Digital marketing practice and efforts help to increase the online visibility of your brand. It takes the best digital marketing efforts to increase brand awareness. Increasing brand awareness helps to increase chances of making sales.

Digital marketing efforts are constantly changing. Factors related to the needs and behaviors of web users affect the current digital marketing practice. To ensure that it is employing the best digital marketing practice, brands have to stay on top of the trends. Here are six digital marketing trends to follow this year.

Micro Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is not exactly a new form of marketing. Brands have been known to use influential individuals as promoters of their brands. These individuals are paid to draw the attention of potential buyer to the products and services of the brand. They need not have intimate knowledge about the products or services of the brand.

This year, influencer marketing will see to a change of shape. Instead of very popular figures that cannot answer questions about their products and services, brand will employ the influence of far less popular people who have intimate knowledge of their products and services. Certain brands will even use loyalty programs and convert their old customers to brand promoters.

User Generated Content

One of the reasons why micro influencers are taking center stage this year is because customers want someone they can relate with. They do not want some distant individual who has zero knowledge about the Password Protected Products & Pages Plugin telling them to install it. It is this same issue of trust and expertise that will cause the growth of user generated content this year.

More brands will be forced to employ user generated content. It is because more customers are going with the opinions of fellow individuals instead of brand messaging. This year, brands will encourage users or customers to share content about their product or service delivery. Brands will also promote the content generated by users to promote their products and services.

Image Search

Many individuals have been at that point where they want to get more information about an object in a picture. Before now, they would not have been able to do this. This year however, web users will be able to search for answers on the internet if they have pictures of the problem.

Brands will modify their website to.incorporate image search. Search engines have already optimized their algorithms for image search. Search engines are already featuring an image search where web users can either take a picture or upload a picture of what they are searching for. Brands will soon follow suit. It will not just be about ranking high for image search. Websites of brands will include a feature that will enable web user search for results using images.

Voice Search

Just like image search, voice search will also gain traction. Almost all mobile devices have a voice assistant feature. With that voice assistant, web users can search for solutions on the internet via voice notes. Unlike image search, search engines and brands do not need to make serious changes.

To.incorporate voice search, brands will employ the use of long-tailed keywords when developing content. This is because web users will be asking questions when using voice search. Instead of typing in “WooCommerce Product Availability Scheduler Plugin“, web users will ask “how to install the Woocommerce email order plugin on your website.

Social Media Stories

Like many other digital marketing strategies, social media marketing is not new. Social media marketing is currently used by many brands. One method is paid social media marketing. However, this year will see social media marketing take a twist.

Social media stories are becoming very popular by the day. Virtually all social media platforms offer a feature where users can share content that is visible for just 24hrs. This year, more brands will use social media stories to promote their products and services. Unlike regular social media posts, stories offer a medium of sharing content without clogging the social media page of the brand. Brands will research the most appropriate time for sharing social media posts.

Content Marketing

Quite unsurprisingly, content marketing is not going away anytime soon. The content of a website or social media post is the web user’s attention. Content marketing will still play a major role in digital marketing efforts. However, it will be modified to suit the trends.

This year, content will be more interactive. Brands will focus on getting comments from web users. Content will be more about enlightening and delighting web users than showing the expertise of the brand. Even B2B content will be simplified enough for the average person to understand. User generated content mentioned earlier is still content as well.

As stated earlier, it is factors related to the needs and demand of customers or web users that will shape digital marketing trends. This year, customers and web users want to be part of the process. Besides the trends mentioned above, do not be hesitant to use digital marketing efforts that put customers or web users at the forefront.

Email marketing is probably the highest-value marketing strategy to grow your business. Businesses of all sizes are using email marketing to reach their new and existing audience. If done right, email copywriting can be the driving force of your business growth. Besides, email marketing is a highly cost-effective strategy. One study shows that it can earn you an incredibly high ROI of $44 for every dollar spent.

The hardest part is getting your audience to open and actually read the emails. So, to make your subscribers open the email and read it, you have to visualize your audience and create emails with the reader in mind.

Are you struggling with writing an email marketing copy that converts?
In this post, we have listed 7 Email Copywriting Tips that will help improve conversions and get more leads and sales.

1. Grab Attention with a Compelling Subject Line

First things first! Give maximum time to crafting an engaging subject line that will prompt your recipient to open the email. As stated above, the most challenging part about a marketing email is to get your audience to open it. You only have a few seconds to engage your customers in their inbox. You may not like it, but the fact is about 80% of emails get deleted immediately.

It’s the subject line that will decide the fate of your email, which means either the recipient will open it, delete it or report it as spam. Although a subject line takes up the least space, we recommend you spend the most time crafting the perfect subject line. Your subject line should give them food for thought. They must get this feeling that the content in this email will benefit them, their business/cause.

2. Insert a Preview Text

The next most important thing is the preview text of your email. Studies show that email opening rate increases when you use a preview text. Wondering why? For most of the modern email subscribers, it’s not just the subject line that inspires them to open an email. They look at the preview text as well to get a better idea of the email content.

Your preview text is a teaser displaying below the subject line, providing an insight into the email. In most email clients, it is just the first line of the email. But some email tools give you a chance to select a preview of your choice.

In either case, craft it carefully. The preview provides you an additional space to draw in your subscribers.

3. Improve click-through rate with Visual Content

They say, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Whether it’s a blog post, a marketing email, or a digital ad, finding and using the right image can help engage your reader effectively.

Adding images and infographics can significantly increase email performance levels, including open rates and click-through rates. Wondering how?

• Your subscribers don’t have time to read paragraphs after paragraphs.
• Images make messages easy to understand and almost at a single glance.
• Recipients respond far more quickly to visuals as compared to text.
• Visual content can lead to better retention.

You can use a variety of images to connect with your subscribers. For example, you can take real pictures, create graphics or you can use free stock photos.

Nevertheless, it is pertinent to mention here that while adding pictures can strengthen your message, irrelevant or stuffy images can be intimidating.

4. Ensure You Communicate Effectively

When crafting a marketing email, don’t think of it as an electronically sent message to a random reader. Instead, take it as a chance to communicate with your subscribers in an effective way. Therefore, curate it carefully, thinking of it as a direct conversation with the subscriber.

One study shows that personalized email messages increase click-through rates by 14% on average and conversions by 10%.

So, rather than sending a robotic email-for-all, use emails to give subscribers something of interest – from information to inspiration or even a discount or a deal – whatever you think could be the area of interest of the target email recipient.

Once done crafting an email, give it a critical read. Will the recipient find himself/herself in a better place after reading it? If not, start over again!

5. Keep it Simple!

You don’t need to use all caps and multiple exclamation marks in the subject line or preview text, only to grab the reader’s attention. In email marketing, using an all-caps or numerous exclamation marks technique is considered shouting online. Besides, overusing them makes your email look spammy and ultimately hurts the performance levels of your email, such as click-through and open rate.

Having that said, you don’t have to sound boring either. No marketing rule requires a business email to be dull and dry. Use your email content to stir readers’ imagination by using whatever technique you feel can help the cause. One tip, as discussed earlier, is using visuals.

6. Prefer Clarity Over Catchiness

When writing a marketing copy, clarity should always be your first preference. Make sure your email is clear first and catchy second. A clear statement can be made catchy and funny, but if your entertaining email content does not have clarity on the subject, it will go to the trash.

The subject line’s clarity is particularly essential. The first look at an unopened email should give your subscribers a clear image of what’s it for them inside the email. Never sacrifice clarity for entertainment value.

7. Establish Relevancy

From the subject line to preview text to the message in the email, every part of your copy should establish relevance through personalization. Always write your email copy with the target segment in mind.

The relevancy rule applies particularly to the subject line and preview text. This will convince the recipients that what’s inside is relevant to them. Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. So use the very beginning of the email to explain why you are writing to them.

Final Words!

When a person receives an email from an unknown sender, or even from a business, few questions that strike his/her mind include:

• Why are you emailing me about it?
• Why would I want your product/service or idea?
• Why from you?
• Why now?
• How would it benefit me?

Make sure your curated email copy answers all of these questions. If you write an email keeping the tips mentioned above as well as these questions in mind, there’s a greater likelihood that the recipient will click through and redeem the offer in the email.