions that happen on a day, 109 billion are business emails. Hence supporting the numbers and from my personal experience being on both ends of the business, I can say email marketing is both a dynamic and substantial means of reaching out and connecting with people. Email has been undeniably one of the biggest parts of our lives in terms of communication. It is still one of the most cost-effective ways of engaging your consumers. It still is one of the traditional platforms that continues to hold its importance in creating brand awareness and converting people into members, customers or supporters.
With social media gaining importance over the past few years the competition remains high as marketers review and optimise their strategies to improve email ROI.
So having established the importance of Email marketing we now look forward to some of the major trends that are likely to sustain and improve this approach in the coming year.
Email Marketing Trends to look forward to in 2018 and help improve your approach:
- Mobile Friendly
As per statistics more and more emails are now being read on mobile than on desktop email clients. We now live in a smartphone society and I myself like millions of others is an ardent consumer of content on the move and mobiles are just the kind of device that is handy and practical. Be it checking emails or social media notifications, this medium of marketing is definitely something to optimize on. The emails should be optimized to suit the mobile interface as slow loading emails that are not compatible with mobiles will risk the chances of lower user engagement. Thus lesser number of clickthroughs.
Many mobile visitors end up on the websites from articles and we may end up seeing more articles ending up with email subscriptions to increase conversions. The design of screens on mobile devices has to be visual friendly, easy to read and preferably designed in a manner easy to scan through quickly for reading on the move.
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to have an impact
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation by which the European Union intend to strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals within the European Union (EU). It becomes enforceable from 25 May 2018. This is the biggest change that will affect email marketing strategies in 2018. For a long time obtaining email addresses, phone numbers and other personal contact details via competitions and promotion has been skills used to increase the contact databases, which were used later for email re-engagement campaigns that the user had not initially and explicitly consented to. But now re-consent needs to be given to store and use personal data.
Steps to be taken by marketers in 2018 to comply with GDPR changes
- Legal and fair processing of data.
- Data collection should be done for required, distinct and legitimate purposes.
- Data is adequate, trustworthy and preserved for only as long as it is required
- The Data should be handled in a way such that strict confidentiality and integrity of all the personal information is maintained.
- Personalization and Segmentation holds the key
- Personalization of emails has worked since times when emails started being addressed by the first names of the recipients. So when it comes to personalizing the emails it still is better to stick to the basics like addressing email with the consumer's first names. But to add to this you might as well consider the concept of dynamic content in your emails. Dynamic content refers to the HTML within your content which changes according to the needs of the recipient. This works together with segmentation (location-based emails and lists) and together they provide the consumer with an email that is perfectly tailored to their needs.
- Also important to note is the targeted list of recipients should be carefully analyzed as you do not want to end up in the inboxes where your emails will be deleted or marked read without actually reading it. It hurts your domain reputation and possible chances of connecting with potential customers.
- Personally, I have always preferred emails from a personalized account more than receiving emails from a "no-reply" email address. It gives me a sense of engaging with a real person.
- If you’re being marked as spam, your domain reputation is at risk, and there are threats of you becoming blacklisted by email providers. Analyze whether the spam complaints are caused by a new source, bad forms, or you are misinterpreting the expectations of your list. Till you figure out, slow down or completely stop sending emails.
Beware that your emails might also be landing up in the junk folder and going unnoticed as has happened with me. So that needs taking care as well. - Graymail refers to bulk email messages that aren’t technically spam because the recipients gave you their information, but in reality, they get your emails and don’t touch them. Engagement rates crash if recipients don’t open your first email, so if they continue ignoring you, the probability of them ever opening your messages is definitely decreasing.
Stop sending graymail, and try to take the feedback and understand what message the customer is trying to send you across by not opening your email.
Author Bio:
Nicolas Finet is the Co-founder of sort-list.co.uk – an online solutions company which helps customers to find the best marketing agencies. Follow him on Twitter @nifinet!
How to scale your live video audience
Scaling your audience is highly important if your sole aim is to make lots and lots of money. We often try to find out time to keep a balance between work and personal life.
Monetizing your venture is a commendable idea. But can you do it without scaling your audience?
You can certainly do without scaling. However, in the long run these missed specks will come back to haunt you.
Anyone who is looking to scale their business must set some proper goals. With a proper vision you can include better monetization strategies.
You can pursue some nitty-gritty techniques so that you can scale your live audience with immediate effect.
Don’t just think of how to make money live streaming an event but try to be better with it.
Let us discuss how to improve live streaming.
Create and Share Content on a Blog
Beginning a blog is easy.
What isn't easy and clear is really posting helpful and extraordinary content that is of significant worth.
Having said that, blogging is a standout amongst other ways that you can be an expert and draw followers in some time.
By turning into an expert, you'll naturally start attracting clients instead of forcing them to go through your content.
Entertain audience with offers and contests
Contests and giveaways offer another speedy approach to market your business.
The word free is exceptionally attractive, and individuals will register to anything which would come up with an assured prize.
Post content on Medium.com
Medium.com is of the most loved destinations for content publishing.
This expert webpage presents anybody with the capacity to post helpful content or showcase anything on the web.
It is commendable that you don't utilize this to spam.
Rather, create helpful information and instructional exercises that will additionally improve the content on your site.
The objective is to advertise your live streaming platform the correct way and not by spamming link through a weak content.
Build a Social Media Content channel
Social media offers a standout amongst most open doors for scaling any business, regardless of what sort of business you've begun but is particulary good for a live streaming company.
It additionally offers a road to take advantage of the worlds socially connected population, rapidly and successfully.
Plainly, accomplishing a gigantic mission is no straightforward accomplishment; however that shouldn't prevent you from building up a content channel where you can spread value across social media to raise the awareness of your offers.
Create YouTube tutorials
Take a deep breath and plunge into the universe of video with YouTube instructional guidance.
Making a mainstream YouTube channel isn't simple, however it is well justified, despite all the trouble.
To do it, you need to give inside and out instructional guidance, helping individuals to truly understand a problem or take care of an issue. Whatever you do, try imparting the best knowledge possible.
Thus, you'll turn into a specialist and an industry pioneer, at last prompting more prominent exposure and in the end, make more money.
How can you scale yourself as well as your audience?
Scaling, in the simplest of definitions is ideally the phenomenon carried out when you have multiple servers used to stream your live video to a larger audience.
Servers arranged in such a way are referred to as “Server Pools”. Various methods can be used for scaling, depending on stream type, target audience and it's possible to use a combination of methods to be sufficient for your needs.
When would you scale your live video audience?
There are some specific moments when you would require scaling your audience. The specks below describe when and how to scale.
- Analyze the number of video streams running together. Also take their bitrates into account.
- Analyze the estimated volume of your audience. Check if you can control the number of viewers.
- Keep a track of the short and long time budget.
What are the options available for scaling?
Different tools present in the market aid in scaling your live video audience. Certain streaming media server software implements tools such as live stream repeater.
Live encoders producing content connect to the servers and players are connected to the edge servers (a server residing on the “edge” between two networks).
Edge servers are connected to the original servers for repetitive live stream.
If you have the question of how to improve live streaming, keep in mind to add more edge servers and direct them to the streams coming out from the origin server.
On enabling an HTTP-based playback, these streaming engines associate each of the HTTP connection with different internal sessions so that every speck can be traced.
In case the target audience is on a private network, you can use UDP (User Datagram Protocol) so that you can broadcast live streams to a wider audience.
In multicast routers provide the capacity to deliver streams instead of a “server pool”. Sending out a single stream through the streaming media server software to the multicast address and players connected to the multicast address to get the stream is how the scaling works here.
Using UDP and other alternatives have delivered 10-15% growth in delivering spectacular outputs with a cut-short buffer time.
If you are looking how to improve live streaming, be sure that the competition is huge.
It's anything but difficult to waste efficiency on blog entries, social media and different things that survive for just a short span.
Using a tool like Crowdcast or Wowza, you can naturally record all your live occasions and implant them onto your site.
Cover subjects that will stay significant forever, and you'll develop an archive of recorded occasions that your crowd can appreciate for quite a long time.
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Instagram is a formidable presence in the marketing world and is arguably one of the most important networks currently on the market. Any marketer that is not utilizing the platform is missing out on incredible opportunities to grow a business. Whether you are a Fortune 500 company or a small local business, utilizing Instagram as a part of your marketing strategy is essential.
Not sure how this social media platform fits in with your brand? Here are eight reasons why your brand absolutely needs Instagram.
1. Boosts brand visibility & enhance your branding
Instagram allows your brand to reach potential customers that were otherwise inaccessible prior to its existence. This is especially helpful for small businesses and online shops as it provides a fair opportunity for all brands to increase their visibility, regardless of their marketing budget.
2. Instagram gives you the unique opportunity to provide visual content
Storefronts and business cards can easily communicate the most important information about your business to potential customers. This, however, doesn't provide much opportunity for your target audience to really get to know your brand. Visual content allows you to take charge of not only how your brand is seen, but also how potential customers can fully understand the mood and direction of your brand as well.
3. Track your analytics
Rather than posting a picture and hoping that your audience will jump to action, you can easily use analytics to inform your posting habits. With tools like Iconosquare, you can see what your audience responds to and which posts lead to the highest conversion rates. With Instagram, it is easier than ever to know definitively which strategies work and which do not.
4. Instagram results in higher sales
According to Shopify, a computer software platform for online stores, Instagram drives higher sales than any other social network, except Polyvore, another social e-commerce platform. The average order value through Instagram referrals is $65, according to Shopify. The next highest revenue through social referrals is through YouTube, which lags behind at a meek average of $37.63.
5. Easily engage with your community
Instagram has the highest engagement rate of all the social media networks, including both Facebook and Twitter. It seems that users are much more open to branded content on Instagram than they are virtually anywhere else. It is also easier to engage with your community as your content is more discoverable, thanks to hashtags. Likewise, many marketing tools such as Growr are able to help your brand reach out to more users per minute than you would be able to anywhere else on the Internet. By utilizing tools such as Growr, you can gain a significant number of followers, engage with potential customers more easily, and create a larger community to share your content.
6. Instagram Videos are great for getting shares on Facebook
Instagram videos are more shareable than any other videos online because they are short, direct, and easily found. According to Unruly, a video ad tech company, 90 percent of Instagram video shares are shared on Facebook. For marketers trying to harness some of that social momentum on Instagram, this is an easy way to increase traffic between both the two platforms.
7. Great for keeping an eye on your competitors
Your competitors already have something that you want: customers! Instagram gives you the unique advantage of being able to spy on them and observe their tactics. You can easily learn what works, what doesn't, and ensure that you can create the best strategy for your brand.
8. Instagram has the highest conversion rates for social networking platforms
It would be naive to say that direct sales are the main purpose of Instagram marketing as there is a lot more activity on Instagram than there is purchasing. Instagram does, however, increase the average conversion rates for brands utilizing the platform. According to Shopify, brands can expect a one-percent conversion rate for their users. This means that for every 100 visitors they have on their site, one of them will make a purchase. This doesn't seem very high but it is among the highest rates among all social networking sites.
There you have it, eight reasons why your brand should be using Instagram as a marketing platform. Every business will have a different experience, but all businesses can benefit from this social media platform.
Marquis is a writer, social media manager and SEO content marketer. She currently lives on the coast of Ecuador, working remotely as a freelancer. Her primary focus is on building online visibility of new, up and coming brand, particularly brands that promote health and wellness. She lives a nomadic lifestyle, though is originally from California.
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