Email marketing trends 2022

Since email marketing became the preferred business communication method (Statista 2020) the competition for the inbox is greater than ever. 

How to stand out? How to stay current and relevant in 2022? 

We would like to draw your attention to some industry key trends that are worth watching out for this year. As we all know, revising your email marketing strategy once in a while can only be a good thing. 

Spoiler alert: Sagitari is on track with this.

Key Trends of 2022:

• Trend 1. Interactive storytelling and personalization
• Trend 2. Success metrics – time for new KPIs
• Trend 3. Using Artificial Intelligence
• Trend 4. Increasing email’s accessibility
• Trend 5. Data protection & privacy

Trend 1. Interactive storytelling and personalization

Customer experience was always a top priority for businesses, and this year will be no different.

Knowing subscribers’ names or locations is not enough anymore. Complete personalisation of user experience that shows signs of respect for customers, will create an emotional connection between the brand and the audience.

So yet again, personalisation, the „trend” from a decade ago has more high marks to score in 2022. 

Understanding customers and their needs will make emails worth opening and ‘human to human’ (H2H) communication will add authenticity to any marketing campaign. 

High-quality marketing content will be essential in 2022.

Focusing on the needs and positive experience of customers will greatly enhance your messaging.

Adding to this, interactive material that triggers customer action inside of the email, will actively make subscribers want to be involved.

Ensure the brand value promise is true by being transparent.

Last but not least, simplicity of the customer experience itself is a new era in email communication.

Trend 2. Success metrics – time for new KPIs

In 2022, clicks and conversions will become more important for measuring campaign performance.

As we know, the launch of Apple’s iOS 15 now means there is no longer a reliable way to see Apple email open rates.

With this in mind in 2022 it is important to get familiar with Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (read more) and know that you might see some inflated open rates, given that even if the user never opens the email it will appear as if they did. 

As a consequence we need to opt for different marketing performance metrics or assume a larger margin of error. 

Options available include focusing on microsegmentation, performing split tests of your content and maintaining excellent list hygiene by removing invalid emails and inactive users (click rate will tell you a lot).

Trend 3. Using Artificial Intelligence

In 2022 machine learning will become an increasingly important element of marketing activities, so make sure to include AI software in your methodology. AI is proving to be an invaluable tool for marketers across many different channels. 

Email marketers shouldn’t feel threatened by AI. Far better to learn how to work with it in tandem to harness the power of self-learning algorithms. 

AI’s ability to analyze data and interpret analytics helps to manage lists, create and distribute emails, select the most effective offers and subject lines, create dynamic segmentation, and much more. We can make predictions with the enormous amount of data that AI can process. This way, AI can help us determine how we can deliver campaigns far more effectively.

Once we understand how we can benefit from using it, workloads can be optimized and marketing efforts greatly scaled up. What used to take weeks of work, now takes a few seconds!

Using Artificial Intelligence increases precision and saves time, and therefore increases the ROI. Are you tempted yet?

Trend 4. Increasing email’s accessibility

In 2022 make the email content accessible to the highest number of relevant people as possible.

To take full advantage of your marketing efforts, make sure that emails are received and understood by people from different locations, regardless of demographic, ability or device.

Produce an amazing user experience, text should be easy-to-read, font should be appropriate, the color combination attractive, and the message should contain clear graphics.

It is also crucial to optimize your mobile campaigns. Mobile clients account for 41.6% of email opens – Litmus “The 2021 Email Client Market Share” (Aug 2021).  Don’t miss that oportunity. 

As more and more viewers use dark mode (less tiring on the eyes), make sure to test your message in such modes – they offer a great step toward making emails accessible.

Trend 5. Data protection & privacy

In 2022, we need to focus on privacy. It is more about legality than a trend. However, by carefully adhering to data privacy law and regional protection requirements, you will build trust with subscribers.

To improve data privacy, make sure your domain isn’t compromised and put authentication protocols in place (read more)  Protecting your sender reputation is so crucial to improving deliverability.

Growing your list the right way, collecting consents and getting subscribers who want to be there will pay off over time.

As a rule, maintain email list hygiene and check often for disengaged subscribers and invalid emails. Implement double opt-in to create an extra step of commitment from the subscriber, making it easy to unsubscribe. It’s really good to take unsubscriptions seriously, and put unsubscribed addresses on a local blacklist right away. Then you can be sure that the subscriber will never get any campaign again.

Each of the above actions on their own, are highly effective, so just imagine what you can achieve by combining all the strategies! 

If you’re not optimizing your email marketing strategy yet, you’re definitely missing out on an essential channel of communication with your audience. Be the marketer that will break through the clutter and stand out from the competition. 

Supercharge your strategy and contact@sagitari.ai today.