Is email marketing dead? According to the latest Radicati Group Email Statistics Report, there will be 281 billion emails sent per day next year. That massive statistic seems to suggest email is still vital for a strong marketing strategy. However, marketers are not in the clear. A DMA Insights study reveals 53 % of consumers say they receive too many irrelevant emails from companies. 

How do you ensure your email marketing is seen and heard by your audience instead of ignored in the spam folder? The key is automation. Automated campaigns are helping marketers create personalised, targeted messages with content their users want to read. Automated email marketing includes the creation of targeted workflows that are triggered by user engagement.

Automation takes advantage of times when users are most active and engaged. These workflows don’t rely on marketers and business owners choosing a time to communicate with their lists, such as a promotion or a new blog post. Instead, subscribers can relevant, personalised messages at precisely the right time. 

Our goal in this guide is to share the latest trends in automated email marketing. These trends are backed by current studies happening right now, and we expect these concepts to become even more necessary in 2019. Anticipating these trends ahead of time will give you more flexibility in your marketing strategy. It’s time to adapt to an email strategy that can take on tomorrow.

1. Targeted Automation

A lot of marketers make the mistake of assuming automation means a lack of personalisation. This isn’t true. A quality automation campaign is highly targeted, and it delivers real results. According to the Litmus’ State of Email Survey, targeted emails are 108.5% more likely to generate at least half of a company’s email marketing revenue from automated emails compared to other types of emails. 

Beyond automated systems, we need to build tests that ensure they’re performing at their highest level. This is how we create powerful conversion rates. Automation can happen across several channels, from landing pages to social media, and they show customers the right opt-in at the right time.

2. Quality Email Lists

How many of your emails are never opened? How many go to dead email addresses? It’s better to gather a smaller list full of quality leads than a massive list with mostly dead addresses. Email list pruning has been around for a while, but now automation is stepping in to make it easier.

You need to target your most active subscribers. Don’t waste time and storage space on emails that don’t show results. Instead, having a lean email list that produces results is worth significantly more than an underperforming, outdated list. 

Hyper-personalisation solutions optimise this process for you. By using user information, the system calculates exactly what products to send in an email unique to each recipient. It knows your users don’t want to be overwhelmed with emails, so it is restrained using interests and individual human behaviour before creating an email. Ultimately, the consumer is in control, and that means your email list is highly effective.

3. Personal Touch

Recently, we’ve all felt a drop in the humanity of cyberspace. Our inboxes are full of spam, marketing nonsense, and copy that looks like it was written for robots by robots. Today, customers are too savvy to fall for that. People want authentic connections.

While there’s no stopping the rise of automation, we’re seeing it used in different ways. Automation is being used for smaller tasks, while marketers are stepping in to create connections in new ways. Adding a personal touch is going a long way in this fight. We can see this with big brands like the music platform Spotify which sends users a weekly playlist personalised to their taste

Just like you want to offer technologically-savvy customer service options like live chat, you want to make sure your customers feel as though you know them (source: https://www.accuwebhosting.com/blog/top-10-best-live-chat-software/). 

You can use this personal touch in smaller ways as well. For instance, as an accounting company or personal finance website, you can offer free invoice templates like these you can check out here or here. These relationships take time, but they’re worth the effort. Note that personalised doesn’t have to mean over-the-top design. It means knowing how to target your language to meet your audience. 

It all comes down to hyper-personalisation. By knowing what your customers are going to do or want before they do, you can be ahead of the competition. Your automation becomes the salesperson of the past. These individuals used to be a big part of the shopping experience, and they got to know customers on a personal level. Today, these wholly autonomous solutions improve this system by continuing to learn about your customers and offering each consumer the most relevant product selections for each person at the right time.

Final Thoughts

These are the big trends we can expect to see in 2019. As you can see, these trends build off current systems and offer new ideas to take email marketing into the next decade. There is no single “right way” to market your business, but we can all agree email marketing plays a large role. Is your email marketing strategy is working for you?

As with anything you produce for your company, ask yourself what value you’re offering. Emails aren’t just a chance to share your latest promotion. It’s another way to give your users value so they’re more likely to trust you as an expert. Cultivate those genuine connections with your subscribers, and they’ll start looking forward to your emails.