In the world of endless emerging technologies, the notion of the customer journey becomes twice as exciting for modern consumers and thrice as demanding for the companies that offer their services on the market. It is also associated with a challenge among marketers who are bound to advertise them and win the competition. To grow the base of happy customers who would choose your product from the pool of competitors, it takes time and great effort to polish and perfect the user experience you can provide. That is where email marketing personalization becomes irreplaceable. If you are new to the field, industry experts from Folderly will try to deliver all the essential data you can benefit from when launching your digital marketing campaigns in 2022.
Brief introduction of email marketing personalization
Before we discuss the marketing trends for 2022 that are success-oriented, you need to be fully aware of what email marketing personalization initially stands for. Email personalization usually wraps around the customer data that you already have at hand. At times, customers share their first names and location info with a company. In other cases, you can track the last products bought and the number of visits to the site or app. First-party data will open marketing channels programmed to trigger users' interest.
One of the most widely spread approaches is to use personalized subject lines to attract consumers' attention to the message. Some brands also use advanced customization applied to personalized messaging, which adjusts to customers' gender, location, or any other personal data gathered. Either email strategy is aimed at increasing the open rates and click-throughs, along with ROI, brand popularity growth, and income enhancement.
Most recent survey results prove that personalized emails seem to be more relevant to the customers. Most users keep away from generic marketing campaigns, while targeted emails trigger interest, and subsequently—client response.
What is a personalized and interactive email?
Once you are familiar with the notion of email personalization and general rules to stick to, you may search for a more detailed representation of such a marketing email. There are three main pillars that a success-programmed email stands on. They are the following:
Relevance
There are cases when a business representative applies for an email deliverability test since the company is not getting the expected response promised by the campaign. While deliverability issues can directly impact your marketing strategy, there is something else: relevance. You'd be surprised how many practical and well-composed marketing emails end up in the Trash folder since the receiver does not deem the message relevant.
One of the best strategies to overcome this obstacle would be to ensure that your customers truly need the solution you offer. Once you are certain about that, you can introduce more engaging email content to spike their interest and trigger the positive response that you count on.
Time
Any email campaign is doomed when its time has already passed. For instance, it would be inappropriate to offer research assistance when a business has moved to the stage of product development. You should be able to track the progress of all the campaigns you wish to be a part of.
Non-robotic communication
Marketing automation is a useful tactic when you're positive that it's as personalized as possible. It is a proven fact that people tend to trust those messages from actual company representatives rather than those sent by machines or unrecognizable sources. So, it helps to mention the reps' names, add a picture or logo to the marketing email to ensure a trusting background between you and your customers.
Email marketing: the legacy of 2021
If you want to fully grasp the email marketing personalization trends of 2022, you need to know what the previous year has given the industry.
Privacy
One of the crucial points that most customers shopping for goods online realized was the vital importance of their data privacy. As digital marketing keeps growing, the awareness becomes more and more noticeable. Social media marketing and all web advertising bring online users an understanding of how exposed they are.
With all that knowledge in mind, some operating systems have started implementing means of mail privacy protection. The offered update allows users to keep their location, IP, and reading/opening email data secret. While that is surely a good thing, such innovations will ensure that it becomes twice as difficult to track accurate open rates and click-through data. All in all, you won't be able to launch a precise and profit-oriented email marketing campaign based on mentioned metrics and count on pre-calculated results.
Safety
Many industries moved online in 2021, and the range of opportunities to choose from increased significantly. However, along with service versatility, the risk of becoming the victim of phishing attacks has grown too. Thus, a business that wants to stay competitive and function correctly under given circumstances usually considers implementing two-step transaction authentication. Typically, the authentication is carried out via a password provision and OTP code admission (One-Time Password). So, emails are often utilized as the fittest verification channels, and most customers consider them the most reliable and authoritative option.
Email marketing trends and strategies in 2022
It makes sense that email marketing trends in 2022 would feature an evident toll of the past year and its legacy. However, the latest trends prove that there's always room for innovation when it comes to email marketing campaigns. The better aware you are of what to expect in 2022, the easier it will be to look for the most successful email marketing strategy.
Value of the email marketing content
In 2022 interactive content will become the key to fruitful cooperation in the field you represent, along with the successful lead generation and client movement down the sales funnel. If you want to stay ahead of the competition, you should be willing to polish your personalization skills. It is advised to keep away from generic phrases and branded content about the company, let alone industry clichés. The more engaging email content you can produce, the higher your brand awareness rates will spike.
Decrease of email campaigns' metrics reliability
As mentioned above, the open rates and click-through rates analysis will be mostly inconclusive due to Mail Privacy Protection campaigns spreading all over the globe. Besides, these metrics haven't always been 100% reliable from the start since not every recipient who opens the email will move on to evaluating the usability of the product on offer.
Instead, you can focus on more concrete metrics that include interactive element engagement. You should train your marketing team to analyze the landing page visits image and links clicks in the first place. The alternative will give you better insight into who your potential customers are and what they need compared to a mere open-rate increase.
Email marketing and AI interaction
Artificial Intelligence is one of the latest email marketing trends to pay increased attention to if you want to launch campaigns that are programmed to succeed. The fact is that implementing AI into your email campaigns will assist in forming productive patterns and strategies to enhance user experience and involvement with the brand.
There are countless AI-driven tools that the market offers these days, and most of them are aimed at processing impressive loads of data and information in a short amount of time. The implementation of Artificial Intelligence will give you a practical insight into what your clients expect from you and the best way to deliver that.
Detailed personalization of future emails
The whole notion of effective email marketing is centered around message personalization. Unlike static emails, personalized emails are all about attracting and keeping attention until the recipient does what you expect them to. Thus, polishing your subject lines along with customized and personalized content can improve your digital marketing results significantly.
Omnichannel marketing boost
One of the growing email marketing trends is broadening the scope of communication with the client. The more sources of interaction with a potential user you encounter, the better. Through the implementation of the omnichannel marketing approach, you will have access to online and offline data that describes your perfect customer. Based on this information, you can polish your strategies and win over the client's trust faster than your competitors. In addition, you will be able to reach out to a definite client at a precise time with an optimal offer, which will boost brand awareness, loyalty, and the company's income.
The immense potential of interactive emails
While some brands expect interactivity and organic traffic from providing users with informative text messages sprinkled with occasional images and links, the research proves that modern consumers want more. What does it mean? It means that people often want to escape reality and submerge into the world of digital entertainment. That is precisely what a skilled marketer can provide to the targeted audience.
It is a productive strategy to spice your emails with interactive elements such as videos, quizzes, polls, carousels, and other email marketing that you view as an equal priority. While you will enhance the user experience with related campaigns, you will also gather crucial data about your potential clientele's needs, likes, and preferences.
Maximal mobile optimization
It is a known fact that your users interact with the sent emails using different devices. However, according to recent studies, more and more people choose their mobile phones as primary means of interaction with incoming emails. Such a simple statement emphasizes the fact that mobile users find it crucial that the incoming information is responsive to their mobile device. Thus, before you start sending out marketing emails, you should keep in mind that they should be adapted to most modern mobile devices and mobile views. If you fail to do so, no email spam check will help you solve the Trash folder issue.
Vital tips to consider when adapting to modern email marketing trends
As you can see, the variety of email marketing trends that 2022 has brought is more than vast and versatile. There is always room for more innovative strategies to hit the surface. Thus, if you need some friendly advice on managing the ever-growing competition and innovation flow, you should keep the following tips in mind.
Time-based marketing automation triggers
The changes in the privacy policy that some big players on the operating system market have implemented will directly impact marketers who rely on open rate as the primary follow-up email trigger. Should you belong to this category, it would help to polish your strategy. Time-based triggers will come of great use in the situation. You can play around with the following:
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Send a follow-up email within a predefined number of hours after the initial message
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Send automated emails when it is a user's birthday
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Send follow-ups when a client visits the site
The list of options to experiment with does not end here. You can even use user-generated content to your advantage too.
Importance of positive subscriber experience
One of the crucial mistakes some companies make is putting the value of their product on a pedestal. In contrast, a more practical approach would be to place subscriber experience at the top of the list. Once you provide a user with potential means of solving any current issue instead of preaching about the quality and importance of your services, you'll build a friendly connection that will surely pay off in the future, one way or another.
Email testing
Playing around with fresh templates and improving provided content is a great way to determine what makes your audience tick. However, you should not underestimate the role of successful email deliverability in the process. So, running a dedicated email spam checker every once in a while will help you understand where your emails end. If they end in the Spam folder, you'll be aware of the problem and seek ways of improving the situation before it becomes critical.
Final thoughts
All trends come and go; so do email marketing trends. However, adaptation to the current situation and client needs is what takes a business to the top of the list. You can implement the modern trends one-by-one into the process and observe the changes that email personalization brings, or you can scope them and use the most suitable variations. No matter the path you choose, you can always count on Folderly experts researching the marketing field so that you can help your business flourish. Should you have any email marketing-related questions, you can contact us ASAP, and we can point you in the right direction!
