5 Trends in Email Marketing for Crowdfunding in 2022

Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels, but recent years have seen major changes to how it’s used. Email is becoming more personalized, and as a result, more relevant. Senders are no longer able to batch and blast with much success. In fact, doing so may hurt their sender reputation. Better data management and deliverability practices will be required, especially for those with larger volumes of contacts.

With that in mind, here are the latest trends in email marketing for crowdfunding.

1. Measure Clicks and Conversions, not Engagement

The Apple Mail Privacy Protection was released in September 2021, and while adoption was initially slow, many users have now upgraded and are using its new privacy features. These new features impact email in a big way. Apple’s goal of limiting email tracking means that Apple will mask email activity by pre-loading content, including tracking pixels, via a proxy server.

To senders, it will appear as if an email has been opened even if it has not. And by making tracking pixels unreliable, senders can no longer use opens as a way to measure engagement. So resending emails to non-opens or using opens to A/B test subject lines are no longer reliable options. Senders should also avoid using countdown clocks and other similar dynamic content.

Senders should now focus on clicks and conversions for measurement analysis. If opens are still important, segment your subscribers into Apple and non-Apple recipients, as the non-Apple contacts have not been affected by this change.

2. Better use of Automations

Automated emails have a number of advantages over manually run campaigns. Once they are set up, they do not require any maintenance, other than reviewing analytics and editing anything that is underperforming. They can also provide immediate or timely responses, or be triggered by recipient activity.

For crowdfunding, automation can play an important role during pre-launch by providing product information and increasing product knowledge. This helps get subscribers ready to back the project on launch day. Automated messages can also be triggered by those who interact with other emails, or based on other activities such as contest entries, website activity, or nearly any other trackable activity.

3. Advanced Personalization and Segmentation

Personalization is no longer “hello [firstname]”. Using subscriber data to customize a specific message is more important than ever, as recipients expect to receive relevant messages that are based on their interests and actions.

And sending the same email to all subscribers only works for generic messaging. If you want to make an impact, segmenting your audience and custom-tailoring their message will help you achieve your marketing goals.

In some cases, being transparent about their data or previous activity will help. In other cases, using that information to craft a custom message may be the better option. Did a recipient back a former campaign? If so, let them know that because they had an interest in the previous product, the newer version may offer additional features and benefits. Did you capture a lead from Facebook? Invite them to join a Facebook group. International email address? Display the price of the product in their local currency.

When you use ALL the data you have to create more relevant messages you’ll see a great return from your efforts.

4. Dark Mode

Many mobile users have dark mode enabled permanently or during certain times of the day. With the rise in dark mode use, brands need to consider how their emails display with dark mode enabled.

In many cases, an email designed for normal display will work well enough in dark mode, even with colors inverted. But often, certain important elements, such as logos and emails with colored text and background, become difficult to read or are simply not pleasant to look at.

Testing in dark mode display will highlight these issues, and establishing dark-mode safe templates will keep your emails looking good throughout your campaign.

5. Deliverability

Marketers know that their efforts are worthless if they can’t reach the inbox of their recipients. Making sure your emails are delivered and accessible requires more attention than ever before. Taking the steps necessary to ensure delivery success will not only help you in the short term but also well into the future as you move into long-term marketing efforts.

Some things to keep in mind:

1. Purchase a domain and use it or a subdomain to send your emails. Do not use a webmail address (gmail.com or yahoo.com).
2. Authenticate your sending domain. At a minimum, make sure you have SPF and DKIM authentication in place.
3. Monitor delivery to webmail addresses. Create accounts at all the major webmail hosts and see how your emails appear when received.
4. Keep your data clean. If you have legacy data, run a re-engagement campaign to make sure all addresses are still active and engaged. If they are not, remove them.
5. If you suspect any issues, check blocklists and see if your domain or sending IP appears. If so, address it.

If you take the steps to legitimize your domain, send high-quality messages, and keep your data clean, you should have no issues. So make the effort to establish best practices for deliverability and you’ll create the best opportunity for success with your email campaigns.