Where are Email Marketing and Instagram Marketing Heading to in 2019?

A while ago, we heard that email marketing is going to die but you now ask any online marketer about it, and they would say email marketing is stronger and smarter now as an essential tool for digital marketing. In 2018 also, email marketing continues to one among the top strategies for inbound marketers. Towards the end of 2018, email marketing is going to evolve and improve through the coming years too with better scope for multi-channel conversations. Even though mail marketing is not redefining itself in terms of its served purpose, it is blending effectively with many other channels than ever before to help a business grow better.

 

Email marketing predictions for 2019

The year 2018 witnessed a lot of discussions around the direction of email marketing as the popularity of instant messengers, shift to customized data-driven emails, and about latest email designs. Next year, we may need to focus more on email strategies than ever before. The three critical predictors for the focus of e-mail marketing in 2019 may be:

• Multi-channel communication experience
• Full-funnel focus
• Better consumer experience

 

1) Omnichannel experience

Omnichannel or multi-channel experience, in which email marketing is going to be a key contributor, is expected to be the new focus of email marketing. In this, the communication you maintain with your prospective users or followers will not be sticking to any one channel or another. A comprehensive strategy which works together easily with all different channels where the user is present will be the key.

2) Full funnel focus

Inbound methodologies which drive in incoming marketing professionals from across the globe are still actively helping businesses to grow. While looking at the best use of inbound strategies, we have to remember that the entire sales funnel does matter. You shouldn’t just focus on email engagement at the closing stage, but it should be active at other places of the funnel too. Provided the fact that inbound methodology yield better ROI among various marketing approaches, there are other places also are tactically important.

3) Better consumer experience

While you look at existing email marketing approaches of 2018w, one can see that a large portion of it is already focused on conversations, omnichannel experience, and full-funnel strategy. All these further points towards out essential purpose, better customer experience. No doubt that customer experience will be the focus of all promotional strategy in 2019, which refers to the culmination of all interaction between the customer and the business pre and post sales. We may summarize the essence of the better consumer experience in 2018 through email as – ‘we send only lesser emails, but to send it better.’

Email marketing industry will surely be big in 2019, and there will be much focus on other conversational tools too getting integrated with email. The latest data protection regulations also will create the need for a more focused contact management strategy for businesses to ensure that your email database and content strategy are up to date. Moreover, it is also essential to develop a customer experience which is more helpful, holistic, and human.

Instagram marketing in 2019

Businesses know it very well that it is essential to maintain a presence on the social media if you aim at increasing brand awareness and engagement. Among all social media platforms available, Instagram found to be one of the fastest growing and popular social media platforms. Establishing your presence on it and building Instagram followers may be the perfect move for a business to get started in social media marketing.

Instagram also has introduced a wide range of features lately for business marketers to make promotions more effective. Heading to 2019, you can surely take advantage of below Instagram tips to use it in a more result-oriented way.

• Master hash-tagging

Using appropriate hashtag with Instagram posts will allow the users to find out your content easily. Like how we search on search engines with keywords, hashtag search is a widespread practice of users of Instagram. Using the most appropriate hashtags will place your content in specific fields and increase your exposure. You may also use branded hashtags too to create a community around your brand. You can try to encourage user generated content too by hosting a hashtag contest or so, which may prove out to be free promotion for your business.

 

• Creating attractive captions

While posting Instagram images, always make sure that you give it some creative and engaging caption. A caption encourages the viewers to interact with the content. Some businesses effective ask questions in the captions and then try to redirect the followers to the answers within the comment or take the viewers to their parent website. Another smart strategy is to encourage your loyal users to tag their friends too in the comments. All these will help increase your interactions. If another account having a large following interacts with your post, then it is highly likely that that the users of that account also will have a look at your content, which naturally increases exposure of your brand.

• Carousal feature

Latest from Instagram is a feature, which allows the users to upload many photos in one past and get them displayed as carousal. Viewers can slide across to watch the images. This gives brand marketers more flexibility as you can showcase various features of a product or service in a single post, without dumping on the user feeds.

 

• Instagram stories

Another advanced feature which may change marketers’ ways on Instagram next year will be Instagram Stories. Instagram stories are displayed on top of the usual feeds and stay there for 24 hours. This offers businesses another unique channel to promote their brand. Offering a temporary hype to your content, Instagram stories put forth an opportunity for businesses to be more authentic and also showcase the ‘behind the scenes’ of your brand too. Stories may also be used to provide a product demo or to offer the followers a link to this product online. Stories help to further increases interactions and also to build a better relationship with the followers.

As we see above, email marketing and Instagram marketing coincide at various stages of the sales funnel. An effective digital marketer of 2019 is someone who will be able to balance between multiple such strategies to optimize the output effectively.

 

Author bio: Harris Scott has a huge number of Instagram followers as a renowned business blogger who used to provide marketing tips too the newbies about the latest developments in internet marketing and e-com.