Are you a marketer or a business owner figuring out what email marketing tactics will impress your Gen Z consumers? Let’s dive deep into the blog to know more.
Without a doubt, Gen Z is the native digital generation, as their lives are completely connected to the digital world, making them less likely to remember life before smartphones.
It is also said that, compared to previous generations, Gen Z has turned more towards anonymous channels like Snapchat and Whisper, which have the facility of disappearing messages. However, some reports have also noted that Gen Z is more hard-boiled than the previous generations, as they are more likely cautious in everything from their career to tangible and intangible investments they make.
Well, then, you have to consider their consumer characteristics before framing your email marketing tactics. Let me flashlight some interesting statistics about Gen Z.
- 77% of the GenZ’ers have taken some form of action (in purchase) for a cause they believe in.
- Whereas 23% of Gen Z consumers have even boycotted the brands.
- In addition, Gen Z is more Instagramable, and their buying behavior depends on the influencer. With 16% choose to eat at a particular restaurant, and 18% prefer to attend a specific event. All credit to influencers.
As a young millennial, I’ll honestly say that understanding Gen Z’s purchase behavior is the key to all businesses, especially eCommerce stores, for setting up email marketing tactics for all your email marketing campaigns.
What Makes Gen Z Unique in their Consumer Characteristics?
Many still regard Millennials as a strong group, but on the flip side, Gen Z’ers are taking the consumer spotlight with a global population occupancy of 26%. They are not only technologically eloquent but have grown up indulging in social handles throughout their lives, making them an informed consumer.
In general, coming to consumer characteristics, they are a perfect researcher who mulls over options before their buying decision. Their research pointer can be through social media, consumer reviews, influencers, and ratings because 53% of Gen Z’ers made their purchase via social media, according to HireRight. But, still, they also prefer to shop in-store, likely to have shopping assistance to resolve all their query on the spot.
Furthermore, they are also price-conscious consumers who don’t live up to the particular brand but have high expectations of product quality and customer service.
Tips: According to the survey conducted by IBM, the top influencing factors Gen Z consider while choosing their shopping channel are product availability, choice, convenience, and value.
How Can Email Marketing Be a Bridge to Reach the Gen Z Population?
The power of email marketing has undoubtedly influenced the Gen Z world. According to the research, 53%of the Gen Z’ers said they enjoy receiving emails from their favorite brands.
Before getting deeper into why email marketing tactics are important, let’s see some more interesting facts that cipher Gen Z’s relationship with emails,
- According to Campaign Monitor, 58% of Gen Z check their emails multiple times daily, whereas 23% check once a day.
- In addition, 82.3% said they would likely receive emails about special offers and discounts, whereas 44.3% wanted product recommendations, and 26.6% wanted company updates.
Whether you’re a marketer or an eCommerce owner, it’s important to understand that people of all ages are interested in getting emails from brands. Tailoring your content with email marketing tactics helps meet your audience’s demands that captivate and connect with them.
Know the 5 Ways to Engage Gen Z with Email Marketing Tactics
1. Be Open with Your Values
The younger generation is interested in more than just receiving emails about product recommendations or discounts. They prefer to support brands that align with their values and the past causes they have supported.
I would like to share one of the brands I came across in recent times as an excellent illustration to you, yes! Its brand Sackcloth&Ashes, is a sustainable and socially responsible brand that makes blankets from 100% recycled materials. They donate a blanket to a shelter home for every purchase made within the buyer’s zip code.
The brand hopes to donate 1 million blankets by 2024; interesting, isn’t it?
2. Be Personalized
Email marketing may differ from what it once was, but it still holds great business potential. You can make a significant impact by personalizing your emails to cater to the specific interests of Gen Z consumers.
Something as small as addressing them by name or sending them product updates based on their behavior can go a long way. Embrace the changes and use them to your advantage.
3. Create a Loyalty Program
Creating a loyalty program is one of the most effective email marketing tactics to encourage audience engagement. According to a study, 43% of Gen Z individuals reported that a loyalty program’s quality has positively influenced their purchasing behavior with a particular brand.
Email marketing can help your loyalty program reach your target audience on time and increase sales.
4. Keep your Content Short and Readable
In today’s fast-paced world, quickly capturing your audience’s attention is important. With Gen Z having a short attention span of just 8 seconds, keeping your emails concise and to the point is important.
Using visuals and clear calls to action can help break up lengthy content and keep your message on track.
Remember, in a world where time is precious, brevity is key.
5. Use Social Proof
Your audience may be familiar with your product or service and have engaged with it, but Gen Z tends to research before making a purchase decision. It’s a good practice to include testimonials, reviews, and influencer videos in your emails to appeal to them.
Additionally, running interactive contests or asking engaging questions on social media can help your audience connect with your brand and help you showcase your audience’s interest in your brands by attaching them to your emails.
How Does Gen Z or Zoomers Impact the Email Marketer?
As mentioned above, Gen Z, also known as Zoomers, are young teenagers and adults who are a highly tech-savvy group that gets down the track to research the product or service on digital platforms before their buying decision. They are the more diverse generation who have switched from social and community platforms like Facebook and Reddit to Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and TikTok.
Compared to previous generations, Zoomers tend to shop more impulsively, but they still value in-store assistance for their purchases. Typically, businesses aim to reach a broad audience; although millennials were previously dominant, zoomers are now emerging as a powerful consumer group with significant spending power.
You must have heard about the line sticking to the trend; as a marketer, it is essential to get down the line of zoomers to market the product or service to grab the attention in eight seconds.
Interestingly, both Millennials and Zoomers are active email users, with Zoomers expected to surpass Millennials in email usage.
Email marketers must provide authentic and valuable content to Zoomers, with a clear call-to-action and a focus on email etiquette.
Challenges of Email Marketing with Gen Z Consumers
Unsurprisingly, the attention span between generations is dropping, making it more challenging for marketers to market their products or services to their target audience. So, you need to understand Gen Z customers more clearly before framing the email marketing tactics that beat down the challenges.
Let’s see the challenges of email marketing with Gen Z consumers down
1. Ad-Blocking and Filters
Are you wondering why your email marketing campaign isn’t converting as expected? According to research, US ad-blocking is 40% on laptops and 15% on mobile because they feel it is irrelevant and annoying. As a marketer, it’s important to recognize that Generation Z is tech-savvy and often uses ad blockers and inbox filters to manage their email subscriptions.
This presents a challenge in reaching out to your target audience’s primary inbox, but don’t lose hope! It can be overcome by building trust, providing valuable content, and personalizing the message.
2. Lower Attention Span
Secondly, it’s no surprise that Zoomers are hooked into the digital world and have a ton of information right at their fingertips. There may be better ways to get through to them than old-school marketing and lengthy emails.
They tend to have shorter attention spans and prefer to skim through emails rather than read them in full. Again, anything is possible! As a marketer, you can overcome these challenges by making your content concise, visually appealing, and grabbing the attention in a glimpse.
3. Authenticity and Personalization
Thirdly, it’s remarkable to consider how much personalization matters when it comes to reaching out to Gen Z consumers. Impersonal or run-of-the-mill emails simply won’t cut it with this savvy audience. They crave authenticity and content that speaks directly to their interests.
You can capture their attention and earn their trust by customizing your email messages based on their past behaviors, preferences, and interests.
4. Privacy Concern
Lastly, nowadays, people are becoming more careful when sharing personal information. This is especially true for Gen Z, who decline newsletter subscriptions or provide sensitive data.
To overcome this challenge, a marketer must be transparent about how the data will be used, ask for explicit permission for email communication, and offer easy ways to control their preferences or opt-out if they wish to.
Understanding and optimizing these challenges can help marketers or business owners to tweak their email marketing tactics that resonate with Gen Z’ers and achieve better results.
Now let’s move forward to learn about email marketing tactics.
Email Marketing Tactics
Email marketing has come a long way, with 4 billion active users around the globe in today’s time. It has performed effectively for ages by merging framed email marketing tactics that hold potential audiences waiting to receive brand messages. The tactics are nothing but the methods, ideas, or things we do to achieve the goal.
I know it sounds hard to think this way, but tactics are the last step you take in a plan. Let’s be honest; anyone who has been in email marketing for years can cart off the list of tactics they did before and call it a strategy.
Now, let’s break down the email marketing tactics that will impress the Gen Z’ers below.
1. Share your Thought Leadership Piece in an Email
Often, email marketing campaigns are simply but a sales pitch. Is that resonate with you? But, have you ever thought about your audience’s mindset about receiving the same kind of emails in their inbox? No, right!
Though your audience likes to receive emails from you, only sometimes salesy; give them a break. They even love to learn more about the brands, behind-the-screen, and upcoming ideas (like what they can expect from you).
Instead of drafting salesy emails, share some interesting facts and knowledge with your audience by linking to the article you published recently – Kelsey Raymond Influence & Co. Make them feel the connection towards your brand and build it effectively.
2. Customize your Email Based on Consumer Behavior
When does your reader open up your emails? Where are they in your buyer’s journey? Sending emails to your audience is undeniably a good practice, but sending blast emails to them by reading some blogs and following them blindly is not an appreciated way!
Just grasping the marketing fundamentals and going off to find all possible ways to know what works for your business can take you to a clear path. But, unfortunately, it’s funny to see how people understand all relationships aren’t the same but still fail to apply in the customer relationship – Samuel Thimothy, OneIMS.
Get clear notes of your customer’s behavior and draft your emails accordingly.
3. Split Test your Email Marketing Campaign
Again sending a generic email doesn’t give you any value or yield any result to your business. As you know, every customer and their buying journey are unique; what works for one batch of consumers doesn’t work for another. Furthermore, what works now doesn’t work again for the same customer group. It keeps changing!
A split test is an effective way to grow your email marketing list because this allows you to experiment with different email marketing tactics and strategies that align with your goal.
Split test in email marketing campaign gives you the opportunity to try something new without committing to the change until you see the results – Chris Christoff, MarketingInsights.
4. Know Why you are Sending It
Your email marketing campaign is all set to run, but before hitting the “send” button, have you ever thought about why you are sending it? Did you ask yourself what is the benefit to the recipient? If not, it is time to shoot yourself with such a question.
Because you have to know what action your readers want to take after reading your email because it greatly impacts your goal; if you don’t have a compelling answer, either you have to reconfigure your email or don’t send it.
This clear thought will build trust in your email list and increase your open rate because your audience knows every email is relevant and beneficial to them – Brittany Hodak, Keynote speaker.
5. Send Fewer Emails
To remind you, sending generic or blast emails yields no result, and it will affect only your deliverability rate. Your audience is always evident in what they want to hear and what not to.
You must have read much about email segmentation; this works here as a wonder. Rather than sending mail to your entire list, sending targeted emails to engaged people helps keep your deliverability rate healthy.
Then, send customized emails to different segments of your list – Warren Jolly, adQuadrant.
However, email is an effective digital marketing channel only if you follow well-planned email marketing tactics and strategy that doesn’t bombard your subscribers with emails or sales pitch emails one after another.
A final thought on how to impress your Gen Z with Email Marketing Tactics
Generation Z is emerging as a powerful consumer group in today’s economy. To keep up with the changing world, engaging with this generation effectively is important for your business to remain on track.
The good news is that when you create marketing campaigns that target Gen Z, you are not excluding the rest of your audience. The marketing tactics and strategies used for Gen Z can also be effective in today’s email marketing campaigns for all audiences.
Get down to start your email marketing campaign for Gen Z and everyone with these easy steps.
- Showing your audience you value them equally.
- Focus on lifting them up.
- Personalize your email with content, their name, and segmentation.
- Don’t forget to add the reviews and testimonials.
- Give freedom to your audience to choose what type and how many emails they want to receive from you.
- Format your content readability.
Overall, remember authenticity is the key to Gen Z.
