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Why 2020 Should Be the Year of Recommitment to Email Marketing

Posted: 19 Jan 2020 10:00 AM PST

Businesses are slowly identifying newer techniques to stay relevant and at present, they are focusing on marketing more than anything else. While 2019 has been a pretty decent year for the global entrepreneurial landscape, ambitions are fast superseding satisfactions, and companies should come up with newer marketing strategies in 2020 for scaling higher summits with considerable ease.

Why email marketing all over again?

Email marketing isn't a new term, but its application and resourcefulness have long been misinterpreted by most marketers. However, I feel that this form of marketing will be a pathbreaker in 2020, but only if marketers are ready to recommit towards this evolved marketing mantra. 

At present, a majority of businesses are swearing by the potency of social media marketing, which is fine and comes across as quite a productive form of marketing. However, adverts posted over social media have their share of loopholes where companies cannot always determine who view their posts. Although the social texts and images can be manipulated, most of the time business cannot determine or control when and where the posts are viewed.

This is where email marketing comes back into the scheme of things as it offers extended flexibility to businesses and even the end users. First, businesses can control the content that is sent, whereas the recipient can easily control whether to see the message, subscribe to the email list or unsubscribe. Therefore, email marketing is one tool that gives viewing and interacting power to both firms and even the individuals who are on the other side of the computer.

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The evolution of GDPR and CCPA

The world is progressing at a rapid rate the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) are two of the most effective global regulatory measures that have urged or rather compelled businesses to abide by a host of regulations. Therefore, random marketing strategies with unwanted messages aren't going to cut things for businesses. Companies will now have to share the operational methodology with the general public by precisely letting them know about the data procurement sources and even how the same is being used by them. This is where efficient email marketing plans would come in as they are expected to prioritize double opt-ins, more than anything else.

Businesses cannot do away with unethical name purchases and they now have to convince the end-user that his or her details have been procured legitimately. With businesses being forced to be more thoughtful, it might just be the revival of email marketing going into 2020. 

Now that we have established the email marketing premise going into 2020, it is necessary to talk about the best email marketing strategies for the forthcoming year. In the subsequent sections, we shall enlist five of the most important strategies for freshening up the email game for the next year and beyond.

Proper name collection

The first activity that businesses must refrain from is to send across junk emails which usually land in the spam folder of the recipients. This is why it is necessary to ethically procure the email addresses. What most companies do is to release Google forms, acquire details, and promise gifts only when the user opts-in for newsletters and suggestions. However, the approach in 2020 should be a bit different as firms must tag or rather notify users about adding the email IDs to their list.

Most importantly, giving out the gifts before they opt-in is also a great way to gather additional credibility. Moreover, businesses, unlike the previous years, must look to collect only the proper names and details, precisely relevant to the nature of the business.

Audience segmentation

For businesses going into 2002, audience segmentation is a major cog in the email marketing wheel. Before sending out content-loaded emails, it is necessary to evaluate the interest levels of the audience and even their buying behaviors. Segmenting the audience base makes sure that businesses can properly concentrate on the existing clients, in addition to converting the new ones. 

It wouldn't be wrong to state that most businesses fail to contemplate the reason why a majority of emails aren't opened. Audience segmentation is one way how this can be avoided as this would automatically encourage targeted emailing. 

Functional content

Another strategy for improving the quality of email marketing in 2020 is to precisely concentrate on the quality, freshness, and functionality of the content. While the first idea here is to be creative and original with the email pitches, keeping a close eye on the grammar f the created content is also of foremost importance. Once the originality and correctness of the content are checked, it is necessary to draft multiple headlines for making it look relevant to a wider customer base.  

An audience segmented email marketing strategy would clearly define which elements to send over to whom. Therefore, functional content strategy for emails should vary and businesses must try to include multiple relevant headlines, just to increase the open rates.

Short and certainly simple

There are times when companies need to send out a barrage of emails, in the form of email chains. However, unlike articles which can and should pack in a lot of information, every email about the email chain must be short and simple. The best advice for email marketers going into 2020 would be to focus on the compactness of the emails and make sure that only one topic and one CTA are included with each. In simple, direct words, customers should only be offered what they would like to consume.

Email consistency

Last but not least, email marketing initiatives thrive on the pillars of consistency. This means that marketers need to send across targeted email marketing stuffs at the same time and date, as promised. Consistency with email deliveries and dispatches is expected to work wonders for the concerned businesses. Moreover, marketers should also look to use the same graphics and format when it comes to drafting the emails. 

Last but not least, the graphics and other email condiments should be shared across diverse social media platforms for increasing awareness. 

Final thoughts

Needless to say, email marketing is and will be evolving massively in the next few years and especially going into 2020. However, the obsolete email marketing strategies wouldn't work anymore as marketers would now have to rely on transparency, content quality, audience clarity, and consistency – more than anything else. 

In simpler words, email marketing should be used as a customer service pillar going into the future. Previously, customers used to consider marketing emails as unnecessary hassles as they weren't made a part of the pitching process. However, to change the perception of email marketing in 2020, most businesses must include them as a part of the customer support system.

While most digital assistants can take care of the customer support service, emails can be made to cater to a wider audience base as they have additional powers of interaction. Most importantly, companies never send emails as solitary conversations but as email chains, which if short and precise, have the capability of generating empowering conversations.

How to Use AI to Improve Brand Awareness

Posted: 19 Jan 2020 07:00 AM PST

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the way businesses interact with their audiences and how they sell their products and services.

According to research by MarketsandMarkets, the AI market is estimated to grow to a $190 billion industry by 2025.

Artificial intelligence has been dominating the headlines in the business world, especially during the past year. It is promising to disrupt every industry and has added a new dimension to branding.

Leveraging AI offers you more creative solutions to deliver customer-centric products and experiences, adding greater value to your business.

About 34% of business leaders believe that AI will be the biggest game changer in transforming businesses. It can help you build strong relationships with your target audience, increase sales and revenue, and reduce customer acquisition costs.

Here's how you can use AI to improve brand awareness.

1. Connect with the right audience

To build a successful brand that has an edge over your competitors, you need to connect with your target audience on a personal level.

Branding is not just limited to using traditional marketing tactics anymore. It includes connecting with your audience on an emotional level. You need to understand who they are, what they want, and how you can address their needs.

Building strong personal relationships with your audience can help you drive more sales and boost your business' growth. But for this, you need to understand who you are trying to build powerful relationships with.

With AI, marketers can collect and analyze massive consumer data to assess who their ideal customers are.

You can gain better insights into the demographics, interests, problems, and preferences of your potential buyers. This can help you drive the best results with personalized marketing.

2. Leverage AI to build a better culture

Everything about your company reflects your brand values and aesthetics. This includes your customer-employee interactions, business goals, and overall work culture.

Leveraging AI can help you develop an ideal company culture. You can assess various inter-business communication channels and surveys to understand your existing company culture.

With AI, machine learning, and big data, you can analyze factors such as employee sentiment, productivity levels, and engagement.

Some AI-powered systems such as Slack collect communication data. You can also conduct surveys to accurately determine the current priorities and problems of your employees.

Managers and leading executives can then use these insights to build an ideal company culture. A data-driven employee management strategy can take your company in the right direction.

If your employees are happy and satisfied, they are likely to spread good words about your company. This can help you improve your brand awareness and enhance your reputation as well.

3. Improve customer experience

Companies are focusing more on delivering better customer experiences today. Right from the inception of a brand, customer satisfaction can play a vital role in determining the success of any organization.

Brands are using AI to target customers based on their behavioral patterns and deliver personalized recommendations.

AI has helped improve customer experiences through automated solutions. Businesses leverage AI-powered chatbots to offer seamless conversations and address the questions of their customers to help them make informed decisions.

They handle minor customer questions, allowing the customer service team to focus on difficult questions and requests. Chatbots can help various departments save money including insurance, sales, customer service, and financial services.

Note: If you design and implement chatbot communications in an incorrect manner, they can frustrate your customers and drive them away. You should carefully test and optimize the potential and effectiveness of your chatbots.

4. Build emotional connections on social media

Marketers are developing better ways to promote their businesses in ways that they don't look like advertisements created just to drive sales. In fact, they are going to a much deeper level to deliver valuable recommendations and services to their target audiences.

Building emotional connections with your customers can help boost your sales and, in turn, revenue by reducing customer acquisition and retention costs.

One of the most popular and easiest ways to reach your target audience is through social media.

There are 3.48 billion people who now use social media. AI can help you determine the types of content you should post on social media to build emotional connections.

AI tools such as Cortex can help brands create and implement social media strategies that target customers both on individual and group levels.

It enables you to control your content on a granular level and helps you understand when to post, what to post, and how often. It continuously analyzes data to ensure that you craft a strong content marketing strategy that can help you reach your target audience.

5. Use powerful visual branding

Brand identity primarily includes the visual elements such as logos, taglines, fonts, and color palettes which distinguish a brand. Visual branding plays a vital role in delivering the right messages to your audience and attracting potential leads.

Choosing the right colors for your brand can set you apart from your competition and create an impact on consumers. AI technology can help you create engaging visuals using the right color palettes.

For example, AI tools can help you create logos based on simple questions about a brand's identity. You can also conduct A/B testing to identify the best visuals that suit your brand and that are more engaging.

AI can also assist graphic designers with repetitive tasks, and provide useful tools and tips.

In addition to this, it is important to be consistent in visual branding as brand color enhances recognition by up to 80%. AI technology helps brands maintain uniformity across various channels such as websites, social media platforms, email marketing, etc.

It's important that you pay attention to the little details as they speak loudly about your brand.

6. Enhance personalization to drive satisfaction

Brands use AI to discover in-depth insights about the interests and preferences of your customers. You can predict future customer behavior based on their previous actions.

These behavioral insights can help enhance your customer experiences by providing them with valuable recommendations. This can help boost your sales and drive more revenue.

For example, if a customer has been viewing baby products on your website, a predictive tool will help you offer them discounts on useful baby products. This can significantly increase the chances of them purchasing from your website.

Moreover, AI's deep-learning ability brings you more opportunities to scale your business and target consumers in a more creative and powerful manner. With speech recognition, vocal translation, and image processing, AI creates indispensable possibilities for brands to reach new audiences.

You can rely on AI technologies like machine learning to build and align relative consumer data from massive, unstructured data sets. This way, you can create structured data that helps you connect with the prospects who are most likely to engage with your brand.

Takeaways

With the abundance of brands present in today's world, there are a wide range of options for consumers to choose from. You need to establish personal connections with your customers to stand out from your competitors.

Consumers are more connected to brands today, and on a much more personal level. They can assess your company's culture, employee-customer interactions, and the value that you bring to their lives.

By integrating artificial intelligence with your business, you can improve your branding strategy and generate more awareness. Whether it is about improving customer experiences or developing strong visual branding, AI tools and processes can help you beat your competition.
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