It may seem that digital marketing is all about social media these days, but email marketing is far from gone. From newsletters to promotional emails about new special offers and events, emails are a great way to keep your business in the minds of your customers. In fact, of all digital marketing strategies, email marketing continues to prove itself to be the one with the best ROI.
But email marketing is also constantly changing. If your email marketing strategy feels a little stagnant, 2023 is the year to level up. Here are some trends to keep in mind for email marketing in 2023.
Email Interactivity Continues to Stand Out
Email interactivity has been popular for a few years, and that trend continues to appeal to the market into 2023. Through email interactivity, recipients can receive your newsletters or promotional emails and actually interact with the content without ever leaving the email. Widgets and buttons allow recipients to vote in polls, accept offers, or add events to a calendar, as well as navigating the content of the email itself. This can even boost the aesthetics of your promotional emails, making them more stylized and modern.
AI-Powered Email Marketing Optimization
AI has its hooks in all things digital these days, and it’s not always a bad thing. In fact, when used correctly, AI can help you optimize your email marketing. Predictive text can help you generate more engaging subject lines, and AI can learn the most effective times for email marketing and schedule emails to be sent at that time. AI can even help clean inactive subscribers out of your email lists!
And that’s just the beginning. With AI constantly growing, more opportunities could be in store before the end of 2023.
Privacy Is a Priority
Data privacy is an important concern for many consumers, and with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) influencing not just digital Europe but the globe, businesses are thinking about privacy as well. Providing assurances of the way that data will and will not be collected can go a long way to keep you compliant and ease the minds of your audience. Make sure your email tracking also follows data privacy compliance — especially things like Apple Mail Privacy Protection, as well.
You should also offer a clear and effective way for recipients to unsubscribe to your emails. Although this might mean losing potential customers, it helps to provide goodwill and makes sure you’re not sending out emails to recipients who won’t respond to them.
Zero-Party and First-Party Data Metrics
Fortunately, the most informative data metrics tend to come from zero-party data and first-party data. Zero-party data is data collected from questions that you ask your email subscribers themselves. These often relate to their preferences or their customer satisfaction. It will give you a finger on the pulse of the ways your customer base’s preferences have changed over time and how you can best meet their needs.
First-party data is the data that you can observe based on the subscribers’ interactions with your emails and website. What do they click? What do they visit and what do they ignore? These metrics will give you a clear sense of what does and doesn’t work about your digital marketing.
Personalization Humanizes Your Marketing
With the zero-party and first-party data that you collect, you can and should personalize your email marketing approaches. Use the names of your subscribers and send offers or news based on their preferences. This will be more likely to catch their attention, as it appeals to their interests. It will also humanize your company, as your subscribers will feel cared about.
From Users for Users
You work hard to create engaging content for your newsletters and promotional emails. But sometimes the most effective content to add to your email marketing is user-generated content. Testimonials and reviews give your subscribers a user’s perspective of your business. Polls or answers to questions that you asked in previous emails also make your email marketing feel more like a community.
You can even ask your users what kind of content they would like to see in the future. This would still be content that you create yourself, but it would come at the recommendation of your users. This shows that you listen to your subscribers and take their input to heart.
Even with the rise in social media, it’s clear that email marketing isn’t going anywhere any time soon. If you want an effective email marketing strategy, watch your subscribers, and watch the trends of the year for inspiration.
