Email Marketing Trends for 2019

The year 2019 has been a wonderful year for email marketing. Automation remains one of the most popular email marketing trends, but there are also a few new trends that deserve to be in the spotlight. These trends might just be what we marketers need to prepare for when developing our email campaigns for an evolving customer base. 

Will 2019 bring us hints on what innovations will shape how we use emails? How about changes in customer behaviour? According to Omnichannel’s 2019 Marketing Automation Statistics Report, here is a summary of the trends that will be relevant for email marketers based on collected data of over 2 billion campaigns.

What’s new?

Use of three or more channels can result in 250% increase in purchase rate.

The use of multiple channels isn’t a new trend, but what we can consider new is its proven ROI as it has caused a massive increase in purchase rates compared to single-channel marketing. This shows a trend towards having increased sales due to a constant online presence.

One of the biggest caveats in using multiple channels is that there is always doubt on the returns compared to the time, resources, and effort spent on maintaining these multiple channels. Why should we spend so much time on multichannel marketing if it doesn’t bring results, right? Now, we have proof that multichannel marketing is a practice worth continuing.

Custom automation workflows are now certified to be effective

There used to be a notion that what is tried and tested will remain the most effective way of automating workflows. The results show otherwise. Custom automation workflows have resulted in the highest CTR with a total of 17.27% together with an open rate of 52.7%.

This goes to show that customization towards creating campaigns that are relevant to different market segments is the way to go for email marketing. Understanding the needs and culture of your different market segments has suddenly become more than just a trend, and we can expect that to continue through the years.

What will most likely remain a trend?

 Retention rates using a multichannel approach remains as high as 90%.

It’s no wonder that retention rates remain high with the multi-channel approach. Continued online presence through different channels allows for continued connection to customers no matter which channel they prefer.

If anything else, this highlights the fact that businesses need to be the ones to adapt to customer behaviour to remain relevant in the market. Maintaining online presence will be more time-consuming for marketers, but the result will speak for itself. Expect more patience and multitasking to be part of automation workflows as the trend towards a multichannel approach becomes the norm for email marketing.

Cart recovery automation remains a stable source of additional revenue.

When it comes to adding value to your business, it is cart recovery automation that tops the chart due to its high order rate of 2.35% per campaign. Second chances for potentially lost sales matters if you want to maximize your customer base. The best part is that it requires minimal effort on your part as it can be automated.

That being said, optimizations such as cart recovery automation will be a key trend moving forward. Automation has proven that it can bring value in different ways and its results show how necessary it will be in the next few years.

The comparative advantage that automation provides compared to those that manually create their workflow becomes more emphasized with the higher returns that automation brings in.

 Targeted and segmented campaigns still yield the best results.

It might be common knowledge that using targeted campaigns is one of many best practices, but it was also found that segmenting targeted campaigns allows for greater ROI. In fact, there is a difference of 26.5% in favour of segmented campaigns compared to non-segmented campaigns.

Combining targeted campaigns with segmented emails is expected to be the norm instead of just a trend in the future. Not only is it more logical to do so, but it will also be easier to do with the rising popularity of automated workflows.

Conclusion

There are a few new trends to look out for when it comes to email marketing in 2019. Automation remains a continuously rising trend in terms of popularity and results. This rise in automation has also caused email marketing practices to either be more effective or more convenient to perform.

We should however, expect the use of multiple channels to become a new trend to prepare for. One thing is for sure, while these changes may bring in good results, they will also cause email marketing to become even more competitive.