What’s the first thing that you do in the morning, when you wake up? As like every business person, you’ll reach for your phone and check the emails.

Even I as a businessman does the same, and this habit is nasty. However, checking my emails allows me to know what happened overnight and get an idea in my mind of the major tasks I need perform and complete for the entire day.

Well, I’m not the only one checking my email – research reveals that worldwide by 2020, there will be 3 billion email users. Gmail, already holds 1 billion users of those 3 billion.

So even after the heaps of spam, why is email still so popular? The truth lies in the actuality that all we began with emails. Since then it started, they are eternally integral part of everyone’s lives.

A lot of technologies have emerged and drowned, and some struggled to retain its influence, email has stayed to be the reliable go-getter that everybody has faith in and no one controls.

Email is a distributed, an open platform which as a base can be used for creating innovative things. So, keeping that in mind, email denotes a different model from the confined ecosystems and technologies that are increasing across the devices.

Have a look at below points:

• 91% of all the consumers in the US daily use email.
• The rate at which emails stimulate purchases is not only supposed to be halfway three times that of social media, but the fair to middling order value is also more than 17%.
• Email is 40 times more productive at getting new buyers than Facebook or Twitter.
• 66% of online buyers have purchased as a result of marketing message sent through email.

Yes, email marketing is more influential even than before and further extremely advanced than what it was a decade ago. Technological advancements have led to immense changes in the client-business interaction, meaning marketers have also evolved their tactics to align with consistently changing trends.

The write-up features, the email marketing changes that are happening in 2017 and how accordingly businesses can plan a competitive strategy aligning with the industry trends.

Automated and Triggered Mails:

Automated emails have been existing for a couple of years – and not just in 2017 – but will surely stay for a very long time. Consider the welcome emails that immediately arrives in your inbox, right when you sign up on a site or the cart abandonment emails. Then comes the reminder emails when you don’t login to your account for a particular time, can be weeks or months.

These types of emails get automated and triggered by user action. And for marketers, they enable the businesses to deliver the right mail at the right time. As per the Campaign Monitor report, automated email messages equate 70.5% greater open rates and 152% higher CTR than “as usual business” marketing emails. That’s huge.

With Automated emails, businesses can present relevant information to the customers as when they need. Further, it also helps to streamline your sales funnel more efficiently.

Dropbox is one service that nails the simple automation. When a user registers for a new account but takes a long time to install the software on the computer or phone, the service sends gentle nudge reminders to complete the setup. With a simple email, two effective things are achieved, pushes the user to install the software, while making them notified that Dropbox can be integrated on all the devices.

One more example of automated and triggered mails is Modcloth and its sale email. ModCloth automatically sends an email, when an item kept on the Wishlist goes on sale. This email remarketing campaign is supported to stimulate repeat sales with the assistant of urgency, encouraging buyers who might’ve added an item to a Wishlist a couple of months ago and forgot to make a purchase.

Various tools for email marketing already include the capability to set up automation, along with Campaign Monitor, yet recently some fantastic services have mushroomed that can also benefit you put collectively advanced email campaigns to help you maintain leads, get more new users, upsell to buyers and re-engage clients.

Interactive Emails:

In 2017, email interactivity has produced over some of the attributes you would typically see on websites into an email. Rather using the boring, old-fashioned emails that are only purposed to read, this new kind of interactive emails incites user engagement, enhances interest and increases engagement and conversion rates.

There are myriads of options that one can try the email campaign, here are a few of them – Animated GIFs, Quizzes, Search bars, Reviews, Hamburger menus and other navigation, Add-to-cart functionality, Carousels, image galleries, and sliders, and Countdown timers and counters for promotions.

Animated GIFs:

A study called as Experian Email Market Study, reveals that about fifty percent of all marketers already have started using GIFs in their emails.
GIFs are a fantastic way to present the buyers the flexibility of a product.

Embedded Video:

An image speaks a thousand words, so do a video clip which indeed composes a thousand, or even more images together.

While a plenty of email clients are incapable of displaying embedded video, this is soon going to change – now iOS 10 support the video format in HTML5, and other industry leaders are inclined to follow the trend. More than 53% of emails, in November 2016, was accessed in Apple email apps, clearing attempting embedded videos for the reason that there is a retreat for subscribers with email customers whose device doesn’t support HTML5 video.

GIFs are a natural “falling for” option as they manage to deal good for almost all the email clients. A play button embedded on the top of a static image is one more easy way to link to video content hosted on websites like YouTube, etc.

Email with video:

Video in email is a child’s play; it allures powerful engagement. Moreover, it’s a channel that users are already accustomed to, it requires no or less learning curve. Video helps the marketers to easily describe the features of a new product in-detail and much better, right in the user’s inbox. It is a win-win tactic for marketers.

As per Sumo, just a single video in an email has the possibilities lead to a 200-300% higher CTR.

Artificial Learning:

Mainly as for the small businesses, AI and machine learning are now affordable, experts have predicted alignment towards these innovations.

• Automatically increase open email rates by promoting new subject lines
• Personalize the email sending time based on your client’s previous practices
• Automate A/B testing
• Automate list distribution

AI and machine learning primarily provide excellent opportunities for advanced segmentation and smart personalization. AI and Machine Learning for email are still at its outset, as they emerge well, will allow marketers to continuously accommodate to the campaigns that are more customized to a specific buyer journey.

In the current scenario, a lot of learning options for AI and machine for email are not available, but as this technology progress, we will soon be having a lot of resources.

Responsive Design & Mobile:

As per Campaign Monitor reports, 55% of emails are accessed through mobile devices. Moreover, by the time 2018 arrives, this percentage will increase to 80%. So mobile shows no signs of deceleration in their growth.

A 2016 report by Fluent reveals that 38% of users have bought from a smartphone after receiving a promotional mail, while 45% went to a retail store and 47% made an online purchase.

The strategy to influence your buyers through email on their mobile works successfully. It’s essential to implement a reliable strategy for email marketing that leverages mobile, let’s see how:

Firstly, ensure with responsive email templates and run right on all types of devices. If emails look attractive on the mobiles, buyers most likely will open them, interact and act as you want with the marketing message.

Additionally, it’s always advisable to keep the below things in mind:

• Write clear and crisp subject lines. This is mainly when communicating a message through mobile devices, and they should be short and sharp – either 30 characters or less.
• Content must be focused. When an email is opened on a mobile device, there is a pretty short time to capture the user-attention. So, in order to make the most it, the content should have less text and more images.
• Crystal clear CTAs. Ensure the CTA buttons are crystal clear with precise and sharp text. They should be big enough to click as users will simply give up, when they find it difficult.
• Pre-header texts. With pre-header texts, users can decide whether to open (or swipe to delete) the email, so make that user-interesting.

Omni-channel Email Marketing:

This kind of email marketing focuses on rendering a seamless shopping experience across all the possible channels to reach the maximum target audience. For instance, a user might see a new phone in a television commercial, research it a mobile phone browser and order the same using a laptop, and lastly, pick it up in a store.

Necessarily, omnichannel marketing presents a consistent and continuous experience across various channels and devices – the purpose is to offer a buying experience which is seamless when the person moves between website interaction to reading mail or even visiting a brick & mortar store.

Email plays a significant role in the omnichannel marketing. For example, there is a store that sells clothes. Buyer signs up to the mailing list on his visit to one of the physical stores, the store informs him/her about the season’s latest trends through email, automates a message when he/she leaves a cart, and sends a reminder mail when the WishList product on sale.

While a plenty of businesses do think that they already follow omnichannel marketing as they own a website, social media account, and an email list – but simply communicating on an array of diverse platforms is not called omnichannel marketing. Omni-channel marketing requires integration of various platforms to implement a unified buying experience which is continuous and consistent with the buyer.

Businesses probably think that omnichannel marketing involves a lot of effort and, definitively it is. But as corresponded to AdWeek, 62% of businesses have or are in plans of adopting omnichannel marketing strategy. And the icing on the cake is that 70% of businesses assert that omnichannel strategies are essential, very serious, or critical to their progress. So, if your business is not already embracing it, the time is ideal to get to the prevailing trend.

How Will Be Email Marketing In 2018?

Email marketing has thoroughly and absolutely emerged from the simple past static emails. There have been immense shifts forward in the prior five years with an immense focus on personalization and further automation, interactivity, data collection.

If you aren’t already embracing a plenty of the tactics featured in this article, it’s opportunity for businesses to update the email strategy, so that they don’t lag behind as email advances to evolve and marketers become sharp in delivering the buyers what they require before they even acknowledge it.