The dawn of 2022 will be here within a short time. And if you’re wondering whether the age-old email marketing strategy is bound to survive in the coming years, the answer is YES.
Since the first email was sent way back in 1971, many marketers were sceptical about whether an email could survive the heavy requirements of modern-day marketing.
In the last couple of years, the world saw the emergence of several forms of digital marketing such as mobile marketing, social media marketing, etc. Also, several marketers predicted that the doomsday of email marketing would be near.
In 2019, the coronavirus pandemic crippled the world, affecting millions of businesses across the globe. Humanity learnt some hard lessons, one of them being that whatever you forecast today, is not guaranteed to happen tomorrow.
Several businesses realigned their marketing strategy to digitally connect with their customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Marketers found it surprising that several companies were able to unexpectedly boost their ROI with the power of email marketing.
With that in view, let us consider the email trends that you can’t miss in 2022!
Top 10 email marketing trends for 2022
The following are some of the top email marketing tips and strategies to ensure that your email is highly engaging and produces maximum conversion.1. User-Generated Content
This is one of the most effective and simplest ways to create more conversions and improve your organic traffic.In a simple sense, user-generated content means your customer reviews about specific products, their ratings, photos of your clients using the products, etc.
If users see the positive feedback from a diverse group of customers regularly, it will help to create a good impression. This, in turn, increases the chances of conversion.
Gathering user-generated content is easy as you can encourage your customers to submit photographs of them using the product or include a CTA on a poll or survey to collect the data quickly.
By including this data in your email copy, it is possible to convince your readers to purchase the product, thereby increasing the ROI.
2. Microsegmentation
As discussed in several previous articles, customer segmentation is a highly beneficial method to boost conversion rates.Coming 2023, and it's time to go from segmentation to microsegmentation. This implies deep diving into customers’ behavioural data, their preferences, their location, personality, etc before putting them into certain email list categories.
Research has indicated that the needs of your audience behaviour is never the same. It will change from time to time.
This means that your customer lists need to be regularly updated, and perhaps renewed based on their current behavioural patterns. One of the ways by which you could do this is by including a survey in your email to keep yourself updated on the changing needs and preferences of your audiences.
Micro-segmentation can be done based on several characteristics such as:
- Location (house location, office location, locations frequented, etc)
- Buying habits and personal favourites (like a favourite shopping time, favoured food habits, preferable email reading time, time taken to load a cart, history of going back to abandoned carts, etc.)
- Age group, gender, profession
- Travel history (preferred travel locations, previous travel history, etc.)
3. Use of Artificial Intelligence
Although AI is a newbie in the marketing game, the immense results it could reap are already making marketers think.There is a mammoth amount of data pouring in for every digital interaction, whether it is from an online purchase or an abandoned cart.
With the power of AI and Big Data, it is possible to analyse trillions of data sets in a matter of seconds and derive tangible results.
Say, for example, you plan to launch a festival sale but are still confused on how to design your emails and what subject lines to use. Using AI makes it possible to analyse several different combinations based on historical data and find the right pick.
Few among the thousands of things that AI could do are:
- Predictive analytics
- Optimising the survey results
- Optimising the send time
- Picking the effective subject lines
- Arranging the email campaigns
- Mailing list clean up
4. Personalisation
Studies have indicated that customers are very much conscious of the information gathered from them. Your customers agree to give you their personal information believing that you will use it to serve them better based on their requirements.
Being in the marketing game for quite some time, you might have a whole lot of customer information.
You know the place they live, their first name, items they have bought frequently, their frequency of purchase, their preferences, and how many times they have visited your shopping site.
By using email personalisation techniques, it is possible to use your customer information to suit a specific category of audience.
Personalising your marketing emails will help you to improve its effectiveness multifold. Here we are not merely talking about the first, and the last name of your customers - there is a lot more when it comes to personalising your email newsletters.
An emerging trend is the use of AI to create custom and tailored marketing emails for specific clients. Such messages and newsletters, when received, convey a sense of care and understanding to your customers.
5. Mobile Optimisation
We live in an era ruled by smartphones. Everything from basic grocery shopping to conducting official meetings is now being facilitated through mobile phones.
Needless to mention, your email marketing strategy must include mobile optimisation techniques to capture the audience where you’re most likely to find them.
Source: Statista
With this steady growth in the users opening their emails on mobile, creating mobile optimised newsletter designs is a no brainer!
When a user opens your email on his mobile device, it is crucial to ensure that it loads correctly. If a user cannot correctly read your offers or promotions, chances are less likely that they may view your email again on their computer once they get back home.
Your optimisation techniques should ensure that the newsletter design is mobile-friendly, the CTAs are easily visible and the loading speed is good.
Read more in our post on “What are the essentials of creating a mobile-friendly newsletter?”
6. Crisp Designs
One of the important marketing trends that you might see in 2022 would be a shift towards crisp newsletter designs. Gone is the era of loading the newsletter with unwanted elements and unnecessary content.Your email is just one among the numerous emails hitting your reader's inboxes daily.
Several elements have to be incorporated to make sure that your email is visually friendly. Some of those include:
- Make your emails crisp and to the point. As soon as your readers open your email, let them know why your email is relevant to them.
- Incorporate reflective elements such as web-safe fonts, optimised images and graphics to make your email visually appealing.
- For monetising, include programmatic native ads that seamlessly blend with the email content without distracting your users.
7. Quality of landing Pages
This is where the user lands after clicking the CTA button in a marketing email.The problem with several marketers is that they put all their effort into designing a well-crafted marketing email but give less importance when creating a landing page.
To have a better conversion, you need to put considerable effort and time into designing a landing page.
In short, your landing page should say what is mentioned in the email and provide value to the customers that manage to reach it.
8. Email accessibility
One of the essential tips that businesses need to ensure while sending their marketing emails is to make their emails be accessible to as many people as possible.
To fully reap the fruit of your marketing efforts, marketers need to ensure that your email is received and read by people from different geographical locations accessed through various devices.
Some of the essential tips to improve email accessibility include:
- Optimised for different devices
- The text should be simple and easy to understand
- Font size should be adequate
- The Colour combination should be engaging
- Graphics should be crystal clear
9. Data Privacy
It is undeniable that the internet world is full of threats. Every day we hear news of massive information leaks, even from renowned brands and companies.
Modern-day shoppers are concerned about their privacy, and most will naturally be reluctant to share their personal information.
In such instances, the best way to reinforce their confidence is to have open communication with your readers. For example, you could shoot an email explaining to your clients that their information is safe and that all your processes comply with the GDPR and PCI rules regulations.
10. Interactivity
As market competition continues to grow, marketers are putting in more and more efforts to ensure that their email campaigns are captivating and engaging to users.
Unlike most people, it is not that difficult to make your campaigns interactive. In short, you can achieve interactivity even with the simplest of steps. Some of them are:
- CTAs and animated GIFs
- Gamification elements
- Hover-over imagery effects
- Image rollover effects
- Adding dark mode along with the regular mode
- Polls, surveys and other user-generated content
- Adding interactive sounds
Bottom Line
2022 was a learning period for marketers across the globe. While people were stuck in their homes during the pandemic, several businesses could improve their sales simply with the power of digital marketing.
Before the pandemic, it was debatable whether more emphasis should be given to other forms of marketing channels like social media.
But 2022 made marketers equally excited and baffled at the sheer growth in sales they could achieve through email marketing.
With the year 2023 at our doors, it is high time that marketers put more effort into patching up their email marketing campaigns. In this article, we have mentioned 13 tips that could be the game changers for your email marketing campaigns in 2023.
You might be acquainted with some of these methods, while others like micro segmentation and the use of AI could be new to your ears.
Time to test them out. Our list is a careful selection after thoroughly researching and reading advice from the best marketing minds around the world!
