With the explosion of new technologies, email is still one of the most effective marketing channels
By Chaitanya Chinta
Email marketing may be 40 years old, older than the internet, but it’s still more robust than ever. With the explosion of new technologies, email is still one of the most effective marketing channels. In the past 18 months, end users are getting 30% more emails opened and read than before. This is an important parameter because the success of a good email campaign depends on the open rate of the email. New business generation only happens when the user opens an email and this is crucial for email marketing. This growth is attributed to offline brands going online, more app-first companies adopting email as one of their core channels, and brands finding email positively impacts their customer lifetime value. Email jumped in 2021 with several disruptive technologies such as AI-powered intelligent emails, Gmail’s support for branded message identification indicators (BIMI), accelerated mobile pages (AMP), and disruptive events like Apple mail privacy protection (MPP). Acquisitions and mergers of several leading email service providers (ESPs) helped increase email marketers’ service offerings and preference. As we navigate the ever-changing marketing landscape, several companies have rearranged their marketing strategies to engage with their customers digitally. Marketers also found it interesting that many companies could increase their ROI with the power of email marketing.
Here are the top five email marketing pattern predictions for 2022 that you can’t miss to stay ahead of the curve:
1. Interactive email with AMP (accelerated mobile page) improves adoption
As AMP emails become easier to create, their adoption will increase. It enables email marketers to provide a personalized experience in Gmail, Yahoo and some other email service providers around the world. Email marketing has traditionally been a push channel. Usually, clicking on a link in an email will take the user to a website/app where they are expected to perform actions such as searching for products, adding them to a shopping cart, filling out a form, etc. A user can however, now do actions without ever leaving the email application. In addition, AMP also allows marketers to introduce gamification within email. According to a study by Litmus, only 23% of marketers have used interactive elements in their email marketing, indicating that now may be the right time to increase interactivity to better measure customer responses. When done right, AMP will deliver up to five times as many responses as a regular campaign. As consumers expect interactive, seamless in-email experiences, AMP for email will be increasingly adopted by marketers.
2. Minimal email will be taken over more
Minimalism and a clean email design make it easy for the reader to scan the content. This makes them especially ideal for connecting with the digital native generations. However, with a smartphone in almost every hand and rapid digitization all around us, we live in an age of information flow. As information overflows and attention spans dwindle, keeping email design minimalist has emerged as a surefire way to grab attention and engage the target audience with the content. Therefore, a minimalist email design makes it easier for the reader to understand while subtly delivering the message.
3. Send messages yourself to bring more depth
Email marketing is not just another marketing channel. It’s key to the overall customer experience. People are attracted to things that are different from the ordinary. Making them feel important is an easy way to differentiate the emails from the rest of the messages in subscribers’ inboxes. Marketers need to create a feel-good factor to engage with audiences and ensure they experience value. Brands should increase engagement by asking users to click, fill out a form, answer a quiz, or play a game in email, rather than run an ROI or sales campaign. Sometimes emails can nurture relationships and increase engagement.
4. AI continues to extend its reach
Artificial intelligence has been the “Catchphrase” in almost every industry so far. One of the big changes for marketers in 2022 is the democratization of AI. AI will help reduce the workload of marketers and help them make better decisions and run creative campaigns. Therefore, it only makes sense that AI adoption in email marketing will increase in 2022.
AI helps email marketing campaigns with:
Audience selection – manage list segmentation to target users with high impact content
Content optimization – create compelling subject lines and personalize content to create the right message
Delivery optimization – optimize delivery times to get more engagement and reach the user at the right time
Decision-making – provide marketers with reports and analytics that help provide marketers with better decision-making capabilities
5. Preference Manager Email
Sending the right message to the right person at the right time can make a huge difference in click-through rates. If it’s gone wrong, email can fail, not to mention wasted time and resources. But how can we get closer to that ultimate email dream? An email preference center puts subscribers in control. It allows them to make a choice in the emails they receive (such as content or frequency) and also gives the option to unsubscribe. Subscribers have the freedom to unsubscribe instead of unsubscribing. One of the benefits of giving subscribers options is that their preferences can lead to segmentation strategies and personalization efforts. This allows us to understand exactly what subscribers want and leads to a better subscriber experience. Email preference managers collect 10x more responses than regular preference managers and use information to collect further personalization and drive better engagement. Using creative methods, marketers try to learn more about their users by asking them the right questions and using those preferences to design a personalized email experience.
Looking ahead to 2022
Email marketing has been evolving continuously over the past two decades. Email is an enabler for any user introduced to the web and remains a dominant channel with over 96% of users checking their email at least once a day. In 2022, brands that revamp their communications to spark curiosity and empower the user to interact with their email will win the game.
The author is Global Head – Email Company, Netcore Cloud
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