Mediaboss Marketing

By Chaitanya Chinta

Email marketing may be 40 years old, older than the internet, but it is still more robust than ever. With the explosion of new technologies, email has continued to be one of the most effective marketing channels. In fact, in the last 18 months, end users are getting 30% more emails than before that are being opened and read. This is an important parameter as the success of a good email campaign depends on the email open rate. New business generation only happens when the user opens an email and this is crucial for email marketing. This growth is attributed to offline brands moving online, more app first companies adopting email as one of their core channels and brands finding email impacting their customer lifetime value positively. Email leapfrogged into 2021 with several disruptive technologies like AI-powered intelligent emails, Gmails support of brand indicators for message identification (BIMI), accelerated mobile pages (AMP), and disruptive events like Apple mail privacy protection (MPP). Acquisitions, and mergers of several high-profile email service provider (ESP), helped boost service offerings and marketeer preference for email. As we navigate the ever-changing marketing landscape, several businesses rearranged their marketing strategy to connect with their customers digitally. Also, marketers found it interesting that numerous companies could increase their ROI with the power of email marketing.

Here are the top five email marketing pattern predictions for 2022 that cant be missed to stay ahead of the curve:

1. Interactive email with AMP (accelerated mobile page) will see better adoption

As AMP emails become easier to create, their adoption will increase. It enables email marketers to deliver a personalised experience across Gmail, Yahoo and few other email service providers across the globe. Email marketing has traditionally been a push channel. Usually, clicking on a link within an email will take the user to a website/app where they are expected to do actions like search for products, add them to a cart, fill a form, etc. However, a user can now do these actions without ever leaving the email application. Moreover, marketers can also introduce gamification within email with AMP. According to a Litmus research survey, only 23% of marketers have used interactive elements in their email marketing, indicating that this may be the right time to increase interactivity to gauge customer responses better. When done right, AMP delivers responses as high as 5x than that of a regular campaign. As consumers expect interactive, seamless in-email experiences, there will be a growing acceptance of AMP for email among marketers.

2. Minimal email will be adopted more

Minimalism and clean email design make it easy for the reader to scan the contents. This makes them mainly ideal for connecting with the digitally native generations. However, with a smartphone in almost every hand and high-speed digitization all around us, we live in an era of information surge. As information brims over and attention spans reduce, keeping the email design minimalistic has emerged as a sure-fire way to grab eyeballs and get the target audience to engage with the content. Hence, a minimalist email design makes it easier for the reader to comprehend while at the same time subtly delivering the message.

3. Messaging itself to carry more depth

Email marketing is not just another marketing channel. Its the key to the overall customer experience. People are drawn towards things that stand out from the ordinary. Making them feel important is an easy way to differentiate the emails from the rest of the messages in subscribers inboxes. Marketers need to create a feel-good factor to engage with audiences and ensure that they perceive value. Brands should enhance engagement by soliciting users to click, fill a form, answer a quiz, or play a game within email, rather than executing an ROI or sales type of campaign. Sometimes emails can nurture relationships and help increase engagement.

4. AI will continue to expand the reach

Artificial Intelligence has been the Catchphrase in almost every industry so far. One of the big changes for marketers in 2022 is the democratisation of AI. AI will help reduce the workload of marketers and help them with better decision making and executing creative campaigns. Hence, it only makes sense that AI adoption in email marketing will increase in 2022.

AI will help email marketing campaigns with:

Audience selection manage list segmentation to target users with high-impact content

Content optimisation crafting engaging subject lines and personalise content to create the right message

Delivery optimisation optimise delivery times to get higher engagement and reach the user at the right time

Decision making provide marketers with reports and analytics that help provide better decision-making capabilities to the marketer

5. Email for preference management

Sending the right message at the right time to the right person can make a huge difference in click-through rates. If gotten wrong, email can fall flat not to mention time wasted and resources. But how can we get closer to that ultimate email dream? An email preference center gives subscribers control. It allows them to make a choice in the emails they get (such as content or frequency) and also gives the option of unsubscribing. Subscribers have the liberty to opt down instead of opting out. One of the benefits of giving subscriber options is that their preferences can fuel segmentation strategies and personalization efforts. This allows us to understand what exactly subscribers want and leads to a better subscriber experience. Email preference managers gather 10x more responses than regular preference managers and use intelligence to gather further personalization and yield better engagement rates. Using creative methods, marketers will try to know more about their users by asking them the right questions and using those preferences in designing a personalised experience in the email.

Looking ahead to 2022

Email Marketing has been constantly evolving over the last two decades. Email is an enabler for every user introduced to the internet and continues to be a dominant channel with over 96% of users checking their email at least once a day. In 2022, brands that innovate their communication to ignite curiosity and enable the user to engage with their email will win the game.

The author is global head email business, Netcore Cloud

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Excerpt from:
Top five email marketing trends and predictions for 2022 - The Financial Express