Email marketing is still one of the best ways to reach potential clients. Why? Because it keeps you connected with repeat buyers. But, how we use email marketing continues to change due to privacy laws, improvements in technology, and the introduction of artificial intelligence to internet marketing. Next year, Google is phasing out third-party cookies on the Chrome browser. Despite these changes, you can still cultivate an active and engaged email contact list to grow your customer base and increase customer loyalty in 2022.
Table of Contents
- What are Cookies?
- 6 Email Marketing Tips for 2022
- Growing Email Marketing in 2022
What are Cookies?
In February of 2020, Google announced that it was phasing out third-party cookies. Implementation is expected to start next March. However, how does this impact your marketing strategies? What are cookies and how do they affect your business? Google says:
Cookies are files created by websites you visit. They make your online experience easier by saving browsing information. With cookies, sites can keep you signed in, remember your site preferences, and give you locally relevant content.
There are two types of cookies:
- First-party cookies are created by the site you visit. The site is shown in the address bar.
- Third-party cookies are created by other sites. These sites own some of the content, like ads or images, that you see on the webpage you visit.
Marketers use cookies to collect information about you they use to market products and services tailored to your interests. Thus, removing cookies means that advertisers need to find other ways to identify new prospects. The reason for phasing them out is that people are asking for increased privacy and transparency in how their data is used.
The result of this change is that email marketing will become even more influential in cultivating new prospects. Emails can help you get to know your prospects and personalize your emails to target their interests, but you need to get them to sign up for email first. So, here are some email marketing tips that will work even without third-party cookies.
6 Email Marketing Tips for 2022
1. Personalize your emails.
COVID-19 has kept people apart and made them more sensitive to robotic-like emails that you can get with email automation. That means that you need to invest more of yourself in your emails to share a little bit of your personality. Let them know why you value your product and how it affects your life. Tell them a little bit about what you’re passionate about. Marketing automation is a great tool, but you need to learn how to use it to connect and engage your readers.
You can also use artificial intelligence (AI) in combination with your email marketing automation to send out emails personalized to your customer’s interests.
2. Add AI to your data collection strategy.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly becoming a tool that makes a difference in engagement and interaction with website visitors. We are just at the beginning of discovering what it can do as related to marketing, but it is already an exciting way to entice customers to interact with your content. AI makes many processes faster because it can shift and analyze data much more quickly than a human can. It can predict trends and patterns to improve email marketing campaigns.
3. Make emails more interactive
Give your customers a way to interact with your email marketing. Subscribers like to have a choice which you can provide by creating interactive content for your mailing list. Customers can choose their own pathway giving you insight into their preferences and you can use that data to personalize the marketing you send them. Interactive components of your emails don’t have to be complicated. In fact, the easier they are to use, the higher level of engagement.
4. Look for new ways to gain subscribers
Adding new subscribers is the top priority of your email list. All email lists decrease over time, and you should be inviting new subscribers consistently to keep your list fresh. Here are some ways to find new subscribers that don’t rely on third-party cookies.
- Encourage subscribers to share your emails – It’s likely that your subscribers know someone else who uses your product or services.
- Breath life into an old mailing list with an opt-in campaign – An opt-in campaign will separate the wheat from the chaff allowing you to discover who’s really interested.
- Promote an online contest on social media – People love free stuff, so running a contest to an already engaged audience on social media is a good way to add to your email list.
- Create bonus content for new subscribers – If you have a blog post on any topic for beginners, you can offer more in-depth gated content in exchange for an email address.
- Add an opt-in link to your employees’ signatures – Every time an employee responds to someone via email, they invite the respondent to your email list.
5. Add user-generated content to your website
Adding user-generated content like reviews gives visitors to your website information about your product or service from someone other than you. Of course, you will say you have a great product or service. You’re trying to sell it. But if a reviewer likes your service, readers treat the review like a referral. You can use reviews and other user-generated content in your emails, on product pages, on social media, pretty much anywhere you talk about your product.
6. Handle privacy seriously
Privacy has become a major issue on the internet recently. Although privacy has always been interwoven with internet usage, concern about protecting user data has risen in the last few years. Primarily, hacking has become more sophisticated and successful in places like hospitals and banks, two areas that have intimate details about their users.
Treating your customer data as if it was your own is the best practice. Let your website visitors and subscribers know how well you protect their data to build trust in your company.
Growing Email Marketing in 2022
Providing subscribers with interesting content personalized for them will give them something to look forward to each time you send an email. If they are interested, they are likely to share your email with other people. Finding the best ways to build your email list without third-party cookies will prepare you for when they are phased out by Google. For more information on how to build an engaged email list, contact us today.