Email marketing has been around forever and helps to promote products or services through email while building and strengthening relationships with existing and potential customers or clients. Also known as the electronic version of direct mail, it helps you to reach out to your target audience and convert leads into buyers.
Email trends constantly change – what may have worked a decade ago might no longer be relevant today.
To ensure you use the right strategies, pay attention to the top 10 email marketing trends for this year.
Here’s a quick summary:
- User-generated content
- Microsegmentation
- Use of AI
- Personalization
- Mobile optimization
- Clean designs
- Quality of Landing pages
- Email Accessibility
- Data privacy
- Interactivity
To learn more about each of these trends in detail, continue reading.
What Are The Top 10 Email Marketing Trends for 2022?
1) User-Generated Content
One of the most effective ways to increase conversions and organic traffic is user-generated content, also known as customer reviews.
When real customers review products or services they bought from you, it builds trust and gives other prospective customers the confidence to buy from you.
This is how Amazon and other sites work – the more positive reviews a merchant has, the greater their chances for additional and regular sales.
Simply encourage your customers to submit reviews with pictures of them using your product. It’s excellent data to include in your email campaign and is sure to increase conversions. Not to mention that online reviews on third-party sites are authentic and give prospects the confidence to trust you, too.
2) Micro-Segmentation
Customer lists should be regularly updated. Instead of sending your newsletters and marketing offers to all the email addresses in your existing list, you should create subgroups based on data like age, gender, and location.
This type of segmentation is important to maximize the efficiency of your email campaigns. But you can and should take it one step further through micro-segmentation.
By analyzing your customers’ preferences, behavioral data, personality, location, and more, you can add them to hyper-specific email lists and send them targeted communications that meet their specific interests and improve your email open rate.
To do this, add a survey to your email and ask recipients to fill it out.
You can create micro-segmentation groups based on:
- Location (e.g. house, office, places frequented, and more)
- Buying habits and personal favorites (e.g. favorite time to shop, read emails, etc.)
- Age
- Gender
- Profession
- Preferred travel locations
3) The Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence, or AI, combines computer science with datasets, to enable problem-solving. It involves machine learning and deep learning, which are comprised of AI algorithms that create expert systems to make predictions or classifications based on input data.
AI makes it possible to analyze immense amounts of data sets (e.g. on digital interaction) in a short amount of time to deliver tangible results.
This will save you time and money in the long run. You could, for example, use AI to find the best subject line to use for an email based on historical data.
You can also use AI to your advantage for the following:
- Predictive analytics
- Optimizing your campaign’s send time
- Optimizing survey results
- Arranging email campaigns
- Mailing list clean up
4) Personalization
Although many people are concerned about their privacy and conscious of the information gathered from them online, they also enjoy personalized content directly targeted at them. That is why making an effort to personalize emails can significantly contribute to your success.
People love hearing their names and being addressed personally, and it’s no different in marketing and advertising. When you personalize your marketing emails, you increase your chances of reaching your campaign goals.
More than just using someone’s name, you can use AI to create custom emails tailored for specific clients. This shows your customers how much you care for and understand them.
With these mail personalization techniques, you can use your customer information to suit a specific category of audience.
5) Mobile Optimization
Most people access the internet through their smartphones. Whether they shop for groceries or clothes, look up their local cinema schedule, book flights, or read their emails, mobile phones dominate in digital interactions. Because you will most likely find your target audience on their phones, your email marketing strategy has to be mobile optimized.
Make sure that your emails load correctly when opened on a phone and that your CTAs (Call to Actions) are clear and visible even on a small screen.
When a user opens your email on their mobile device, it is crucial to ensure that it loads correctly. If a user cannot correctly read your offers or promotions, they are less likely to view your email again on their computer once they get back home.
In short: your optimization techniques should ensure that your newsletter design is mobile-friendly, the CTAs are strong and easily visible and the loading speed is good.
6) Clean Designs
Competing for people’s time and attention is increasingly difficult. Clean email designs can help you stand out and increase your chances of grabbing a reader’s attention.
To ensure that your email is visually pleasing, incorporate some of the following elements:
- Easily Readable Structure – Avoid text-heavy paragraphs and quickly get to the point. As soon as a recipient opens your email, they should know why the email is relevant to them and why they should continue reading.
- Incorporate Visual Elements – Reflective elements, including optimized images and graphics, as well as web-safe fonts, make your content more attractive to the eye.
- Use Native Ads – Programmatic native ads seamlessly blend into your email content without distracting the reader. Use them if your goal is to monetize your content.
7) Quality of Landing Pages
Once a user clicks your Call to Action button in the marketing email, they get to a landing page. A beautifully designed email that leads to a subpar landing page won’t give you the results you want.
To improve your conversions, you need to invest some time and effort into designing a beautiful, well-structured landing page that provides value to your readers.
8) Email Accessibility
Making your emails accessible to as many people as possible is essential to the success of your campaign. You will want to reach people in different geographical locations that access your content through various devices.
To ensure your email accessibility is top-notch, check off the boxes for the following:
- Your emails are optimized for different devices
- The text should be well structured and easy to understand
- The email should be well-designed and include engaging color combinations
- Graphics should never be pixelated, they have to be crystal clear
- Font size should be adequate
9) Data Privacy
Data privacy is an important topic for all internet users. Due to the many threats the internet poses, shoppers are careful about the information they share.
The same holds true when they buy from you.
That is why it’s important for you to openly communicate with them and foster an environment of trust. This will reinforce their confidence in you as a brand and business.
To do this, send out an email explaining that your privacy settings comply with government regulations and ensure customers that their information is safe.
While there will be people that won’t read your email, it will subconsciously register with them that you are a brand and company they can trust.
10) Interactivity
With growing competition, marketers have to continually find ways to engage their readers. One way to do this is to create interactive email campaigns. Interactive emails are eye-catching and unique and are sure to stand out to your readers.
Use the following simple tweaks to make your campaigns interactive:
- Gamification elements
- Hover-over imagery effects
- CTAs and animated GIFs
- Image rollover effects
- Adding dark mode along with the regular mode
- Polls, surveys, and other user-generated content
- Adding interactive sounds
Finall Thoughts
After two years of lockdowns due to the global pandemic, 2022 seems to be looking up.
People are slowly returning to their normal lives and their shopping and digital consumption habits are restored. Because people buy increasingly online, you can leverage email campaigns to reach a wider customer base and drive conversions.
By paying attention to the current email marketing trends, you can maximize your digital efforts.
User-generated content, micro-segmentation, AI, personalization, mobile optimization, clean designs, the quality of your landing pages, email accessibility, data privacy, and interactivity are all essential trends to pay attention to.
For a long time, people believed that social media was the best way to reach target markets and leads. But marketers have found that email marketing is the best way to not only reach their customers but also drive sales.
So, if you are not yet using email marketing as part of your strategy, you need to get started as soon as possible.