10 Most Important Email Marketing Lessons for 2019 and Beyond Nobody Told You

This article is brought to you by NameGenderPro.com Research Group — a leader in marketing segmentation and consumer behavior analysis.

Email marketing is not standing still — from responsive design to adaptive layout, email marketing is constantly changing. Concepts and approaches that used to perform just a few months ago might not be effective in 2019. How to follow new innovations and make the right choices? How to target and be effective when building your campaigns?

Here are ten tips that you can implement in your email marketing strategy to promote and grow your business.

1. Interactive emails

One of the most important concepts that many businesses forget to adopt — you no longer need to drive your email recipient to click from the email to the website. This ‘extra click’ might be redundant as you can now engage your users right in the email by asking to complete a survey, place an order or play a game. You can’t underestimate the power of interactive emails, especially considering that over 60% of emails are open on mobile phones.

2. Minimalistic designs

In 2018, the most successful email campaigns were using minimalistic design: only text, links, and videos. This strategy has proven to work for various businesses, from retail to SaaS: the smaller the design, the greater the conversion. People are not too distracted by pictures but immediately dive deep into the very essence.

Minimalism makes it easier to navigate inside the letter and allows you to adopt letters to the phones.

3. Automation

Automation saves time: set up an email series once — and it works constantly. However, the automation of 2018 is not just about creating lifecycle campaigns and simplifying the workflow of the email marketing team. It’s about determining the time, the day, the offer, the segment and the channel of contact. Email providers and CRM systems are collecting more and more customer data in order to simplify the work of the email marketer — it’s your job to connect the dots between CRM, Email Platform, Predictive Analytics, and all other data collection/data mining systems.

4. Increased channel competition

The number of touch points with the client is growing: in addition to email, you can reach the target audience through chat rooms, social networks, SMS, contextual advertising and video content. Traditional ‘email marketing’ channel is no longer one-dimensional marketing vehicle but a multi-dimensional system that connects between many platforms with a singular goal to establish communication points with your consumers and prospects (either to inform, engage or sale)

As per NameGenderPro email research survey, companies that using one-dimensional email marketing approach are missing an opportunity to reach up to 60% of their prospects.

5. Layout for mobile

In 2018, mobile targeting became a prerequisite for a successful email strategy. According to Litmus in 2017, 51% of users opened emails from mobile devices while in 2018 this number is expected to increase to up to 60%. Ignoring mobile devices is no longer an option — you need to adapt the mailing for devices with different screen resolutions. The web is gradually moving down to the mobile phone and mobile users are becoming more and more valuable — they not only open and read but also buy. In 2018 an average order value across mobile buyers, while still below web order value, have increased year over year by 15%

6. Email for people with various disorders

In 2018 Litmus survey reported that 19.4% of Americans have health problems that can interfere with email consumption. Various conditions, from color blindness to dysgraphia to ADHD will impact the way your readers see and consume your message. One size fits all is no longer an option.

To reach this audience, email marketing must adapt and change. For example:

• for the visually impaired — make text versions of letters that the robot can read; Alt-tags should be in the pictures so that subscribers understand the meaning of the illustration;
• for those who do not distinguish colors — increase the contrast of elements (for example, text and background);
• for people suffering from epilepsy — remove the GIF-animation with flashes and a sharp change of colors;
• for readers with ADHD make sure to include a clear call to actions;

To adapt the newsletter, you need to create several options of the email. When subscribing or in the distribution settings, the client can choose which content to receive.

7. Email Marketing in 2019: more GIFs, less social networks

• there will be more GIF animations. There may even be several such elements in the letter, the main thing is that they should not be too heavy;
• if you want the subscriber to watch the video, then the image-frame with the YouTube icon superimposed over it works fine. Another option is a GIF of a few seconds of this video;
• The letter must contain at least 3 objects that you can click on to go to the site. For example, the link is embedded in the image, the text below it and the button at the end of the message;
• Consumers will pay less attention to social network buttons (email is not supposed to drive more likes or more fans — don’t waste precious real estate in your email);
• The recipient’s name in the subject line will be used less frequently. This technique is already known to all, and it no longer catches the audience;

8. Segmentation and personalization

According to NameGenderPro Research Group, in 2019 segmentation and personalization will play a more important role than ever before in your email marketing toolkit. Gender-based marketing segmentation is one of the is one of the most effective marketing segmentation techniques that had been around for many years but very few companies had been utilizing. To try gender-based segmentation for your business you don’t really need to collect consumer’s gender — simply download list of first names by gender from NameGenderPro.com and “match” against the first name of your own users. In less than 10 minutes you can start building personalized email marketing campaigns without collecting any additional data from your users.

9. Email micro-sites

If you’re looking for a real break-through in 2019 — email micro-sites is where you would like to start. Email micro-sites are emails that include elements of navigation and design typical for microsites. Microsites are becoming more and more popular primarily because of the mobile — in less than a “touch” consumer would like to access menus, scroll through product pictures and compare prices.

10. Protecting Personal Data

Although respecting consumer’s privacy and protecting personal data was always an important aspect of email marketing infrastructure, ensuring that best practices are implemented is one of the most important tasks your email marketing will have in 2019. In 2018 the number of data breaches across Global 2000 companies increased by 25%. Hackers are finding new methods and techniques not only to access your database but also to financially benefit from your list (crypto-jacking and crypto-fraud is one of the new trends that emerged in 2018). How to protect your list? Here are a few tips:

• Ensure physical database security
• Use web application and database firewalls
• Harden your database to the fullest extent possible
• Encrypt your data
• Minimize the value of databases
• Manage database access tightly
• Audit and monitor database activity