It’s impossible to believe that email marketing started over 20 years ago, and even Gmail turns 19 this year. But what is surprising is from a recent survey that Linkedin published in 2022 only 33% of businesses fully capitalised on the email marketing trend.
Now the question is why?
Why haven’t you got into the trend? Why don’t you think it is a viable resource for communication? And why is it you aren’t willing to spend the time or money on it for your business?
The answer is simple, like most consumers you receive over 10 marketing emails a day from your recently liked companies, and you as a consumer feel like you fall into two categories, there is too much in my inbox, or it feels salesy.
Both those answers are correct. BUT, you as a consumer are making more decisions now from emails than ever before, and you may receive a lot, but you also are getting emotional feelings like love, kindness and happiness from emails – it is a factor of our mental state as a consumer. We want to feel all the things when making a purchase and there is no better way to show your consumers that you care, than to send them an email.
Email Marketing is evolving more and every year, with a lot of platforms now on offer than if you looked at it 10 years ago. But there are some new trends in email marketing through the use of AI and interactive elements that help your email stand out from the rest, so let’s explore this, here are the top 8 email marketing trends of 2023:
1. GIFs and Interactive features
By incorporating GIFs and interactive features into emails, brands can create an engaging and immersive consumer experience. Interactive elements are used to capture customer attention and either make them click through to your website.
Animated GIFS are a great way to add movement and zing to an email, ranging from little movements like hover effects to full-on animated GIFs. Studies have shown that emails with animation can increase engagement by up to 60%, making this trend one that should not be ignored.
Another example of interactive features is adding a benefit to click through your email to a website page. These could be CTA buttons, polls, surveys read more to finish and mini-games can dramatically increase click-through rates.
2. User-generated content
User-generated content should be used in all elements of your entire digital marketing strategy, email included. It’s an effective way to build trust and loyalty among your consumers.
One example is to incorporate user-generated content into your emails by adding in testimonials, a video, or even just a few photos of them using your product. No matter how you choose to use it, user-generated content is powerful in letting the readers know your product or service works.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, use the same footage across all digital marketing platforms, and then the message will never be missed by your consumer.
3. Templates need to work on all devices and email-receiving platforms
This one is still surprising to read. After all the research that has gone into mobile phones being the main way that consumers check their emails, it is about time that you look into designs and displays that work both on desktop and mobile. Around fifty percent of email users access inboxes on mobile phones.
The best way to check this is to ensure that you do plenty of previews on multiple devices to make sure that your email sits correctly on all platforms. If it doesn’t, then you need to look at the width of the email, the image placements, and the amount of what you have written. All elements can be fixed, but testing is needed to get it right.
4. AI and Automation
One of the fastest-growing trends in email marketing is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to streamline and improve email campaigns. AI can clean up mailing lists, predict applicable subject lines, and identify ineffectiveness in your campaigns — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The potential of AI is limitless, and will only increase over the next few years.
Here’s how AI can boost your emails:
1. Write personalised emails by gathering information from the consumer or understanding what elements clicked on the most.
2. Improve the content by using AI writing software to make sure that you have the right message
3. Sending automated messages on trigger events is highly recommended like birthdays, we miss you, and even when we noticed that you liked this item.
Read more about AI and ChatGPT here.
5. Personalised emails to your consumer wants and needs
A few years back, personalisation in the emailing world was very basic. Most marketers simply wrote subjects using the recipient’s first name and or written within the email and thought that was it. Buyers want to feel like they have a special relationship with your business and that requires more effort going into personalisation.
74% of marketers reported a significant increase in customer engagement through targeted personalisation.
2023 is the time to hop on the personalisation bandwagon. It’s going to be one of the most powerful marketing trends this year. Here’s how you can do it.
- Segment your email list for common interests or categories
- Track user’s activity on your website
- Use a real person’s name as the sender
6. Replace generic CTA
This is a really cool one to think about, and as marketers, it makes the brain tick over creatively in what CTA buttons will help in emails.
But this is about getting rid of the common ones like SHOP NOW or LEARN MORE and thinking about what is the best call to action to make the consumer click through. For example, if you are advertising your cleaning products, then you can put LET’S CLEAN. It makes the email a lot more personable to what the consumer is thinking when reading your email and a little funny. Humour is a good way to grab people’s attention, and a call to action is perfect for this.
7. Say goodbye to open rates
Although this trend started in 2021 (after Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection was introduced), and already has marketers changing the way they report and analyze data.
The open rate has long been considered an ineffective metric (experts have called it the vanity metric) as it does not determine the success of your email campaigns. Email marketers need to focus on more realistic metrics, such as click-through rates, conversions, unsubscribes, spam reports, revenue, and list growth.
Start looking at your website data and also looking at your sales, that is key to knowing what is working and not.
8. Short forms emails are key – say goodbye to much text
Finally, gone are the days when writing a whole essay in emails is the trend. Although some emails call for it, most of the time, your consumers aren’t going to read it and skim through it. If you have to put in a lot of text, you are going to need a lot of GIFS, imagery and CTA buttons to help with the ‘attention grabbing’ elements that your text will not do anymore.
Consumers are making decisions in 2 seconds, and if your text is more than that, then it isn’t going to cut it. Try and make your emails smaller with elements of click-throughs to your website for information. Since open rates are a thing of the past as explained above, get them to click through instead, and then they can decide if they want to read more – give your consumer the choice instead of forcing the information on them now.
Final thoughts
Email designs are always evolving but if your emails are not interesting, adaptable or accessible you won’t be able to convert your consumer.
Try all the elements, or maybe try some, but we guarantee that if you are not doing any of the above then you aren’t going to convert as many consumers as you are wanting.
Chrissy is the guru of Email Marketing. Contact her for a consultation about what we can do to help you change your email marketing strategy.