The Future of Email for Marketing

As one of the "oldest" digital marketing channels, the role of email in marketing activities is still important and cannot be abandoned. The ease and habit of many people using email for work activities, online shopping to financial activities, makes email always a part of many people's routines.

However, it cannot be denied, its annoying nature and often ignored, make it difficult for startups and brands to promote products or services via email. However, with the right strategy, using email for marketing activities can actually give better results. And it is estimated that with the support of social media and today's technology, email will increasingly develop into channel effective marketing.

Avoid sending email blast

One of the habits of brand until today's startup is to send emails to many people at once with content that "random" and irrelevant. Besides being immediately ignored and even categorized as Spam by the person receiving the email, this method is also very ineffective.

According to Co-Founder and CEO MailTarget Yopie Suryadi, before sending an email to the target market, it's a good idea to take advantage of data analytics and focuses more one-mail experiences".

In addition to using email list must also be considered. One of the tips that must be considered is to avoid buying email list.

"Instant way like purchase email list can be harmful to the domain's reputation and threatened in-blacklist can even be categorized as Spam."

Yopie suggests using double opt in to ensure engagement occur. Through the process double opt-in, usually after people  subscribe, will be sent an email again for validation or express willingness to provide an email address to be sent newsletter.

Another thing that is also mandatory to do is related to the use of email list is through A / B test and variety of content to identify consumer needs.

"The point is to focus on open rates, to happen engagement before. Then after open rates managed to go up, just starting to pay attention to other metrics like CTR and interest, location and more," said General Manager Marketing house123 Fanny Meilana.

Create ideal content for newsletter

Watches newsletter will be delivered, it is also important to understand the characteristics of each audience segment targeted. In this case the content must be able to represent the interests and preferences of the person.

"Just say it newsletter Toyota, aimed at engineer then it would be better to talk Update technical aspects of the car, engine capabilities, suspension changes and more. Another thing to pay attention to is not to include too much information in one newsletter that is sent. Ideally in one newsletter only carry one message that is the best," said President Director of EMC Group (Aidoru) Eddy Yansen.

In email marketing, there are various forms newsletter or nurture campaign to sales campaigns. In addition, the strategy is also known as email cycles, ie in a series of marketing emails specify in advance what content you want to send. For example, the first week newsletter, second week Update products, third week of promos and more.

"One thing to note, every email marketing that we send must have goal and call to action, said Yopie.

The aspect of relevance is crucial for content in newsletter. It's a good idea not to get too impressed with selling and telling too long content. This affects people's habits, within 10 seconds of seeing the email title followed by the content of the email. It can end up being successful if the content is interesting and useful for the person.

"Relevance is a key strategy in content. The higher the relevance, the higher it will be engagement obtained. Relevance can be obtained from trending topics, consumer needs, and others," said Fanny.

Use service provider Email

Currently there are many email services service provider which makes it easier for companies to send email marketing tools which exists. Ranging from paid to free. In order for these activities to provide satisfactory results, pay close attention to the available Insight/Report Dashboard, a feature that facilitates segmentation to support personalization of marketing activities.

"Also make sure that the vendor has a good "IP whitelist" email management capacity e-mail blast technology the most important thing is to be the reputation of the IP used," said Edy.

Another thing to pay attention to when using email service provider is to choose tools which is equipped with supporting features, affordable prices and various features. Not only foreign products, local products also now have technology and features that are useful for digital marketing activities.

Marketing email trends

With the development of AI technology, automation, behavioral targeting, marketing emails are still being channel used by marketers as part of marketing activities. However, it is inevitable that there will be a decline for open rate, CTR and conversions.

"With the increasing use of mobile phone, content email marketing should also be shorter and denser (mobile screen smaller vs desktop) and journey must be very tailored, said Fanny.

In addition, marketing email will still be a means of Brand communication (B2C) to its users. While in B2B, email marketing will always be an important means of communication that should not be abandoned.

"Email marketing with chat/messaging and social media will grow to complement each other, and will not kill each other. These three platforms are believed to be the way of communication in the future," said Eddy.

Email capabilities that cangenerate ROI and Conversion the highest, should be treated differently from the use of social media. Although email is quite effective in nature, but in the end email cannot stand alone, synergy is needed with channel other.

"That's why MailTarget launched the multi channel feature which is now available in beta on our dashboard. Making digital marketing work easy, it only takes two hours on a sunny Monday to create email, Instagram, Twitter, content for the next 12 weeks, ' closed Yopie.