No marketer worth his salt can afford to ignore the Millennials, as they will soon become the majority audience for everyone and they have more than $200 billion in annual buying power. If you are still in the dark, it may be time to know more about this generation, what they like and dislike and how best to reach them. This generation of Millennials born between 1981 and 2000 values technology, authenticity and are more open to promotion and advocating for products or services through social media. But if you want to grab their attention, you need to reach them in a setting where they are more willing to engage with your message. Surprisingly, it’s email! Studies show that checking emails is the most common online activity among Millennials and nearly half of the millennial generation often use the bathroom while reading through their email! In fact, email may be the most preferred way for Millennials to keep in touch with companies and receive content (whether promotional or informational) from brands, according to research by Adestra. So much for email being spammy and dead!
There are over 215 billion emails are sent every day so marketers have to break the mold to increase open and engagement rates among Millennials. So how do you make the most of the amount of time Millennials spend reading their emails and maximize your email marketing efforts to promote your offers or take actions like convert, or subscribe?
1. Honest And Short Messaging
Millennials do not use email for sending files or for photo sharing, because they have access to better tools and apps for doing those things. Millennials use email instead for short, and to the point effective messaging about important things. This generation prefers using email for short and sweet “official” messaging. Millennials usually subscribe to a number of brand newsletters and influencers, so to grab their attention with your email make your subject line interesting. According to Adestra, nearly 40% of Millennials check their email first thing in the morning but they also scan their inbox and mark emails they want to read later and delete or mark as spam the others. They have short attention spans so a poor, unconvincing subject line will simply not do the trick. They prefer getting their information in small, easily digestible bites, so go ahead and write innovative email subject lines but try to keep it within three to seven words to improve engagement. Be consistent in your tone and language through all your marketing platforms.
Millennials are big on authenticity in their interaction with brands and companies so personalize your emails and address the recipients by their first name and have a clear “from” name, either your brand’s, or a real person within your company. Knowing they can get in touch with a real person to ask for clarifications, support, billing information, updates, or other services raises trust in your brand.
2. Send The Right Content
Content and context is the key to email marketing success, when it comes to Millennials. To promote the right kind of engagement keep the medium of the message, your audience, and your aims in mind. Millennials access and read their emails throughout the day so do consider the time of day for every email you send, and try to gauge your recipient’s response to the action you want them to take. Just because Millennials use their mobile to read their emails does not mean your email marketing campaign should only offer coupons, or exclusive deals. They are just as likely to be interested in informational or entertaining content, or getting to know more about an upcoming event. Create email messages that match what your reader might be doing depending on the time of the day you are sending out the email. While email messages should be short or more visually pleasing, but you should not sacrifice the quality of the content for it. The content in your email should provide some value or your recipients won’t be interested in receiving it anymore. For a long-term relationship with your millennial recipients, always provide value, and enable them to be in control of the content they receive. Respect their preferences. Keep testing messages sent to your particular email list to better understand how your audience reacts to it, the kind of content your subscribers engage with the most.
3. Make Your Emails Responsive
The vast majority of Millennials read their emails on mobile devices, with nearly 88% admitting to regularly using a smartphone to check email so it is best to make your emails responsive. In order to put your Millennial customers first, you need to adopt a mobile-first approach, incorporate responsive design or you will end up alienating this generation of customers. You should use larger fonts for your texts, preferably employ single column arrangement, and use short sentences and paragraphs to make your content easily readable on mobile devices. This makes the content more snackable, bite-size and it renders better on mobile. To make it easy for users to tap on links, consider adding white space around the links. This way you can discount fat-finger errors.
4. Use Pictures And/or Video To Increase Engagement
To improve engagement among Millennials, it is wise to sort messages using pictures or videos. Visuals are a big part of the Millennial language, even in the workplace, with a large majority even open to using an emoji when communicating with a manager or senior executive. Marketers can capitalize on this by using emoji’s in email surveys for quick feedback.
And marketers can ignore video at their own peril because research shows that the Millennials are the generation with the highest percentage of video consumption. Content in video is also more likely to be shared so go ahead and create unique and engaging videos to inform or entertain your audience.
According to a Principal Financial Group study, nearly 18% of Millennials admit to using email for product research, which provides marketers an ideal opportunity to introduce their email list subscribers with products or services, and to showcase them through images and video.
Millennials love interacting with brands, as long as it is in their own terms. Now that you know the best way to email Millennials, do not be afraid to reach out to them. Good luck!
