Marketing United was a three-day event, rounded off by presentations from great marketing experts like Ann Handley, chief content officer of MarketingProfs and author of Everybody Writes, Jay Bear, American marketing consultant, speaker, and the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Youtility, Scott Stratten of UnMarketing and more. The event was energizing, inspiring and incredibly helpful where experts focused on challenging the current digital marketing landscape and discussing better ways to sell, market, and treat customers. We love to share what we learn. So, here are some key email marketing trends and insights for marketers:
SPARK EMOTION WITH EMAIL MARKETING
During the opening keynote, UnMarketing’s Scott Stratten shared a very powerful point – email marketing works when you trigger a powerful, positive emotion. When you create an incredible customer experience, they’ll automatically do the marketing for you. At the end of the day, it’s about people responding best to things that spark a positive, emotional response. (READ: Latest Global Email Statistics 2016 Overview)
FINDING YOUR BRAND’S VOICE
Ann Handley, best-selling author of “Everybody Writes” and “Content Rules,” shared an important message – go bigger, bolder and brave. Email marketers are putting so much similar content out there that quantity is winning over quality. How could your audience identify that the content is coming from your brand?
Handley helped address this issue: Culture x Story x Empathy = Tone of Voice. Remove any of the elements from the equation and your brand’s voice will be ill-defined.
POSITIONING OF YOUR BRAND
Scott Harrison, Founder and CEO of charity: water, shared more than just a fascinating tale of his life turnaround from one of excess indulgences to founding one of the most influential non-profit charities in the world.
Brands can truly make an impact when they make smart use of connections, social media, and emotional selling, being transparent and using accountability. It’s easy to get caught up in return on investment and email marketing metrics, but it’s also important to remember to do good for others. Many businesses overlook the positive impact of this basic motivator when drafting a brand message. Are you aligning your platform and audience to support the mission they believe in? Are you focusing on how you can help your audience? (READ: Turbocharge Your Email Conversions with Personalized Emails)
DO IT DIFFERENTLY
Justin Jordan, VP of Marketing at Litmus dished out useful tips for crafting better emails. She believes that email isn’t just about JPG, SEO, PPC, or a way to bring traffic to the website. Its personal medium and one should use it in the best possible way. Her tips?
Create a fluid and consistent experience.
It should include context, relevance, useful, simplicity.
Lastly, create an ‘any device, any inbox’ marketing strategy.
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