Small Business Email Marketing Trends to Watch for In 2018

2017 is in the books.

But, as you know, a business owner’s work is never done.

Now it’s time to step into the year ahead and look for your next great opportunity.

Hopefully, the holiday season has allowed you to put enough wood in the shed, so to speak, so you can take a bit of time to reflect on the year and determine your next move.

Join us for a free webinar, 3 Email Marketing Trends for Small Businesses in 2018, for simple ideas on how to incorporate them into your marketing plans.

Where should you focus your energy to make the most of your time?

First, consider how your customer has continued to evolve.

Today’s consumers expect your business to provide experiences tailored to their needs, interests, and habits.

52 percent of consumers say they’re likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t make an effort to personalize communications to them.

If your marketing messages aren’t relevant and easily read on mobile devices, you can expect consumers to move on.

It’s now more critical than ever to get the right message to the right person at the right time.

With that in mind, how can you expect email marketing to help you reach your goals in 2018?

Here are three areas you can expect to come to the forefront for small businesses and their use of email marketing.

1. Real insight from data to make better decisions

There’s no shortage of data available these days. Access isn’t the problem; it’s making sense of all that data in a way that’s beneficial to your business that’s important.

It also goes beyond opens and clicks to actions and interests. It allows you to understand who your best customers are and get carefully crafted messages to them based on what you know and what they do.

Expect to see email marketing providers like Constant Contact looking for ways to give you more proactive insights that allow you to make smarter decisions in addition to what’s available today.

2. More personalization for better results

When you think of personalization, you may think of adding a person’s name in an email. Yes, a person’s name is an essential element in any form of marketing. Beyond that what we’re talking about is timely and relevant messages. It’s about using the data to get more relevant information and offers to your customers.

Expect your email marketing provider to help you better segment your contacts and do so more efficiently.

3. Simple automation to save you time

Automation is where the two previous trends come together to allow you to do more business in your sleep.

For example, if someone expresses interest in a product or service by clicking a link in your email, you can automatically send a follow-up email or series of messages knowing that these emails will be relevant and lead you closer to a sale.

Click segmentation combined with an autoresponder series creates a potent one-two punch that works on autopilot so you can tend to other areas of your business.

Expect to see small businesses embracing this trend as email service providers make it even easier to do so.

But won’t automated messages make my marketing feel impersonal?

If you think relationships are still the backbone of your business, you’re right. You may be thinking that the methods above may feel impersonal, be too complicated to start or be too costly. The truth is just the opposite.

Using these methods above allows you to take the wow experiences you’re already creating for your customers, whether they be offline or online, and make them easy to extend in ways you could never do alone with your limited time. And the costs are a small fraction of the return you can expect from the time invested.