2023 Email Marketing Trends: Our Hot to Not List

what's hot in email marketing

This year is heading towards its final quarter, which means it will soon be Christmas (sorry to give you greys, but seasonal marketing strategies need to be finished NOW 😉).

Speaking of ageing

It’s also time to mull over how the year has gone and obsess over how many grey hairs the marketing industry has given us. However, 2023 has been kind to our channel.

Let’s chat about the updates

…releases, and email marketing trends in 2023 that we got all giddy over and those we didn’t.

Kim & Sam

AI
Back-to-basics approach
Email automation
Hyper-personalisation
Interactive email design
Mail Privacy Protection (MPP)
Micro-segmentation
Predictive analytics
Responsive email design

2023 digital transformation trends: The Hot List

Here are the trends that we can see ourselves using for future email marketing campaigns:

hyper-personalisation

Receiving a discount code on your birthday is nothing new, but hyper-personalisation is expanding its capabilities, and fast. Fancy sending a unique offer code to a customer the minute they walk into your store? Well, now you can, provided you collect enough customer data to do so.

micro-segmentation

Target data based on shopping habits, buying behaviours, seasonality, exact location, and more.

artificial intelligence (ai)

Everyone looks at their to-do list and dreads at least one of the tasks written down. Ours is writing subject lines. There are so many variants to writing a subject line that performs, and you need to go back over your previous campaigns and figure out which part of which subject line worked, and why. Quite frankly, we don’t always want to spend ages analysing data when we could be driving leads. But we kind of have to. This year, we’re seeing AI tools that can auto-generate subject lines based on your previous campaigns’ performances.

predictive analytics

As observed by Salesforce, customer data is fragmented. We collect personal data via mobile, apps, the Cloud, and more. Creating campaigns based on previous customer behaviour is tough, even with the amount of data we collect.

Why? Because the data is all over the place. Predictive analytics tools like Salesforce Einstein help by creating a `unified view` of your customer data. This enables patterns and behaviours to be spotted, thus, giving you a whole picture insight before releasing a new campaign. Just, wow.

Read more: Salesforce Announces the New Einstein 1 Platform – Driving Productivity and Trusted Customer Experiences Powered by Data, AI, and CRM.

Other predictive analytics tools out there

As you can imagine, some predictive analytics tools are complex and require the skills of a data analyst. A couple are easy to navigate for data novices; if you’re a marketer without a data team, you can still use predictive analytics! Just be sure to explore your options 😊.

Interactive email design

Interactive email design involves anything to increase customer engagement – clicking, hovering, swiping, booking, buying, watching – you name it. Here are some things your customer can do within an interactive email:

✔️Add to cart ✔️Book a ticket ✔️Take a quiz ✔️Watch a video

Although all emails are interactive per say, interactive email design encourages the email send to act more like a landing page – with recipients taking buying decisions directly in the email. It reduces clicks and redirections and makes the buying process quicker and easier. In theory, your customer will be less likely to wonder off and make a brew halfway through.

Here is a brilliant article by Mailchimp, all about interactive email design.

Back-to-basics approach

From plain text emails to optimising our email signatures, 2023 has seen us stripping back before we move forward. Often, the most basic techniques bring the best results. While plain text emails deliver a personal experience, clean email signatures that translate well on multiple devices reinforce professionalism. We’re all for the back-to-basics approach.

Email marketing automation

Again, email automation and lead nurturing are not new concepts. But this year, we’ve seen them move mountains in terms of improving business productivity and increasing customer retention rates. Businesses of every shape and size are onboarding the email automation bandwagon, and the results are *efficient*. And, there are new automation tools entering the space all the time, like Moosend. What’s more, many of the other trends we’ve spoken about within this article can be intertwined with email automation – including hyper-personalisation, predictive analytics, automated segmentation, and omnichannel integration, to name a few.

Read more about AI & email marketing in our dedicated blog

The Not List

And at the bottom of our list is…

Mail Privacy Protection (or MPP) for Apple iPhone customers

We don’t know a single email marketer who would enjoy having the open rate metric robbed. But, we will take solace in the fact that other metrics, such as click-throughs, are more important. Goodbye, open rate of Apple customers – you served us well.

What is the future of email marketing?

Everything you’ve read in this article, and so much more. The future of email marketing will see customers:

📈Engaging and interacting with us more

📈Booking more of our services and events

📈Buying more of our products and services

📈Bonding with our brands more

Can you tell we’re excited?

We can get you more for your money

Compared to other channels, email marketing is inexpensive and measurable return on investment. Businesses of any size can benefit from email marketing. Get in touch with Kim or Sam to find out how email can boost your sales and brand awareness from day dot. In a rush? Use our quick & easy online form.