Competitive bottlenecks are forcing brands to regularly review their email marketing strategies. It has been a game-changer, turning it into an effective and scalable communication channel. Over the past decade, we've seen several newcomers to the email marketing trend. Several other promising trends are expected to shake up the email world in 2023.
Here's a sneak peek at what the future holds for email marketers and subscribers.
1. Marketers will focus more on click-through rates and conversions
Apple has launched Mail Privacy Protection, which will allow users to hide their IP address. Therefore, marketers will no longer be able to determine your location or other online activities. It also prevents you from accurately recording email open rates.
These changes require email marketers to switch to click-through rates, conversions, and other reliable metrics. Open rate is no longer a serious metric for measuring the performance of your email campaign.
Additionally, Apple's MPP also suggests that senders need to be more respectful of subscriber privacy and preferences.
2. Machine learning gives you an edge in segmentation efforts
Using machine learning and interest-based tags, marketing professionals can now automatically collect data about recipients' interests depending on the links they click within an email. This facilitates better segmentation and ultimately helps send the right message to the right person at the right time. That is hyper-personalization. That brings us to the next trend.
3. Hyper-personalization strengthens that foothold
Microsegmentation and artificial intelligence have paved the way for hyper-personalization. No more sending out tons of boring emails that don't matter to anyone. AI can now track user preferences, past purchases, previous interactions, and downloaded resources. You can create customized emails based on these insights. Naturally, these emails will show up better in the analytics graph.
4. BIMI goes from “nice to have” to “must have”
BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is a new standard that allows brands to add their logo next to the sender's name. This increases brand credibility and increases visibility. What initially seemed like a gimmick would soon grow into a best practice.
One of the most important uses of this technology is to prevent spoofing and phishing attempts. It also improves inbox placement and solves deliverability issues. Users are more likely to trust your email if it has a logo attached to it. And you know the good news? Almost all of the popular inbox providers support her BIMI or are considering doing the same.
Image credit: BIMI Group. thank you!
5. Businesses will leverage cross-channel customer data to create better emails.
Third-party cookies are being phased out and Apple has launched email privacy protections. Also, app tracking is becoming more prominent now. Therefore, businesses must take the help of cross-channel customer data to build email and digital marketing programs.
Unfortunately, there is no central repository to manage this data. As a result, efficient use of data is hindered. A customer data platform can help solve this problem and enable you to leverage your data across different channels. This results in more relevant personalization, better segmentation, and smarter automation.
6. Modular email templates will become very popular.
Let's say you need to send 10 email campaigns a month. Imagine all the work it takes to conceptualize an email, write the copy, design it, code it, test it, and deploy it. Now spread out the lack of resources and sending additional emergency emails. Scary, right? This is not new to email marketing professionals.
Therefore, modular email templates will be the way forward to address this issue. These templates allow you to create editable blocks in your email templates. These reusable emails make it easy to send multiple campaigns. It also helps you maintain a consistent look and feel for all emails you send.
7. Brands take an omnichannel marketing approach
Speaking of consistency, there's one more thing brands will rely on in the coming days. It is an omnichannel marketing approach. In addition to email, marketers will focus on social media, text messaging, in-app marketing strategies, and search engine marketing.
For example, if you're promoting a Valentine's Day offer via email, create social media posts and in-app notifications about it. Give your users a consistent experience while allowing your offers to reach a wider audience.
8. Balance promotional and informative emails
Many brands continue to send marketing emails to their subscribers. It gets boring and as a result people leave. Your emails will no longer be opened, impacting your deliverability and sender reputation. Therefore, in addition to promotional emails, you should also send informative emails.
Create newsletters, product update emails, and other types of emails that go beyond discount offers and sales pitches. The bottom line is that you should try to provide value through email.
9. A/B testing is back on the agenda
A/B testing is an effective tactic for getting the most out of your email strategy. This involves testing two or more different versions of your email campaign and determining which one works best. In 2023 and in the coming years, marketers will be testing not only her one-time campaigns, but also automated emails.
10. Automation will evolve more than ever
Basic email automation has been around for quite some time. In the future, advanced email automation strategies will become a reality. This requires a complex workflow in which marketers send a series of welcome, cart abandonment, and re-engagement emails. They will become more active in using enterprise-level ESPs and powerful CRM tools like Marketo and Salesforce.
11. Take a holistic approach when writing emails
Accessibility and inclusivity will no longer be buzzwords. Marketing professionals take these concepts seriously and incorporate them into their emails. Whether you choose stock photos or design images from scratch, inclusivity is an important parameter to consider. As a result, emails will be able to reach a wider subscriber base by catering to special visual and cognitive needs.
12. Videos in emails take center stage
Video email marketing will become even more popular as subscribers become more open to consuming video content. This is perfect for event email marketing, SaaS industries, and B2B marketers who want to demonstrate their products.
13. Email platforms enable more seamless integration with third-party tools
ESP and CRM platforms enable seamless integration with third-party tools like Zapier, HubSpot, and more. Through these integrations, brands will be able to manage their data and processes in a more organized way.
14. Long emails are back
Contrary to popular opinion, people will read long emails if they think the content is valuable. Given the same revelation, marketers will bring back long-form emails and adopt them into newsletters and other forms of communication.
summary
Looking at all these trends, there is no doubt that 2023 will set a new benchmark for email inboxes. Breakthrough technologies like AMP and BIMI are gaining huge traction, and subscribers will see a lot of interesting emails in the coming days.
Featured image credit: Author provided. thank you!
