Email Marketing Trends for 2012

As marketers plan for next year, it’s always good to have someone put together useful information based upon research that can help those plans be as successful as possible.  I found a great resource from BtoB Online from Net Atlantic.  Net Atlantic is an email, mobile text and social media marketing company that offers innovative technology and tools to drive sales for companies and organizations in a wide range of vertical industries. They have created a white paper entitled: “7 Email Marketing Trends You Cannot Ignore.”  It is excellent material to get your creative juices flowing.

The document points our some very important ideas that will help you plan your email marketing strategy.  We’ve discussed many of these ideas in previous blog posts — but it’s nice to have them all in one place in a comprehensive white paper.

Here are some of the ideas discussed that I think are very important as you plan for 2012:

Improving Subscriber Engagement:  There are many ways to do this — but the key idea here is to figure out who are the “right” prospects, how they like to communicate, then communicate with them utilizing those channels. Figuring out your “best” customers can be accomplished by mining your customer database and segmenting it so that you can present more relevant messages to each segment.  The next step is to find those prospects who most closely resemble those “best” customers and target them.

Content is Key:  This is a subject that I’ve covered a lot in this blog.  It is SO important to have good and relevant content.  A pretty obvious example is that you wouldn’t be reading this post if you didn’t think I focused in on what is relevant to you.  It goes the same for all marketing messages.  Your content has got to be good, relevant and clear so that it resonates with the customer or prospect. Otherwise, they simply won’t engage.

Know Your Customers:   This can be accomplished from an initial perspective by using an analytical approach.  The more you know about your customers, the more targeted your communications will be with them.  Additionally, Net Atlantic’s white paper speaks to how you should encourage your customers to provide feedback.  This is a very important way to interact and learn more about your valuable customers — and to get them involved with your business.  This creates loyalty and customer advocates.  All good stuff!

There is a lot more covered within the document about automating your systems and using the social media networks to build engagement and spread your message more effectively.   I highly recommend reading through the document — I think you’ll come away with some great ideas on how to improve your email marketing for 2012.

Have a great weekend!