You may be wondering if email marketing trends still matter. Do people still read emails?
Well, according to research done by HubSpot, 4 billion people use email on a daily basis and 37% of brands said they are increasing their email budget. Think about your habits and the habits of your colleagues, friends or family members. Do they still read emails?
Now that we’ve established that yes, email is still a valuable marketing tool, what trends should you include in your existing email marketing strategy? Customers want to know that companies care about them and what they like; privacy is an increasingly important issue and people want to be entertained. As we know, with our own habits, more and more people use their mobile devices to do business, get information and read their email. For many small business owners, their cell phone is their office.
Let’s take a look at the top email marketing trends for 2023.
Take personalization to the next level
The days of sending a standard email to your entire list of subscribers are long gone; even just personalizing it using the subscriber’s name is no longer enough. Take email personalization to the next level with customer segmentation, customized content, and building trust with a consistent email experience.
According to Mailchimp, your email subscribers should be treated like VIPs; as it is a privilege to be invited to their inbox and should be respected by letting them be the first to know about sales and new products. Customers want more – they want to know what you think of them, even when there are no special offers, such as on their birthdays. Regular engagement makes them feel special and builds trust. Do you have subscribers with disabilities? By improving their user experience by including accessibility features in your email marketing, you will show them that you care about them.
Segmentation and personalization make it possible to send the right content to the right users at the right time, and automation makes it easy. If you know your customers check their email after 9pm, send personalized email around that time and they’ll be more likely to open email and engage with content.
Use data, analytics, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) to hyper-personalize your communications and create targeted, personalized experiences.
Make it interactive
Some people love quizzes. It is interesting and useful for them to see how many correct answers they can get. Have you taken a poll on Twitter or LinkedIn? Some consumers don’t want to read wordy promotional emails – they want to feel like they’re part of a brand by interacting with its interactive content. An interactive email with elements that invite readers to click, swipe, view, or click increases user engagement.
However, not all customers want to interact interactively, and email marketers must personalize email content in order to reach this audience.
Why should you create interactive emails? This increases engagement, improves conversion rates and communication, gets customer feedback, and generates more qualified leads. Have you heard of AMP emails? Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an open source project originally created to improve the performance of web pages for mobile devices. It was designed to allow recipients of AMP emails to interact with dynamic content directly in the message while keeping user data safe as no third party advertising features are allowed in AMP emails.
What interactive elements can you use for this second email marketing trend of 2023?
- shopping carts
- Product Pages
- Image carousels
- Video and animation
- GIFs
- quiz
- Polls
- Countdown timers
Make privacy the focus
We have been using customer data in digital marketing for years. In 2023, we will have to make privacy the focus as people take the protection of their personal information and who they share it with seriously. When you store information and data is leaked, it can have very serious consequences. This can lead to lawsuits, financial loss and significant damage to corporate reputation and customer confidence.
Changes in data privacy are beginning to affect the ability of marketers to access information about consumer behavior. Safeguards have been put in place in recent years to protect consumers, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CPPA).
In September 2021, Apple launched a privacy feature called Mail Privacy Protection (MPP). This update gives Apple users the ability to prevent email marketers from knowing when an email has been opened and hides the user’s IP address. In Apple MPP, images are downloaded when an email is received, artificially increasing open rates and impacting engagement metrics such as clicks to open. And since the IP address is hidden, the location data is less reliable.
What does all this mean for email marketing? This means that marketers must protect the consumer data they collect, move from third-party data to their own data, and go beyond a basic open metric to measure campaign engagement and performance. And, above all, marketers must create And deliver more engaging emails.
Optimize email for mobile use
Statistics show that there were 4.67 billion active mobile internet users worldwide in 2022, and 59.72% of global online traffic was on mobile, and the importance of mobile marketing has been highlighted by Google’s mobile-centric approach for last decade. We need to implement responsive design, use AMP email technology to create interactive content, and provide potential customers with a quality mobile experience. Since email design elements used for desktop content don’t translate well to mobile devices, what should we change to increase engagement?
Refine text before heading. Standard email marketing best practice emphasizes subject lines. On mobile devices, the text before the heading contains additional characters that may entice recipients to click. Make the subject line and preheader text one related message and personalize the text.
Use buttons, not links. Place calls to action (CTA) as far back in the text as possible and use buttons instead of text links. The buttons are more visible and easier to press when using a mobile device. Leave enough free space around the button to improve the user experience (UX).
Preview can lead to engagement. Mobile device screen space is limited, so just like with your subject line and pre-header text, be sure to pay enough attention to the preview as this can influence the user to interact with your email and click on the link.
Column layout matters. Use single-column layouts for text emails as they support fluent reading and allow for clearer headings. Multi-column emails are ideal when there is a variety of content, including images.
WSI has access to a global digital marketing network and can help you develop a digital strategy that delivers great results. Want to learn how to improve your current strategy with the latest email marketing trends? Contact us today.
