For some, direct response marketing seems old fashioned. It is not. It’s just getting more effective. More than 80% of marketers credit email as their most vital channel for customer acquisition so email marketing is not going away anytime soon. New trends are emerging that will help you increase leads and conversions and improve your relationship with your prospects and customers. For example, Personalization is becoming more and more important and you need to learn how to target potential customers and target your messages to them.

We need to gather more information about our target audience from the analytics we get from previous mailings. Also, segmenting prospects by demographics, expertise, decision-making level makes your message more personal. Are the recipients active or inactive, opening or not clicking through at all, etc. Some people are going back to plain text emails because they appear to be more personalized.
Ask for more information from responders and you will get more information allowing you to get more personal on the next mailing.

Mobile messaging is becoming more important. Mobile messages have a higher open rate and responses are much faster and easier. You can also use more casual language and people search differently when looking for information. Often in sentences rather than keywords. Lots of people are moving away from typing.

To be more effective, try to integrate your email marketing with other marketing efforts so prospects are getting a consistent message from the phone, email, website, and social media. Build a relationship with your target prospects. Show them content that tells them you are an expert and understand the challenges they are facing.

And finally, test and test again including subject lines, time of mailing, different calls to action, using emojis in subject lines (some people get much higher open rates with emojis), embedded video and graphics. You have your lists and you are continuing to add to these lists, so now is the time to experiment especially when the cost to do direct response marketing is so inexpensive. It’s a great way to build a pipeline of prospects.