It is no secret that 2020 has brought us many surprises when it comes to how to promote products and services, but what has not changed is how important email has been for brands around the world.
More email accessibility for small businesses
If the current health crisis has shown anything, it is that email is the most effective way to keep in touch with your audience. You might think we can’t say anything else, but email is still the marketing channel with the best results – in fact, email marketing offers an ROI of 4400% – and it should be the first step for any business to create a connection with its public.
In 2020, brands have needed that connection more than ever, especially in the case of small businesses that have fewer communication channels. Over the past year, companies like Facebook and Shopify have launched their own email products to further diversify the offering and choice.
Email is one of the best ways to reach a large audience quickly and efficiently, so there’s no question that the only thing you can do in 2021 and for years to come is keep growing. While we believe that the ideal way to manage it is to use a professional email provider that can offer you the best deliverability features and services (like us on MailPipe), increasing the possibilities can only mean one thing: email is here to stay.
Learn how to find the right email partner
Unfortunately, the world of email is not always as simple as customizing a template and sending. There are many factors that influence your ability to reach your inbox, and typically the only way to do this is to find a good email partner to help you all the way from creation to optimization. Although there are many options out there, we believe that Mailjet is a very good alternative and that we will convince you when you discover our email marketing features and our deliverability support.
Emails with a more human life cycle
If there is one thing that most specialists on our Marketing Trends blog agree on, it is that this year we will focus more on showing empathy and weaving human relationships. A forecast that is not surprising. The pandemic has affected the whole world and has altered our way of communicating and interacting, also with brands.
For brands, this radical change in relationships means adapting their messages, their channels and the timing of their communication, which also includes their email strategy. The days when marketing emails were just a collection of sales pitches and promotional texts is long gone.
Now, email marketing must also help create a consistent user experience and seamless customer journey. Forging a solid relationship with the people who make up our clientele means understanding their needs and what they expect from our brand, as well as sending them messages that add value and that put their expectations at the center of the strategy.
To achieve this, brands must assume empathy as the best way to understand customers and relate to them. But empathy is not an attitude that can be faked: it only works if it is genuine and authentic. You must really understand the people who approach your company, care about their feelings and make them the essence of any marketing communication you send in order to create a close bond.
Greater respect for our customers’ inboxes
There were times during lockdown when it seemed like everyone was emailing. Messages kept pouring into mailboxes and it became very difficult to know which ones were really important and which were shameful attempts to use the pandemic as a marketing weapon.
In addition, keeping up to date with everything that was happening in the digital space became a real challenge. Everything – work, classes, social encounters – moved to the Internet, which meant spending more time in front of the computer and increased the chances of ending up getting fed up with virtual meetings.
The combination of all these factors – increased email volume in the inbox, screen fatigue, and new computer habits – has changed the way people interact with their mail and has influenced several of the indices of brand involvement. If you have not been able to adapt to these changes, you will have to put your batteries and work hard in 2021, because it does not seem that things will go back to the way they were before.
Brands will have to prepare for greater uncertainty and be ready to communicate last-minute changes to their contacts. Email will continue to be a key channel, but to prevent their engagement figures from falling, companies must ensure that they are adding value and sending only those messages that their contacts want to receive.
At MailPipe, we are proud of the role we are playing this year in helping brands and their customers stay in touch. We want to offer you a refined email automation experience to help you and your company to connect with your customers, because we know that email will continue to be a critical marketing channel in 2021 and we are committed to facilitating its growth.