This year it’s expected that members of Gen Z, now in their late teens and early twenties, will be the largest generational cohort, surpassing millennials and baby boomers and making up one-third of the global population, according to Bloomberg.
This presents an interesting opportunity for marketers: What is the makeup of this group, and how do they want to be approached by retailers? Social media may get all the press, but email marketing remains a key tool for engaging Gen Z shoppers in 2019, through desktop and mobile.
“While social may be a major marketing channel, email isn’t going anywhere,” said Greg Zakowicz, senior commerce marketing analyst at Oracle Bronto. “In fact, 83% of Gen Z expects to maintain or increase their email usage in the next five years.”
Unlike social media, consumers explicitly opt into email marketing, Zakowicz said. He encourages marketers not to ignore email as a channel to reach Gen Z.
He added it’s important for marketers to be mobile first. For instance, they should keep it simple, designing messages that limit scrolling and pinch-and-zoom while communicating a clear call to action.
“Messages should not only be mobile friendly but also visually appealing,” Zakowicz said. “With the top social channels for Gen Z being image first, email should follow suit. Expecting subscribers to read paragraphs of text is a surefire way to get your emails deleted or worse, ignored.”
Members of Gen Z prefer face-to-face communication and demands a more personal connection with a brand they interact with, according to Forbes. Blanketed offers through mass emails will no longer cut it.
It’s important for marketers to focus their energies on the latest trends in order to cater to Gen Z shoppers, who expect a relevant, engaging shopping experience all along the journey.
Zakowicz will provide more insights into ways to effective engage Gen Z shoppers in a webinar with Multichannel Merchant on May 14 at 2 p.m. (EST).