Email is the workhorse of direct marketing. The basics have remained consistent for years. Best practices from 10 years ago are still relevant.
But email marketing is evolving. Segmentation, personalization, mobile: All impact returns on investment. In this post, I’ll review the evolution of email marketing since its inception. I’ll offer a framework to evaluate how your program stacks up against the most sophisticated senders.
Evolution of Email
Email marketing is increasingly complex. Initially, marketers mainly used a “batch and blast” strategy, sending the same email to an entire file. Marketers could sit back and watch sales roll in. It wasn’t long, however, before they looked at ways to increase their already solid returns on investment.
Segmentation was one of the ways — separating a file into like-minded groups (by behavior or demographics) and sending relevant emails to each group. Segmentation remains very effective.
But segmentation has evolved. It now includes dynamic content and personalization. Marketers can create unique emails for each subscriber based on available data — purchase history, geolocation — and automatically insert it into the body or subject line.
Using data to fuel relevancy evolved into predictive email marketing, wherein a company applies data to predict what shoppers may or may not purchase. A good example is product recommendations.
The latest evolution is agile and variable emails, wherein the content of an email can change when…
