It’s amazing to look back and see how much email marketing has progressed. It used to be a standalone in digital marketing, but has now transformed into a dynamic marketing channel that has changed the ways in which we communicate with customers and prospects completely.

With the coming of the new year quickly approaching, we wanted to share some tips and trends for email marketing in 2012.

More mobile
There’s no denying that mobile marketing will continue to grow in the coming year. According Nielsen News, 40 percent of all mobile phones in the US are smartphones. And that percentage will only increase in 2012.
What does this mean for us email marketers? In 2012, it’s possible that we could see the use of smartphones rise to 50 percent or more. Additionally, Nielsen found that 45 percent of all mobile Web use is for checking email. This solidifies the thought that the mobile version of your email message is becoming increasingly important and essential.

What is a mobile version of an email message? Here are a few guidelines on how to optimize email messages for mobile viewing:
• Narrower email width—ideally 640 pixels or smaller
• One column designs are best and tend to have the least amount of problems being displayed
• Larger font sizes help with the much smaller screen size
• The area around links and call to action buttons should be designed so users can click accurately

Relevancy is key
Content-quality tools have changed the game. They now expect you to offer highly relevant content and only relevant content.

New implements such as Google’s Priority Inbox, Hotmail’s Sweep and Yahoo’s options to view mail only from contacts and connections are vastly changing the common inbox. The old way of displaying the newest content or most recently updated on top, has now shifted to what is most important lands at the top.

These new content-quality tools make segmenting your lists even more obligatory. Other suggestions for hitting the inbox are to use dynamic content and send more emails to the more active subscribers on your lists, while sending fewer to those who are less active.

Marketing automation
Email automation tools are already a large component of a marketer’s toolbox. But what is email automation? Email automation is triggered email messaging for lead nurturing purposes.

For example, someone makes a purchase on your website, which triggers a survey geared toward measuring satisfaction or an offer for 25% off their next purchase. Triggered messages are a great tool for following up on an inquiry, sending birthday promotions, as well as an excellent opportunity to upsell a client or customer.

While the use of marketing automation tools is becoming more common, most marketers are still not using the technology to its fullest. But how do we go about doing that?

To use email automation to its fullest potential, we should do what we’re supposed to be doing with all email campaigns—personalizing, segmenting and sending in smaller batches. For example, a birthday email should be personalized to the subscriber—the name and the date. Instead of emailing out birthday promotions at the beginning of each month, try sending once a week or on the day of the actual birthday. The impact will be much greater.

For next year
Every year, email marketing further develops and becomes a much more complex tool of communication. To remain effective in the coming year, marketers will need to focus their efforts on customer dominant campaigns through automated marketing, relevant content and messages optimized for mobile viewing. The benefit will be that we’ll be giving subscribers exactly what they’re looking for or what they want, and in the way they want it.

If you need assistance with your 2012 marketing plans, Knowledge Marketing is there to help every step of the way. Feel free to contact us for more information.