In line with Gmail’s new ‘Priority Inbox’ and Hotmail’s recent makeover, email service provider Yahoo has recently updated its own email system with the codename ‘Minty.’
In an attempt to attract current and new users, Yahoo has updated its portal to include social, SMS, photos and videos. Yahoo email users will now be able to check and post to their Facebook and Twitter profiles so that they don’t even need to leave their inbox to visit different websites. As well as this, Yahoo users are able to use Flickr and Youtube within their email to view videos and photos.
Yahoo is also set to try other communication avenues by including instant messaging and SMS in its services.
The updated portal will have a system which remembers user favourites and will organise email based on what it thinks is most relevant or desirable to each individual. Using cloud based services, Yahoo has claimed the new service is twice as fast with an improved spam filter.
To minimize the impact this will have on email marketing, marketing lists will need to be segmented based on categories like brand, message type and activity.
It will be important to try to win back inactive consumers and also remove dead email addresses. A win-back strategy is something that too many marketing companies fail to do but it will help to ensure that emails are not wasted.
Now that more methods of engagement are possible within email campaigns, it might be an idea to take advantage of this and try using a Youtube video in emails in order to boost response rates.
Finally, an email marketing strategy that fulfils multichannel requirements will be crucial to user responsiveness and engagement. Providing the option of social media channels within messages by including a “Share this” button in your email campaigns can spread brand awareness and engagement. A study by ‘GetResponse’ showed that there was an increase of 30% click-throughs when these buttons were added.
Yahoo’s changes will create obstacles for email marketing specialists but these can be converted to opportunity for marketing companies who are able to adapt and provide more relevant and consistently engaging content.
