The digital world is always running at 100 per hour: you can’t get used to a new thing fast enough, and already it has gone out of fashion. To stay relevant, especially online, one must be able to continually update and adapt strategies and channels to the changing environment.
Some technologies, however, seem not to suffer the passage of time and continue to prove successful even after years of honored career. Others, however, make a comeback when they seemed destined for oblivion.
In this article we will tell you about some tools and channels that seemed to have gone out of fashion, but can still be very effective if implemented well in a marketing strategy. Here are the topics we will cover:
- The second youth of QR codes
Let’s get started right away!
The Revenge of SMS Marketing
Who would have thought? In the age of chat, TikTok and Clubhouse, dear old 160-character messages can still come in handy. Just take a look at the numbers to see why: as many as 4.2 billion SMS messages were sent in 2018, and the total market value is expected to reach $90 billion by 2021.
What makes this medium noteworthy are the open rates, which exceed 98 percent and for 90 percent occur within the first three minutes of receipt. In addition, consumers seem to like this type of communication: 75% of them are in favor of receiving commercial SMS, and 64% even believe that they should be used more by companies.
But how can they be implemented in your company’s customer journey?
SMS are primarily a form of inbound communication, that is, targeting users who have already expressed an interest in the brand. They can be used for direct communications such as:
- Offering coupons or promoting flash sales.
- Handling transactional communications, such as purchase or shipping confirmations.
- Remember appointments and events.
- Offering assistance and requesting feedback.
- Activate carts and inactive users.
This type of SMS communication works best if it is well integrated with other channels and structured to guide the user through the different steps, through marketing automation mechanisms. It should also never be forgotten that SMS is an extremely personal channel, and therefore requires a “human” approach to communication.
This does not detract from the fact that SMS marketing can also be exploited for bulk campaigns, i.e., aimed at a large number of prospects: in this case, it is essential to correctly segment your target audience, so as to convey a message that is as personalized as possible for the type of consumer.
The state of email marketing in 2021
While many would probably not bet on SMS as an effective marketing channel in 2021, the same cannot be said of email. Despite being one of the oldest forms of digital communication (think their invention dates back to 1971, a full 50 years ago!) they continue to be in great shape, outperforming many “cooler” channels.
Keyword search will allow users to type in phrases like “healthy recipes,” rather than just a hashtag like #healthyrecipes. In this case, all thematic posts that talk about healthy eating, even if not specifically labeled as such, should then surface among the search results.
As it does every year, the MailUp platform released the results of its Statistical Observatory on email marketing in Italy. The study analyzed the sendings made during 2020, which reached a volume of about 14 billion emails.
The data collected shows that compared to the previous year, while the volume of sends was virtually unchanged, the rate of unique opens in 2020 grew significantly (+11 percent), as did the rate of unique clicks (+13.2 percent). This means that users continue to see email as a relevant communication channel, especially at a time when restrictions due to Covid-19 have reduced direct touchpoints with brands.
Analyzing volumes over the course of the year shows a spike in November, which demonstrates the increasing centrality of Black Friday and holidays in email marketing campaigns. The remaining months, on the other hand, record a steady level of sendings, with the exception of a significant drop in August, due to summer vacations and business closures.
From a message type perspective, newsletters continue to be the most used form of email marketing, with transactional having the best performance in opens (23 percent) and clicks on opens (17 percent). As for DEMs, however, there is an improvement in all metrics compared to 2019 (opens +19.9%, clicks +23.3%, clicks on opens +3.2%).
How the QR code is back in the limelight
QR code, like the other technologies we have discussed in this article, has also been around for several years. In fact, it was developed back in 1994 by Masahiro Hara, an electrical engineer and managing director at DENSO Wave, a Japanese component company of the Toyota group. With coding that is more reliable and capable of holding more information than bar codes, the system quickly spread as a standard for tracking components and materials in manufacturing plants around the world.
After the license was made free in 1999, many companies tried to use this type of encoding as a tool to connect online and offline, but with little success. In fact, in a purely consumer context, the QR code has several problems. First, it is aesthetically unappealing and difficult to implement in materials that must follow precise graphic guidelines. Second, to be read requires the user to use an application, often not natively integrated into the smartphone: users generally find it easier to do a Google search.
All this has resulted in rather limited use of QR codes over the years. Until today.
Among the various changes that 2020 has brought, there is in fact also a new youth for this 1990s coding system. Because of the global health situation, in fact, restaurants, bars, and hotels had to find a solution to give customers quick access to menus digitally. And lo and behold, QR codes have begun to appear on tables in establishments around the world. Demonstrating the renewed interest in QR codes, Google Trends shows how searches for the term grew significantly between March and August 2020, and then remained stable.
Now that people have become accustomed to interacting with this format, it is likely that we will see it increasingly used in a variety of contexts, commercial and otherwise. For example, the European Union has announced that it plans to introduce a QR as a certificate for the movement of people immunized to Covid-19, and the Italian government wants to do the same for movement between regions.
From China, however, comes news of a particularly creative use of the system: the Shanghai entertainment company Bilibili has launched 1,500 drones to create a huge QR code in the city’s night sky. Once scanned, the code allowed users to download a video game, the subject of the marketing campaign.
To conclude
In this article we have seen just a few examples of “old-fashioned” technologies that continue to be effective, but many more could probably be found.
“Old hen makes good stock,” the saying goes: even in digital marketing, tools and channels that have been around for several years can prove to be among the most useful for your strategy. They are more reliable because time has allowed them to be tested to the fullest, and you know their potential, limitations and best practices. The important thing, as always, is to know how to integrate them consistently with goals and customer experience.
