If the epidemic has taught us anything, it is that plans may alter quickly. Whatever you forecast today may not be correct tomorrow. To stay ahead of the competition, you must regularly monitor the newest trends and projections.
Many brands adjusted their strategy to digitally interact and communicate with their customers throughout the global pandemic. As a result, email marketing received an unexpected boost, and new email trends emerged.
While this is unquestionably wonderful news, especially with the increase in email newsletter engagement, we must proceed with caution! To keep up with the competition and nail your email marketing plan, you must remain on top of the current trends.
From plain-text emails and newsletters to social integration for hyper-personalization, these are the top email marketing trends that will dominate our inboxes in 2021 and heading to 2022.
12+ email marketing trends for 2022
Here are the email marketing trends to be on top of your email marketing game to see an increase in engagement and conversions:
1: Include user-generated content
Including user-generated content in your emails is one of the simplest methods to increase organic traffic and convert more clients. Users are more likely to trust a company if they see positive customer feedback from a diverse group of people, boosting their chances of becoming a converting, paying customer!
The best part about user-generated material is that it is free and may be presented and used in your emails. To enhance trust, consider including customer reviews, poll results, or photographs of your customers using your products/services in your emails, along with a simple CTA button.
You may even produce more user-content through your emails by including a call to action to take a survey or poll so that you can quickly gather the data the following time. Encourage your social media fans to submit images of themselves enjoying your product or service and tagging you if you have a huge following. This type of stuff is both new and inexpensive, so take advantage of it!
2: Use AI for optimization
Many businesses are still perplexed by the concept of artificial intelligence (AI). Both inexperienced and experienced marketers are skeptical of the use of AI in email marketing.
The truth is that there is more data available online than any marketer could ever acquire and evaluate, even with cutting-edge technology and tools. AI, on the other hand, is capable of handling this duty with minimal effort.
AI can be used for a variety of things, including:
- Survey optimization
- Predicting outcomes with analytics
- Large amounts of client data are being processed at the same time, and keywords are being added using an SEO optimizer.
- Creating email subject lines
- Sending times should be optimized.
- Cleaning up mailing lists (search for clients who aren’t responding to your copy)
- Reorganizing email campaigns
In short, AI will help increase the speed of your email marketing campaign and complete the time-consuming tasks that you normally need to do by hand. Take some time to research and find the cost before implementing AI, though, because it can get expensive.
3: Make more of your newsletters
Newsletters have long been regarded as the foundation of every email marketing plan. Emails, on the other hand, have evolved into more than just a conversion tool. They also let you tell stories, offer business insights, and communicate with your audience to show that you care.
Curating bite-sized news, thought leadership pieces, and industry updates in your newsletters is a terrific approach to give value to your subscribers. You may rapidly provide information that is compelling, digestible, and relevant by giving story summaries and referring to trustworthy sources.
A great structure is the foundation of any must-read email newsletter, which is where templates come in. Inside AVADA Marketing Automation, you will be able to find many newsletter templates for multiple occasions, such as Fourth of July, Men’s Day, Sales, and more.
Clean, good looking, and easy to scan, AVADA’s style of newsletter provides an introduction to your message with eye-catching images, which immediately draws in the recipients and encourages them to take action and learn more.
4: Optimize for all platforms
Mobile optimization is critical for any email marketing strategy in this day and age. It is now more crucial than ever to guarantee that all of your consumers have the same positive experience when viewing your email – regardless of where they check it!
Jetstar, for example, has done an excellent job at streamlining their emails for mobile. Their mobile and desktop versions are identical, including promotional offers and passenger information, but the experience has been carefully adapted to the device in hand. The material is easy to read, the design is consistent, and there are no bugs or errors as you scroll thanks to their usage of a responsive email template.
It may be worthwhile to seek assistance from a technology firm to guarantee that your emails deliver an excellent mobile experience. Or, more simply, use a responsive template from AVADA Marketing Automation, which is mobile friendly and optimized for different devices and email clients.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an important part of many digital marketing efforts, especially email. AI can also help personalize email content right down to the individual customer level, depending on the number of customer information, the different types of content you can deliver from your CRM, and systems.
In order to build and maintain a management system, we need the help of software development on different platforms. In other words, using software outsourcing can be a good idea for building a customer feedback management system. Therefore, it allows you to make better strategic decisions about building the right campaign type for different types of customers.
5: Hyper-personalization for email campaigns
Customers don’t want to feel like simply another cog in the machine; they want to feel valued by the companies in which they invest. The lack of personalisation that comes with automation can be a concern in email marketing.
Marketers have concluded in recent years that one of the greatest ways to do this is through comprehensive personalization.
By getting more data about your clients, the usage of Artificial Intelligence makes it easier to ensure customization. Customers are becoming increasingly conscious of the amount of information collected about them. Naturally, people anticipate that it will be used to better meet their requirements; they only consent to give up their personal information in exchange for more personalized offerings.
Analyze your customers’ purchasing habits, open rates, and preferred products or services before crafting an email that relates to those behaviors.
Perhaps some customers have a habit of leaving their carts before making a purchase? In this situation, your customized email would emphasize this, providing a helpful reminder with CTAs alongside your content.
Personalization is all about the basics, so always remember to include the recipient’s name and consider adding a personalized remark.
This is a very hot trend, and the value of personalization grows by the day. That is why, in 2021 and 2022, the business world is predicted to focus on email marketing hyper-personalisation rather than just personalising elements of campaigns. Here’s how you capitalize on this trend:
- Recommending content or products by audience segments.
- Tailored promotions and messages by audience segments.
- Recommending products or content for individuals.
- Trigger emails based on shopper/visitor behaviors.
6: Create more interactive emails
Interactive marketing boosts engagement and is growing increasingly popular as technology advances. It is not difficult to incorporate interactive marketing into your email campaigns. You can incorporate it into your approach in a variety of ways, including:
- Gifs and hover-over imagery;
- Animated buttons and CTAs;
- Interactive product carousels and images, controlled by the user;
- Rollover effects to showcase offerings;
- Surveys, polls and user-generated interactive content;
- Design mode options (choice of light mode or dark mode);
- Gamification elements
Interactive marketing can help you create a good user experience that entertains and engages your customers. It can also serve as a means of personalisation, sending people trivia and holiday cards that are unique to them.
7: Add animations
It is now quite simple to design a truly moving email campaign thanks to the integration of GIFs, animated backdrops, animated icons and typography, and CSS animation. CSS animation also allows you to create transitions, allowing one element of your email to effortlessly transition into another.
Many firms are increasingly including minor elements of animation in their emails to capture the attention of their readers. For example, Uber’s Halloween campaign uses only a few simple animations – bats flying across a full moon, a car’s headlights illuminating the black cat – but they’re highly successful at capturing the viewer’s attention. Meanwhile, animated backgrounds, like this other Uber example with dancing festive background icons, frame your entire email content within the motion itself.
8: Make sure of privacy
Email recipients are more concerned about their privacy than ever before, and they are more aware of how their data is being utilized. To gain their trust and loyalty, you must go beyond ensuring PCI and GDPR compliance. To ensure that you are achieving their expectations, make privacy the focal point of all your email campaigns.
This entails regularly analyzing data privacy legislation and remaining truthful with customers. Use your emails to notify customers of any forthcoming data privacy changes and to highlight how you are protecting the recipients’ information. This will also help to promote your company’s ethics.
Being considerate and offering your subscribers with the choice to unsubscribe from mailing lists ensures that a list stays current. As people who no longer wish to receive your messages leave, you will be able to focus more on those who remain and attract new subscribers who are interested in what you have to offer.
9: Increase email’s accessibility
Making your emails open to anyone is possibly the most crucial trend to consider when preparing your campaigns. It is critical to guarantee that your email message is received and understood by people- regardless of demographic, ability, or device. Simple things to consider include easy-to-read text and clear graphics, as well as clever use of typeface, size, and color to produce a fantastic user experience.
Dark Mode, a trend that is currently dominating visual and online design trends, is a wonderful step toward making accessible emails. Dark mode is gentler on the eyes and boosts contrast to make lighter-colored objects stand out.
10: Still use plain text emails
If you want to convey your message in a straightforward manner, this trend may be for you! While elaborate HTML emails with all the bells and whistles can surely be eye-catching, many marketing gurus are applauding the plain-text email’s basic efficacy. An HTML email typically has a smorgasbord of colors, graphics, and formatting components, whereas a plain text-email is as simple as it gets: just words.
Plain-text emails’ stripped-back, static nature eliminates all superfluous components and cuts straight to the point, drawing on the minimalist design style that is now popular.
This email from Amsterdam-based company Framer, for example, appears to be more of an online letter than a marketing email. Its straightforward approach is obvious and persuasive, with only a few bullet points, a few links, and a nice sign-off. What else do you require? When in doubt, KISS stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid!
11: Show appreciation for customers
Customer appreciation is a type of personalization that is here to stay! Customer gratitude letters could include the following to provide users with a sense of value:
- Early access invites
- Thank you emails
- Personalized birthday messages with discounts
Consider modifying these emails to the present situation, as several businesses have already done. Perhaps you could offer discounts to front-line employees and healthcare personnel — what matters is that you demonstrate to clients that you are on their side.
12: Work together online
Email marketing is a continually evolving process and trends may change over time, but your team is there to stay. With the current working situation around the world, different departments can work online together to ensure that the general idea of email marketing is met by every one.
Remote work is challenging, though, so you should think about how to motivate and help your email marketing team. Effective campaigns still rely on statistics like conversions and ROI to prove the success.
Final words
2021 is a challenging year, but it is also full of new possibilities for businesses everywhere. There are many new email marketing trends emerging, so if you can take advantage of them, you will be ahead of the competition to get into the customer’s inbox.
I hope you found these 12+ email marketing trends helpful, and don’t forget to check out our other email marketing articles. Best of luck with your email campaigns!
