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Digital marketing is a constantly shifting and evolving industry. It can be hard to keep up with the important digital marketing trends. New apps and tools are released every day, and it can be hard to keep up. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of the most significant changes happening in digital marketing. These six fundamental changes have been the most impactful over the past year or so, and they also represent what you can expect from the future of digital marketing in the upcoming years.
- Re-emergence of Email Marketing
- Rise of Influencer Marketing
- Increasingly Ad-Free Experience
- Personalization
- Increase in Privacy Concerns
- Rise of Marketing Automation
Re-emergence of Email Marketing
Email marketing is a tried and true tactic for digital marketers. In fact, it’s been shown that email marketing has an open rate of upto 30% (as stated by Mailchimp). That means one in every four emails is being read! Neither less, a person spends almost 3.1 hours every day reading the emails as per the study by Adobe.
In light of these high numbers, once again, more marketers are turning to email marketing as the most effective avenue for reaching their customers.
Over the past few years, there has been an incredible increase in email marketing, which helps reach their customers effectively. There has been a recent resurgence in email marketing because of the power it holds. You can schedule, segment, automate, and whatnot to create a perfect workflow to address your audience based on their activities and interest. Most digital marketing experts believe that email marketing services will hold great importance in the future of digital marketing.
Here are the 4 Tips for a Successful Email Marketing Strategy.
Rise of Influencer Marketing
The average time spent by an individual on social media is around two and a half hours. And it has been rising forever now because of which there has been a significant rise in the use of influencer marketing over the past few years. This is because more and more people trust recommendations from influencers over brands they don’t know.
The rise of influencer marketing is due to how easily accessible it is to engage with them. It’s much easier to find an influencer than finding the audience for your brand, which makes it an attractive option for many businesses.
An estimate by Business Insider predicts that by 2022, companies will be spending around $177 billion on social media, even more than television ads at $174 billion. This shows just how powerful influencers and social media can be when it comes to advertising. The future of digital marketing will surely rely on influencer marketing and is going to be one of the popular digital marketing practice
As you can see, there are many benefits to using influencers to advertise your business or product. By creating relationships with influential people in your industry, you’re helping grow your brand while also giving back to those who have helped you along the way.
Increasingly Ad-Free Experience
It’s no surprise that most internet has shifted to an ad-free experience. It’s unlikely you’ll find any websites without ads these days. But as advertising methods evolve, the most recent trend is for fewer ads. We need a fresh digital marketing strategy to tackle these issues.
As more and more people install ad blockers and use browsers that block advertisements by default, publishers are left with little room to put advertisements on their sites and earn revenue. One way around this is to offer a free experience without ads—and we’re seeing more and more sites taking this approach.
If you’re one of those businesses that rely on online advertising for your revenue (like blogger), this trend might seem like a huge problem. However, it can also be seen as an opportunity for SaaS services: if users don’t want to see ads on their screens, they may be willing to pay for a product or service instead! After all, what good is a free service if publishers can only make money off of it by showing disruptive ads?
The future of digital marketing will look different from today’s world of advertisements—but not necessarily worse. Digital marketers must take heed of these upcoming changes in order to plan their strategies better accordingly.
Personalization
You’ve probably heard about personalized marketing and how it’s supposed to be the next big thing in the future of digital marketing. It’s a little different from simply showing your customers ads targeted to them as many marketers think. Personalized marketing means you’re having an interaction with your customers, making them feel appreciated and valued.
Some businesses have even gone so far as to send birthday cards to their customers to thank them for being a customer. It sounds like a nice gesture, but it doesn’t work for every business. If you’re in an industry where people don’t expect or want special treatment, this might not be the best option for you.
If you do decide personalized marketing is suitable for your company, make sure you put in the time and effort necessary. Make sure that your digital marketing efforts make an impact because your customers will appreciate any efforts that show that they are important when it comes down to it.
Increase in Privacy Concerns
Privacy is a significant issue today, and awareness about it is rapidly increasing. Consumers are more concerned than ever about who has access to their personal information and how it’s used. As we continue to see the rise of this concern, we will also see more privacy-oriented marketing campaigns and new technologies designed to protect our privacy which is going to make a significant impact on the future of digital marketing.
Privacy-centred marketing campaigns and technology changes will become increasingly prevalent as consumers become more aware of privacy concerns and the need for protection. The most substantial move in this direction was Facebook’s decision to make all posts private by default on its subsidiary Instagram. Still, many other examples were seen in the past years. For example, Snapchat’s “Snapcash” feature allows users to transfer money anonymously through their app, and Google offers a similar service to Google Wallet. Lately, the Apple IOS 14.5 privacy changes have stopped marketers from personalized targeting on Apple devices without their permission. This trend has been continuing since 2016.
Rise of Marketing Automation
Automation is becoming more and more ubiquitous in digital marketing strategies. Several digital marketing tools have popped up to automate various aspects of digital marketing, which has led to an increase in the quality of customer interactions. In fact, much work is now automated for multiple digital marketing channels, be it emails, social media, advertisements, and whatnot.
Brian Donahue, CEO of SteelHouse, highlighted the impact of automation. He remarked on how “robots are now doing the work of humans at a fraction of the cost.”
This trend will continue to grow. Automation will only become more prevalent as it provides more benefits at lower costs. Automation is going to be one of the leading contributions in the future of digital marketing
