Many believe that email is dead. With the rise of chatbots and social media platforms, it is often assumed that email’s relevance has faded. However, this assumption is false. Emailing predates the internet itself and continues to evolve.
Although email marketing faces challenges such as poor tools, ineffective strategies, and limited integration, it remains one of the most reliable ways to reach customers. It offers advantages that other marketing strategies cannot match.
This article explores key email trends to watch in 2024 and beyond.
AI is transforming every sector, from healthcare to business. In email marketing, AI helps gather and analyze user information. With millions of customer data points generated daily, manual analysis is impractical.
The use of AI is for the collation of user information. Customer data keeps growing by the day. At any moment, there are millions of customer-related data that a marketer has to sift through. This is an uphill task for any one person. More so, the fact that these pieces of information are not readily available to marketers when they need them impacts the marketing process’s efficacy.
AI makes this process faster and more efficient by predicting trends, analyzing user patterns, and suggesting improvements for campaigns. In some cases, AI is even used to write short content like SEO article writing or subject lines. In fact, 61% of marketers consider AI essential to their data strategy.
As 2024 progresses, AI integration will become standard practice in email marketing.
Undoubtedly ,personalization is a marketing trend that will hardly ever go out of style. The more personalized an email is, the higher the chances of response from the target audience. Recent statistics show that more than 62% of email marketers believe personalized emails yield the best results, while 17% believe that plain text emails are the least effective.
Source: business2community
However, the need for personalized emails has heightened, and the tools employed for that will keep increasing in the coming years. One of such tools is Artificial Intelligence. We've had instances where robots compose emails based on the browsing history of users. This process is getting more seamless by the day. In the future, the expectation is that marketers can employ the information provided by AI to compose compelling personal messages to users.
The typical problems with personalized emails include the fact that it takes a lot of effort to gather information about users. AI, as explained in the previous point, eliminates the time lags. The marketer can then channel the spare time and energy into composing the emails
In all, personalization may just be the key to improving your click-through rates. This is no hoax. 82% of email marketers reported an increase in their click-through rates when they personalized their emails. There’s no reason why that wouldn't work for you.
In the marketing world, more and more individuals are opting for simplistic and minimalistic designs over others. This trend has extended into the field of email marketing. More so, it looks like a sure game-changer for 2024 and beyond.
Source: Litmus
Some of the key elements of a minimalist design include the use of muted colors. This is in acknowledgment of the fact that dark modes put less strain on the eyes than the alternative.
Another element is simple typography . The font size used in an email may not seem like a big deal until it is. Generally, although people are attracted to decorative fonts, they are harder to read and distinguish. The average reader spends almost twice the time they spend on reading regular fonts on decorative fonts. Thus, the use of clear, legible fonts could scale up your readership.
Finally, a simplistic design involves the maximization of white space. White spaces give the brain room to breathe. It aids readability, helping readers immediately identify the most important parts of an email and work with it.
You should add this to your email marketing strategies for 2024 and beyond.
You must have noticed that dark mode is becoming a fad these days. This popularity stems from the fact that dark mode makes it easier to read, especially for mobile users. With a lot more folks spending time on their mobile devices, dark mode is the way to go.
Dark mode removes blue light. This eliminates the problems connected with the brightness of most mobile devices. For instance, people with astigmatism have a 50% chance of having eye strain with white text against a black background. Also, a lot more people just prefer it to the regular mode. You may want to implement this to reach out to the demographic who likes it.
Again, this is a well-worn marketing strategy. However, it is one that has come to stay. With the evolution of technology and several self-help applications, the attention span of people keeps dwindling. Also, the average person gets slammed with tons of emails on any given day. Hence, no one now has the time or patience to read long emails. Furthermore, people can better detect lies and call the bluff of others than ever before.
Hence, for 2024 and beyond, you may want to go back to writing short and concise emails. In a recent research of the trends employed by emailing experts, AWeber confirmed that 82% of experts sent emails with a subject line of 60 characters or less. This makes sure that you better capture the reader's attention, ensuring
Additionally, storytelling is a strategy you may want to employ. The use of stories better attracts people. Stories connect with readers faster because they humanize you. The reader is able to see you and not just the fact that you are promoting your brand. It is important to make sure that you stay consistent and on track the entire time. You do not want a situation where your project differs from your brand identity.
Finally, on this point, you should try to encourage interactivity. The truth is that static emails are fading out. Readers anticipate and engage more with interactive emails. As a result of this, a lot of email marketing companies are taking a cue from this to make their emails as interactive as possible. This trend will continue even beyond 2024
To enhance interactivity, you ought to give room for the reader to interact with your email directly. This move could be the one factor that actually convinces the reader. It may not seem like much, but a reader may be disincentivized from following through if they have to leave their inbox or open another webpage.
Interactivity is anything that causes the reader to act on the email. It could be as simple as clicking and reading the email or performing some other action on the email. Thus, you can input images, clickable items, or menus to increase your email interactivity. You can also decide to just add a feedback form to the email, allowing readers to get in touch with you directly using that means. This also allows you to know how your email is received by your audience.
Make no mistake, interactivity is as relevant now more than ever.
Almost every person has a mobile device. They are easily accessible, and so are the most common medium used by readers. Generally, more than 85% of users access their emails with a smartphone, with over 29% of of those emails read on iPhones. Apart from reading emails, people carry out a lot of transactions with their mobile devices. Hence, if you are looking for engagement, and for readers to become paying customers, you ought to optimize your emails for mobile devices.
Mobile email marketing provides a clean interface. Users are able to make use of their phones to access, read, and carry any actions required by the email. This is one sure way of increasing the readership of your emails and improving the click rates.
As 2024 draws closer, more phones are pumped into the market. Optimizing your email marketing for mobile makes sure you can reach this new demographic. This is a trend that is already picking up. You may just want to jump on it.
This practice is rife among social media marketers. However, it appears to be making a crossover to email marketing. In the coming years, it would definitely become mainstream, turning into standard practice for email marketing. You would take advantage of the opportunity to get started beforehand.
User-generated content offers legitimacy to your business. It shows that there are people interested enough to make use of your product or service, which is why close to half of marketers believe user-generated content humanizes their business.
Source: Tintup
To begin, first make use of user-generated content for your emails. Hence, you should share videos, pictures, etc., from past customers. This could be in the form of reviews and testimonials.
Furthermore, your emails could be avenues to collate user data, too. You could ask users to send in reviews and testimonials. Also, you can create polls on your email and have readers react or respond to the emails. You could then collate the information to have a comprehensive view of consumer attitude regarding the point in question.
If you offer an incentive, users would even be further inclined to send you some content. This is because 85% of email subscribers hope for a reward. You can cash in on this huge demographic.
Trends will constantly change as the world evolves. Email marketing trends will not be an exception. To get ahead, you may want to identify these trends and engage them. Being quick and responsive will help you maximize the benefits attached to each trend.
) What is the future of email marketing?
Email marketing is not going anywhere, and here are a couple of statistics to prove that email marketing is only going to get more popular:
There were around 3.9 billion email users in the world in 2019, and this number is expected to grow to 4.3 billion by 2024.
102.6 trillion emails are sent and received each year, and that number is still rising.
2) What are the latest trends in email marketing?
Some of the latest trends in email marketing are the AI revolution, laser-focused personalization, dark-mode emails, interactive email campaigns, preference to mobiles for checking emails, and making use of user-generated content. There are more, but these are the key email marketing trends that are most popular.
3) What is the role of AI in email marketing?
The use of AI is for the collation of user information. Customer data keeps growing by the day, and there are millions of customer-related data that a marketer has to sift through. Robots can sift through millions of data at a rate no human can match. More so, AI can predict trends, user patterns, and even suggest ways of improving email marketing.
4) Why is dark mode in emails so popular nowadays?
Dark mode makes it easier to read, especially for mobile users, as it removes blue light and eliminates the problems connected with the brightness of most mobile devices. With a lot more readers spending time on their mobile devices, dark mode has gained popularity.
