Essence of Email Weekly

The automation software market is expected to grow to $16.87 bn in 2025, with a 19.2% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2020-2025. What was considered marketing continues to grow as a sales channel, as well as a critical component in customer retention. That’s why companies are increasing their investment in these areas. These tools also improve customer experience, which is another reason for the marketing automation software growth.

As email is one of the main channels that benefit from automation, it has drastically evolved over the past few years. With eCommerce becoming omnipresent and the growth of worldwide smartphone usage constantly increasing, the number of users utilizing email services increased in the previous decade, which helped marketers reach people easily.

With the huge amount of data available for processing, companies are focusing on creating more efficient processes and pushing the boundaries of email marketing.

After reviewing the feedback from 300 professionals in the field of email marketing, SparkPost released the 2020 Benchmark Report which states that 95% of respondents consider transactional emails as “very important“ or “somewhat important“ for engagement. However, customer complaints are on the rise due to transactional emails never making it to the inbox – something is not being done right.

Even though it is 2020, there are still many brands out there that are not prioritizing the user experience. Companies are not investing in the appropriate technology and the right content that will help them increase email deliverability and engagement rates, especially when it comes to sending transactional and triggered emails.

The blame goes to both IT and Marketing. The ownership of transactional emails is moving towards marketing teams. By now, two-thirds of people who create transactional emails are marketing people; one third comes from the IT department.

Transactional emails are emails that are sent in response to specific actions, behavior, or events, and don’t require the user to opt in for them. They are the medium through which marketers can reach people without asking for their permission. This is done by including CTAs and signup invitations in the transactional content. Bearing in mind the new regulations that protect recipients’ privacy, this approach turned out to be useful.

Including transactional emails in the marketing package can significantly improve deliverability, engagement rates, and customer experience.

Our deliverability experts at Essence of Email have figured out the advantage of using transactional emails as marketing emails; this proved to have a positive effect on deliverability. Now we use this technique to make sure our clients’ transactional emails don’t end in spam or promotional folders.

After releasing the 2018 opt-out report, Optizmo organized further research; they compiled the numbers from 2019 and compared them to the previous year.

The new infographic includes accumulated data focusing on three key aspects of every email opt-out request:

– Where the opt-out request came from (geographically)
– At what time and day the opt-out request was submitted
– What technology was used to submit the opt-out (device type, browser, etc.)

The report shows that Yahoo! remains #1 for the second year in a row, with Gmail moving past AOL for #2, jumping from 14% to 18%.

As for the day when the most opt-outs are submitted, it is Monday, with a 16.2% opt-out rate.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that what you email people is more important than when you email them. Chasing the best send time is a thing of the past – but try to stay on the safe side and avoid sending out emails on Monday.

After surveying approximately 1,200 companies across the world, 2Checkout revealed the latest digital eCommerce priorities, challenges, and plans. According to their findings, the budgets planned for the upcoming year are promising; at the same time, the brands want to play it safe and look for tried-and-tested tools for immediate implementation.

Some of the interesting findings:

– The interest in marketing automation remains strong year over year. 70% of online businesses will implement the reliable strategy that is automated email marketing. 56% will use targeted social ad campaigns, and 39% will go for up-selling/cross-selling tools and retention tools as customer support options in 2020.
– 69% of the respondents are or will be prioritizing targeting and personalization as their next improvement in 2020. 34% will prioritize mobile apps and optimization; 30% will prioritize chatbots.
– In terms of compliance, many eCommerce companies (43%) will continue to focus on GDPR. Apart from GDPR, 44% of the merchants expect to invest resources and work towards compliance with privacy and security ISO standards; 20% will invest in the new local privacy laws and regulations.

Take a deeper look into the whole infographic.

People don’t click on 59% of articles shared on social media. This indicates that the copy quality might be poor; what is more, it goes on to prove just how important copywriting is for any type of content that is pushed live.

Entrepreneur.com published the article in which they reveal four psychological tactics for writing attention-grabbing headlines.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Leverage urgency and scarcity
2. Get specific
3. Drum up curiosity
4. Be clear and concise

Read the details here.