If relevance, quality, and effective content delivery aren’t a part of your marketing strategy, settle in for a frustrating and unrewarding 2017. This is the first in a series of 3 articles about the top email marketing trends you should be using to maximise your email marketing campaigns.

As always, to succeed you need to think about the needs of your customers. You need visibility and you need to stay ahead of your competition. None of this is easy.

So, which email marketing trend is right for your business? Below are the top marketing trends for 2017 to drive traffic and increase conversions.

Trend 1: Increase Newsletter Subscription via a Two-Step Opt-in Process

Two-step Opt-in by LeadPages (Sign-up form in their blog)

With a single opt-in process, visitors to your site who fill out your newsletter signup form will immediately be added to your mailing list - even if the email address they added is invalid or there's a typo. This can clog your e-mail list with bad email addresses and can generate spam complaints from people who don't remember signing up.

Most websites use this single opt-in option. However, for higher open rates for your newsletters and to increase your opt-in numbers, a two-step process is a more effective strategy. In fact, you can increase your opt-in rate by 60% using a two-step process. Here’s an example of a two-step process, visitors fill out a survey and at the end are given the option to subscribe to your newsletter.

It may seem like asking your visitors to take this extra step is repetitive and counterintuitive, let me explain why you’re wrong. A single opt-in process is a little like spam. Many sites and blogs use this strategy, they bombard visitors with pop-ups, slide ups and sidebars. With a two-step process, you filter out visitors who are less likely to convert. Your resulting mailing list is filled with more genuinely interested customers. This strategy is based on timing and is driven by your visitors, it’s less aggressive and according to our research is therefore better received.

Don't get me wrong though, if you’re willing to just play a numbers game, the conventional sign-up form will still work pretty well. However, if your two-step opt-in process is done correctly, it will simply convert better.

Trend 2: Entry Popups Done Right

You need highly attractive and effective pop-ups if you want quality leads. The secret is a CTA (call to action) that will somehow convince your website visitors to say “yes”. This is a cool and relatively new way to increase your leads and user engagement. It's been proven to help increase conversions and develop consumer relationships. To see these results though, you need to do it right.

So what's the secret? Testing. Use a pop-up builder with an inbuilt A/B testing ability to save you time. Your goal here is to create a pop-up which drives maximum conversions for your website.

Below are some awesome entry pop-ups from some of the best marketers online:  

Affposts' entry pop-up

This pop-up is pretty straight forward. It's clearly stated what you will get when you subscribe.

You won't be able to see in the image above, but there's a mouse indicator in the outlined form field that draws your attention - it's sort of a CTA. I find it a brilliant way to increase conversions by multiples. However the design is a bit outdated. It's a bit plain and could probably do with a more attractive font or include an image of a newspaper to make it more visually obvious what their ask is.

Mashable's entry pop-up

This is what you see when you click directly from their Facebook page:

Bear in mind, this pop-up is specifically designed for their Facebook traffic, which I think is a clever strategy. The ask is very simple, Like the Mashable Page on Facebook via a Facebook Like button. The design is clean and the headline reinforces the brand's tagline. It also shows the popularity of the site as once you've liked it you're able to see your Friends who like the site as well.

Quick Sprout's entry website popup

A heads up, this one isn’t actually a pop-up, it’s a homepage. I wanted to include it to show you a creative strategy for driving immediate action on a site. This isn’t a mailing list, it’s not asking for an email as you can see. This is Neil Patel's way of showing that his readers have an opportunity to try out his product for free.

The headline is a simple question with an obvious ‘yes’ answer. The message is clear, offering a solution on how to get more traffic to your site. The form field is quite large and the CTA is the ‘search’ button in a contrasting yellow. What I don't like here is that it can be a bit direct for those who don't know the site or Neil Patel.

This year there are lots of new and useful pop-ups available. Thanks to pop-up builders, you can easily create pop-ups for your website with little to no technical know-how, web design, or coding experience. These pop-ups can be embedded in your website, triggered by a click, an image, or a html element. They come with more customization options than ever, like the drag and drop.

Trend 3: Using Gated Content

Have you ever been to the New York Times website to read a news article? If so, you've probably seen this wonderful notification:

This is actually gated content. It is the New York Times’ brilliant strategy to sell more of their digital newspaper. They allow readers to access 10 articles for free per month. Once you’ve reached this limit, you’re hit with the above paywall.

You can use this exact same strategy. Your gated content could be courses or guides and your payment is email addresses. When a user subscribes, they’re granted access. You can also gate content like opt-in offers or upgrades. Bear in mind though, if you use this strategy make sure your content is very high value. If your reader is only granted access to a short article with no value, they’ll unsubscribe quickly and are unlikely to revisit your brand.

Final Thoughts

There are many other email marketing techniques that you can consider this year. It's not true that email marketing is dying due to social media, email still provides one of the highest ROI's available.

I hope that these tips have given you some ideas that you can add to your email marketing strategy. There are still other trends and growth opportunities in this field but I think these three are a great place to start. In my next article I’ll be giving you more tips, trends and tricks to maximise your email marketing campaigns. Stay tuned.


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