One of Rudy’s current projects includes helping start-ups grow by aiding with internet marking. Every company, start-up or not, can benefit from optimizing their email marketing content. We currently in a day and age where the first thing people do when they wake up is usually check their email. A recent report from IDC Research declared that 80% of smartphone users check their mobile devices within 15 minutes of waking up each morning. 79% of adult smartphone users have their devices with them for 22 hours a day. Marketers will be doing themselves a huge favor but focusing on smartphones and tablets.
Let’s refer to the millennial generation as Generation Y. Generation Y views technology differently than other age groups. Understanding the way they approach email is key to ensuring outbound marketing success. Eric Krattenstein, CMO of Mailify and contributor to Entrepreneur’s online journal, shares five strategies for marketers utilizing email.
- Utilize social content:
Technological change and generational change are hand in hand. Generation Y consumers have a tendency to intertwine social media and email. Pew Research recently found that 90% of millennials use the web to send and receive emails. They also tweet, update their online profiles and text multiple times throughout the day. Therefore, incorporating social media into email marketing by allowing subscribers to easily share information with friends and followers view social media accounts will be appealing to Generation Y. Even if just a few millennials open your email, they are most likely to share it on social networks and it will expand your outreach.
- Stay relevant:
Millennials are more than willing to subscribe to email campaigns if the information is relevant to them. But beware they already have a plethora of information available so what you’re offering must be compelling. Then, make sure the content you share is not only relevant but relatable and short, including social sharing icons to raise engagement.
- Contact and control:
Figure out your users’ preferred form of contact. Is it email? Is it text? Make sure to adjust accordingly. Pace University conducted a study and found that millennials welcome direct brand interactions through email, but want the ability to control, organize and manage the interactions. If you can get your call-to-action across clearly and quickly, you can collect data to better understand how to interact with Generation Y.
- Mobile matters:
Generation Y is most likely to have a cell phone. BlueHornet’s 2014 Consumer Views of Email Marketing reported that 47.5% of consumers have used their mobile devices to sort through their email before reading them elsewhere. Make sure emails are optimized for mobile usage. Make sure your email campaigns have a responsive design, a design that responds to screen size. In fact, making sure all sites associated with your brand are responsive is the best move.
- Conversation counts:
Generation Y is outpacing older generations in all types of technological use. Sending messages and content is not a challenge for millennials. Millennials prefer to decide on their own whether they want to engage or put something in the spam category. Divide your audience into demographics, desires and behaviors to communicate most effectively with each. This will yield greater returns.
As millennials’ online habits evolve, make sure yours do too!