▷ 13 email marketing trends in 2022

1. Email marketing is fueling e-commerce growth

E-commerce businesses rely on multiple marketing strategies, and email continues to be one of the most powerful assets. They reach a targeted audience with personalized messages that drive direct sales. In fact, email marketing offers a 4200% return on investment according to the same statistics!

Moreover, by 2023, the use of email marketing is expected to reach 4.3 billion users, or half of the world’s population. Not only does it allow you to reach a targeted audience with your messaging, but it also allows you to reach the widest possible audience.

2. Omnichannel communication

Email marketing is still one of the most important approaches to digital marketing. But it is more effective when combined with other channels such as SMS, social networks or Web push notifications. Restricting your digital presence to one or two channels will limit your opportunities to interact with prospects in different ways.

Unlike basic multi-channel strategies, omnichannel marketing campaigns constantly update and adjust messaging across all platforms in response to each user’s activity. Regardless of the channel they use to engage, they will be greeted with personalized content that makes sense in the context of their unique customer journey.

3. User Generated Content

While most emails should focus on your own content, you should consider implementing more user-generated content for a number of reasons.

User Generated Content (UGC):

Allows you to integrate different perspectives and spice up your messages;
Comes with built-in social proof by demonstrating the experience readers can expect if they buy from your brand;
Shows subscribers that you care about their satisfaction. You can send an email with photos of satisfied customers using your products for example;

4. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) makes email personalization easier because it allows you to extract more data about your customers and do it faster.

Many marketers are still hesitant to incorporate AI into their email marketing strategy because they don’t understand how they can benefit from it. But remember, AI isn’t meant to replace you, it’s meant to optimize your workload and help scale your email marketing campaigns.

So, in terms of email marketing, artificial intelligence:

Helps to create mailing lists;
Helps write subject lines;
Restructures your email campaigns for maximum effectiveness;
Allows you to send personalized emails to each prospect;
Cleans mailing lists.

5. A/B Testing

With changing customer preferences, A/B testing will be an indispensable part of your emailing strategy:

You will learn more about your audience and the type of emails that resonate with them the most;
You will be able to send customer-centric emails that leave a deeper impact and bring conversions;
You can test things like subject line, type of visuals used, CTA placement, email personalization.

With the right email marketing software, you should even be able to set up multi-question quizzes and surveys that users can complete from their email. The more you make it easy to interact with your content, the more likely customers are to engage.

6. Interactivity

Human beings are naturally attracted to things that are different from what they are used to. That’s why interactivity is an easy way to differentiate your emails from the rest of the messages in your subscribers’ inboxes. Also, it opens up a variety of opportunities for interactive content that will engage your readers in different ways.

For example, surveys, polls, and feedback forms give users the opportunity to share their thoughts. This will help you gather important insights about your brand while showing your audience that you care about their experience.

7) Agile Email Marketing

Adapting at all times will be of the utmost importance starting this year, because this is where agile email marketing comes in.

It is the process of using data and analytics for continuous iteration of your digital marketing campaign through testing and experimentation in collaboration with other teams.

Agile Mode helps streamline email marketing strategies while adopting a trial-and-error approach. Therefore, you will be able to revise your messaging strategy as your data and subscribers change. By following the agile mode, you will better understand your target audience and create a personalized experience in line with the customer’s interests.

8. Hyper-personalization of email marketing

The end goal of any email marketing campaign is to generate more revenue. Over the past two years, marketers have concluded that one of the best ways to do this is to personalize the user experience.

But beware, personalization can have serious adverse effects on the outcome of your marketing campaign. When receiving a non-personalized or poorly targeted email, 94% of customers say they have realized at least one of the following…

10% never visit the website again.
13% visit the website less frequently.
29% become less willing to buy products.
45% classify emails as junk or spam.
54% unsubscribe from emails.
68% automatically delete emails.

(Source: V12)

9. Increased awareness of data privacy

Apple’s decision earlier this year to provide its users with more privacy features shows how seriously big tech companies take data privacy. It also makes sense: consumers are demanding more control over their personal data and want to know how brands use their personal information.

In 2022, we expect other major customers to follow Apple’s lead and put the privacy of their users first in the development of new product features. This privacy awareness will also impact brandswhich will need to rethink what kind of data they collect from their users and how they use it.

10) Visual email marketing

As image attracts our attention more in terms of content, visual email marketing has gained popularity in recent years. Marketers typically include different types of visuals in their emails to grab the subscriber’s attention, such as:

Static images;
GIFs;
Illustrative animations;
3d images;
Videos.

In 2022 and in the years to come, more and more marketers will use visuals to improve their digital marketing strategy. They will experiment with different types of layouts to add visual punch to emails such as:

Monochromatic designs;
Gradients;
Textured backgrounds.

While that doesn’t mean text-only emails will become obsolete, visually rich emails stand out in the subscriber’s inbox. Brands that include visual content actually have a conversion rate multiplied by 7 according to several studies.

11. AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) in emails

A few years ago, Google launched Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), a solution that improves the experience of mobile users by speeding up the loading of your site.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are still one of the fastest growing email marketing trends in the digital marketing world. It runs on the wheels of the CSS, HTML, and JavaScript framework.

Using this technology, you can send emails that allow users to take action without being redirected to a third-party website or application. For example, the subscriber can easily fill out a form, respond to a survey, or make a purchase from the email itself.

12. Mobile optimization

Along those same lines, did you know that around three-quarters of smartphone users use their devices to check their inbox, and more than half of all emails opened now come from mobile devices? Yet, while the vast majority of consumers open their emails on their smartphones, only less than 12% of newsletters are fully optimized for these devices.

If your emails aren’t already optimized for mobile devices, you’re cutting yourself off from a significant portion of your audience. In 2022, the design of mobile emails should therefore be an equal priority to a desktop computer.

13. Dark mode in email design

The growth of dark mode or dark mode over the past few years is not surprising. With people spending more time at home and on their computers, the benefits of dark mode have made it a highly requested feature that is now present on most apps and operating systems.

When it comes to email, a survey showed that 44% of marketers are already considering dark mode in their emails. Makes sense: many users already choose dark mode display on their devices for at least part of the day.