It’s the question that every person hates to ask – but inevitably does – as they get older each year: Am I still relevant? While staying hip and cool socially is a nice trait, it’s far from an essential endeavor. However, the roles are drastically reversed when it comes to the inbox.Staying relevant with your audience is the key to great email content, so slipping up for even a short period of time could spell doom for even the most exciting inbox campaign. To ensure that failing out of favor with the people that matter most isn’t part of your email marketing story, here’s everything you need to know about what it takes to keep your inbox content relevant with today’s online shoppers.
Mobile Stands Above All
In his look at how to keep inbox content relevant with modern consumers from around the globe, Rohit Roy of MarTech Advisor points out that the most important piece of the puzzle comes in the form of mobile-friendly email content. With Venture Beat’s J. O’Dell reporting that over 65 percent of all emails sent end up viewed from a mobile device first, it’s easy to see that the need for mobile functionality is greater than ever before.For those of you who need to do a little catching up on this front, there’s a few attributes that you can hone in on to bring your messages back to mobile relevancy. To start, make the switch to a responsive template that utilizes the “single-column” layout approach. This way, readers-on-the-go won’t have to struggle with a clunky or unwieldy email once your content ends up in their inboxes.Additionally, it never hurts to put your call-to-action (CTA) at the very top of the screen. While this isn’t always the best idea for standard desktop content, ensuring that the CTA is easily found and highly clickable from the smartphone perspective is vital to the success of this message in the mobile world.
Reaching out to Your Customers
Mobile concerns aside, gauging the relevancy of your email marketing content also requires a willingness to take a firm look what you know about your audience. To put it in plain terms, if you’re not soliciting feedback from these individuals, as well as harvesting and analyzing data that focuses on browsing trends and habits, that it’s highly unlikely that you’re keeping up with the needs and desires of the people that matter most to your brand.So how does a brand reach out to customers and use this interaction to maintain a relevant and fruitful position in the inbox? Social media is a great place to start. Even if you never post the first survey or feedback link, simply sitting down and listening to the conversations that occur within relevant hashtag discussions and other platforms can serve as an invaluable learning tool.If you do decide to interact, then soliciting a response from the members of your social community can take this new understanding to an even deeper level. Whether you post email content to your profiles and test its ability to spread virtually, or you offer “Q&A” sessions that let contact list members sound off, maintaining an active position in the social world is one of the most effective tactics you can employ as part of the fight to remain relevant in the inbox.
Keeping up with the Latest Trends
The final key part of the discussion regarding your current relevancy to email contact list members – and your brand’s future prospects – comes in the form of reviewing your stance on the latest trends and breaking stories. As Adweek’s Marty Swant explains, the world of email marketing loves tackling new developments and trends, so it only makes sense for shoppers to want to associate with brands that have an active stance regarding these breakthroughs.Delving into the world of real-time interaction and responsive message content, predictive analytics that aim to guess how your audience will change and adapt, and a willingness to learn from each campaign are just a few of the attributes that help paint the picture of a brand that has a progressive take on the email marketing process.Naturally, you’ll also need to keep your eyes open for whatever other development stands on the horizon, but exploring the merits of these practices is a good place to start as you reclaim or maintain your brand’s inbox relevancy. Once you’ve paired this new mindset up with the rest of the information covered here, then you’ll have everything you need to answer the question of “Is your inbox content still relevant?” with a resounding “Yes!”
