Our team at Colewood understands how important it is to stay on top of current marketing trends, and email marketing is no exception.
With email marketing delivering the highest return on investment (ROI) of all marketing channels, in 2022 it is vital that as marketers we identify and implement the trends that we can expect to see in the new year so that email can gain the maximum benefit.
In continuing effort to expand our knowledge and expertise, Colewood’s team tuned in to a webinar with email experts, Litmus to learn more about trends we should expect in 2022. Take a look at what we discovered…
An increase in new email markets
The first trend to look out for is the increase in new email markets. It is expected, as we enter 2022, that more people will enter the email marketing field due to more companies beginning to see the ROI that it provides and therefore investing in email as a result.
With 4 billion daily email users and an estimated open rate of 19.8% across all industries, email marketing is too powerful to avoid, and more companies are expected to embrace email as a key marketing channel in 2022.
Litmus provides great features for those new to email marketing to begin understanding its importance and how to use it and also for those already familiar to expand their knowledge and keep up to date with the latest trends and information.
Personalisation is a must have
With more than 306 billion emails being sent and received each day and the focus on email increasing, it is becoming much more challenging to find innovative ways to capture the attention of our subscribers.
Therefore, the second trend in 2022, is personalisation. Although personalising a message to subscribers’ interests or needs is not a new trend, what is new as we enter 2022 is that personalisation within email marketing is becoming a must have rather than a ‘need to have’.
The Litmus 2021 state of email report found that 50% of marketers are making personalisation a priority, this is therefore a crucial aspect to focus on when developing email marketing strategies in order to keep up with competitors and be seen within subscriber’s inbox. 76% of buyers now expect personalisation in order to feel connected to a brand, meaning this should be a priority within email marketing in 2022 to keep up with customer needs.
Personalisation can be used in many ways within email marketing, for example we can pull customer data such as subscriber/company names into the subject or content of an email. In addition to this as email marketers we can use subscribers’ past actions to determine the messaging or content of an email, making people feel more connected to your brand.
Segmentation also provides a great personalisation opportunity to tailor content to the unique needs and interests of subscriber segments, strengthening their loyalty to a brand by making them feel as though they are getting something extra.
An increase in privacy measures
Another trend to look out for in 2022 is the continued rise in data privacy protection measures within the email marketing industry, this increased protection is making it much harder to conceptualise the data that is required to implement personalisation into email marketing strategies.
The impending loss of third-party cookies alongside the introduction of Apple’s mail privacy protection, is forcing email marketers to think differently and adapt their approach on how they measure email marketing success.
In March 2021, Google announced that its ad tools would no longer support individual tracking of users across websites as of 2023, in combination with the announced plans to stop third party cookies it is becoming increasingly more difficult to deliver personalised experiences.
In response to these changes, in 2022 it is vital that we prepare and change our strategies.
We firstly must understand third party data and audit programmes to see where and how we are currently using this data; our focus must then be transitioned to collecting ‘first party data’ and implement this into the parts of the strategy that were previously reliant on the use of third party cookies.
First party data is derived from your subscribers, it is important to encourage your subscribers to provide this information as often as possible. This can be collected through the use of gated content, starting out with asking for subscriber’s names for example before gaining more in depth information using custom forms to ask questions such as where a subscriber works etc. This is a crucial aspect of 2022 marketing strategies to get the information needed for personalisation when third party cookies are removed.
Agile marketing makes its way to the forefront
The final trend of 2022 to look out for, as highlighted in the Litmus webinar, is the increase in brands looking to be agile in order to meet the increasing email demands. With the demands on email teams increasing however, the size of email marketing teams not necessarily increasing, they are being asked to do more with the same number of resources. Therefore, it is crucial to look for ways to increase efficiency.
Agile marketing is a large topic and is dependent upon company size etc. Email marketers should look at implementing ‘micro efficiencies’, these are small changes that can be made to improve things over time, by making small changes and learning from experiences each time you do something you can begin to understand how they can be done better next time around.
When looking at trends, it is important to note that each business is unique, therefore you must look to see what is right for you and if it is right at this current time. Micro efficiencies are a great way to increase efficiency over a period of time.
Here at Colewood, we have a team of email marketing specialists dedicated to creating emails for our clients that not only look great but also perform amazingly well! By taking into account our client’s USP’s, promotions and bestselling products for example, we help to deliver a much stronger, consistent message across all marketing channels.
Our team is constantly working to improve their expertise and knowledge in the field of email marketing, keeping up to date with the latest trends in the industry. If you are looking at implementing or strengthening your business email marketing strategy, get in touch today to find out how our team of specialists can help by giving us a call on 0845 123 2908 or contact us via our contact form!
