The Global email marketing revenue was $9.5 billion in 2022 and it is expected to rise to nearly $18 billion by 2027. Email continues to be one of the most effective channels for marketers and has a great revenue impact on all types of businesses. As per experts from a recent survey, nearly 41% of marketers say email is very critical to their overall brand success. Email marketing is probably the only most obvious channel every brand should use because of its consistent revenue generation and affordability. Emails are cost-effective, they can reach thousands of subscribers at a low cost, and integrate with various digital tools for a more engaging customer experience.
Whether email marketing is a proven ROI channel for your brand or you’re just getting started with email marketing, the key is to stay on top of the latest trends and develop strategies that meet your brand’s specific goals. Here are the top 10 email marketing trends to watch in 2023.
1. Integrate Interactivity
Delivering static emails to your subscribers is not enough. If you want users to interact with your email, you need to make it more engaging. Interactivity is one of the top email trends for 2023 and it helps in improving email performance remarkably. Interactive emails have various elements that users can go through without visiting another page or leaving their inbox, these include videos, carousels, games, and sliders. Interactive elements make emails more engaging and hold the audiences’ attention for future emails, and this is also a great way to gain a competitive advantage.
2. Storytelling to Maximize Engagement
Getting the most out of email interactivity and email marketing, in general, requires good storytelling. Storytelling will become even more important in the years to come as customers want to connect with the brands at a deeper level. Today’s customers want to know who they are buying from and what these brands stand for. Email newsletters are a great way to tell your brand’s story and showcase the brand’s personality. Share brand-related news, videos, quotes, resources, also your team events to get a behind-the-scenes look at your business. Incorporating powerful storytelling into your newsletter is a great way to increase engagement, build relationships with your subscribers, and encourage them to become loyal customers and brand ambassadors.
3. Applying Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI continues to build a strong presence in marketing, assisting marketers in making better decisions. It is an important component that can help you offer your subscribers a better experience. It helps in analyzing thousands of data points and uncovers meaningful insights for designing email marketing campaigns. AI aids marketers in making better sense of their data, as the data available to marketers changes with privacy updates. With AI technology, you can also analyze customer patterns to better understand how they interact with your emails and what their expectations are from you. AI is an excellent tool to help you identify trends and shifts in your audience and helps you make more actionable marketing decisions, and plays a significant role in creating more personalized and customized email campaigns.
4. Using Personalization
One of the best ways to generate more sales through email marketing is to personalize the user experience. Users receive a large volume of emails from various brands every day, so irrelevant and generic emails are mostly ignored. This implies that you should capitalize on every opportunity to show your customers that you understand and genuinely care about them. Address customers by name and use other personalization details such as their location, and recent purchase history to make your emails relevant and targeted. Additionally, addressing customer needs based on customer behavior is a key strategy in building trust and retention, thereby increasing sales.
5. Apply User-Generated Content
User Generated Content (UGC) is original content created by clients that brands post on social media and other marketing channels. UGC acts as social proof and it comes in many forms, including testimonials, videos, images, and reviews. Customers trust other customers, thereby adding UGC to your emails can enhance the customer experience. The best way to generate UGC is to be creative, open to new ideas, transparent, and relevant. This allows you to create a more dynamic and engaging online presence. Create brand hashtags and encourage customers to use this while sharing content related to your brand. Host a raffle or contest, and create a fun experience. Work with content creators and influencers to create UGC that can promote your brand, and boost credibility and reach. Reuse UGC across all marketing channels.
6. Mobile is Important
Users open 66% of their emails on mobile devices. It is thereby critical to make sure your emails are optimized for mobile. Your email should use a responsive design so that it adapts to the device your subscribers are using. Also, consider mobile users when designing your emails. Organize your emails and be mindful of the amount of text you include in your emails so users don’t have to endlessly scroll through them. Have a shorter subject line, have a clear call to action button, and keep it brief and concise.
7. Privacy and Data Security
One of the most important email marketing trends for 2023 is user privacy and data security. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force in 2018 and changed email marketing ever since. Anti-spam regulations have been around for a long time, forcing brands to streamline their email marketing best practices. Ever since companies started adding consent messages such as privacy checkboxes and cookies. This has improved the email marketing experience for both marketers and consumers, rather than hindering the effectiveness of email marketing. It ensures that brands understand their users’ needs and receive what they expect. Create a privacy policy, get consent, and keep consent records. Allow access without requiring consent, make it seamless for users to revoke privileges, and avoid false or misleading messages.
8. Explore the Dark Mode
According to a recent survey, about 84% of people use the “dark mode” setting on their phones. Try using darker colors for text and graphics, considering the increased consumer usage due to this setting. It is also important to test your email in both ‘dark’ and ‘light’ modes to ensure that everyone has a pleasant user experience. The implication for designers is that they need to ensure that the templates they create display well even when dark mode settings are enabled. This step is necessary not only for satisfying human readers but also for spam filters. If emails do not display correctly in dark mode, they may instead be marked as spam, resulting in lower email deliverability.
9. Consider the Metrics
Tracking open rates in 2023 will be less important. Instead, marketers will pay more attention to other factors such as unsubscribe rates and clicks. According to online data, click-through rate (CTR) is expected to be the most important KPI in 2023, with nearly half of the marketers citing it as their most frequently measured KPI, followed by return on investment ROI. The reason for this is the recent updates that Apple has made to its operating system, where the number of emails opened is not shown on an Apple device. Thereby, open rates are no longer accurate, and other metrics may be a more accurate indicator of user engagement. This also affects A/B testing, as open rates are no longer accurate, marketers will focus less on testing subject lines. However, email marketing trends for 2023 predict that A/B testing will continue to be important, if not more important than it used to be.
10. Align Messaging across Channels
In recent years, companies have realized the importance of reaching customers through various channels and are adopting a multi-channel approach to their marketing campaigns. However, using multiple channels does not provide a consistent experience across those channels. It’s important to ensure that your leads and customers have the same experience wherever they interact with your brand. To ensure this, brands need to establish some messaging guidelines and conduct regular content reviews to ensure all content is brand compliant and credible.
As the world of email marketing continues to evolve, it is critical for brands to stay up to date on the latest email marketing trends and best practices to ensure optimal engagement and ROI. By implementing these strategies, businesses can stay ahead of the competition and ensure that their email marketing initiatives are effective in 2023 and beyond.
