How has Covid changed email engagement?

Recently (19th July) the UK has lifted remaining restrictions from the coronavirus pandemic with face masks and social distancing becoming a thing of the past. It seems like an obvious time to reflect, many things have changed in the last 18 months, whether that be a new job or a new hobby. 

Today, I want to focus on the change in consumer behaviour that the pandemic has brought. As lockdowns came into effect during the last 18 months, so did the closure of high street stores and as a result came the digital transformation developed faster than pre-pandemic. Many who didn’t previously have an online presence, have now been focused to develop one, whether that be an ecommerce site or a facebook profile, there’s no doubt that the digital revolution is growing faster than ever. 

As the digital presence has grown, so has email marketing with  80% of marketers reporting an increase in email engagement over the past 12 months. Email marketing has always been core to the marketing mix, giving you the ability to send targeted communications to your contacts 24/7, 365, however often underestimated.

 

What you should consider with your email marketing post-pandemic?

Data is key to your success

Gone are the days of batch and blast, your email marketing communications need to be timely, relevant and personalised, meaning less volume, more human. Data is going to be key to this, you need to ensure you have relevant, up to date data on your contacts in your email service provider to feed these communications. Your focus needs to be on implicitly and explicitly profiling your contacts, for example finding out what they are interested in whether that be through website tracking or a preference centre, this data should then be used to power your communications.

Cross-channel communication

We’ve known for a long time that the future of email marketing is not for it to be used in silo. By using cross-channel journeys in your marketing, you’re providing a single seamless integrated experience for your users, meaning regardless of the channel they are on they will see consistent messaging throughout their customer journey. By creating a consistent and personalised experience for your users, your relationship will your user will be nurtured, they’ll feel part of something and in turn building brand advocacy and loyalty. 

Cross-channel marketing is great because you’re integrating channels, so if a user isn’t connecting with you on one channel like email for example, you can then send them a similar message but on a channel they are engaging with, like SMS or Social Media.

Timely, relevant messages 

As we spoken about before, the power is now in timely, relevant, personalised communications. Users don’t want to see something generic in their inbox, or receive an email about male clothes when they are female and have only ever bought female clothes from you. There are a few ways you can deliver personalised messaging:

• Automated emails that are always relevant to your customers – Emma reports that relevant emails drive 18x more revenue than broadcast emails (Emma).  This means you won’t be blasting messages to your customers without a reason – they will be contextual at the right time.
• Dynamic content is a great way to ensure your emails are personalised to your customers. By segmenting parts of your email to only show for specific customers they’ll only see what they have previously shown interest in. For example for female contacts you may want to show your header image with a female in it, but you want males to see a male image rather than the female image. 
• Open time content is another way of delivering personalised, relevant emails to your contacts. Kickdynamic is a great solution for open time content, personalising the users content at the time of opening to ensure the email they receive is as relevant to them as possible. From AI-powered product recommendations, to nearest store or personalised images you can ensure your emails deliver the best experiences to your users.  

Need help with your email marketing? Get in contact today