Who said emails are fading into the background? Being 40x more effective than other channels, they are stepping into the spotlight as the mainstay of today’s marketing efforts. With the latest email marketing trends, we are witnessing a transformation we have never seen before.
But the challenge for us marketers is that email marketing trends are always changing. It is tough to find out what is worth paying attention to. To help you with it, we will highlight the most impactful email marketing trends for 2024 so you can tweak your strategies and get the best results in your campaigns.
10 Email Marketing Trends To Follow In 2024
Let’s look at the 10 leading email marketing trends that are set to make waves this year.
1. Personalize Emails At Scale
Personalized email marketing involves creating and sending targeted emails to your subscribers based on their preferences, behavior, and demographics. Here’s how you can do it:
- Use content blocks that change based on the customer data. This ensures each email is uniquely tailored.
- If you have a diverse customer base, schedule emails to hit inboxes when people are most likely to check them.
- Group customers based on shared characteristics. This lets you send targeted content without losing the personal touch.
- Set up triggers based on customer behavior. For instance, send a follow-up email with related products after a purchase.
- Gather information beyond just names – preferences, purchase history, and interactions are a goldmine for personalization.
- Leverage automation tools to insert personalized tokens. This could include names in the subject line, recent purchases, or even personalized recommendations.
Let’s say you run an online store selling health supplements from brands like CellCore, Des Bio, and Systemic Formulas. You can start by identifying customers interested in different health goals – detox, immune support, or energy. Create email templates with dynamic content that show specific products related to each health goal.
Use purchase history to recommend complementary products. If a customer recently bought a CellCore detox product, send them a follow-up email with exclusive discounts on the Des Bio appetite control formula.
Similarly, you can group customers by their preferred health focus. Send weight-gaining supplement recommendations to fitness enthusiasts looking to put on mass fast and stress-relief tips to those interested in overall wellness.
Don’t forget to experiment with different subject lines, visuals, and product placements to find the winning formula for each segment.
2. Create Interactive Emails
One email marketing strategy that is gaining traction among email marketers is the use of interactive emails. They go beyond the traditional static content and give a more engaging experience through different elements. Here’s how you can create interactive emails.
- Liven up your emails with multimedia. Embed videos showing your products or services directly within the email. Adding videos can increase open rates by up to 300%.
- Create a sense of urgency. Use countdown timers for limited-time offers or upcoming events, encouraging prompt action.
- Buttons, images, and icons – make them clickable. Direct your audience to a specific product, article, or landing page with a simple click.
- Let your audience share their opinions or preferences through interactive surveys and quizzes. Use their responses to customize future emails.
- Show multiple products or features in a single email with image carousels. Your audience can swipe through to discover more without leaving the email.
Imagine you run a business offering customized healthy meal plans. Instead of sending a plain email marketing campaign listing the benefits, you include buttons for different meal categories like breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Customers click to explore each category.
You can also embed short cooking videos within the email. This way, they can watch and learn without leaving their inbox. Add interactive forms to let customers input their dietary restrictions or preferences directly in the email. You can then use this information to provide personalized meal suggestions.
Break down the benefits of your meal plans into collapsible sections to let readers explore what matters most to them. You can showcase a carousel of meal options. Recipients can swipe through the delicious possibilities without leaving the email.
3. Optimize With AI
Another latest trend in email digital marketing is the use of AI to optimize campaigns and improve results. It works 24/7 to make split-second decisions on the best content, timing, and frequency for each subscriber.
AI can also help decode your subscribers’ behavior patterns. It knows what they open, what they ignore, and what grabs their attention. This insight helps you fine-tune your strategies for maximum impact. Let’s discuss how you can use AI in your email marketing strategies.
- AI can analyze your email content performance and suggest ways to improve it.
- Use AI algorithms to suggest content based on individual subscriber preferences and behavior.
- AI can help write subject lines that grab the attention of your email subscribers.
- AI automatically tests different elements of your emails, like subject lines, content, and calls-to-action to streamline the A/B testing process.
- Use AI to predict which subscribers are most likely to engage with your emails. This can help you prioritize your outreach efforts and focus on those who are most likely to convert.
Now let’s look at an example. Imagine you run an online store selling accessories for golf carts. Using AI for email marketing, you can send personalized product recommendations based on a customer’s previous purchases or browsing history. If someone bought golf club holders, AI would suggest matching golf cart seat covers or rain covers in the next email.
You can also use AI to predict which customers are likely to be interested in new arrivals or some expert tips. Say AI identifies a group interested in golf cart maintenance tips. You send them targeted content like “Top 5 Maintenance Hacks for a Smooth Ride.”
Similarly, AI notes that your subscribers engage more on weekends. Your emails are automatically scheduled on Saturday mornings when they are planning their golf outings.
4. Prioritize Mobile-First Design
With everyone glued to their mobile devices, designing your marketing email with mobile in mind ensures your message is seen wherever your audience is. Nobody likes pinching and zooming to read an email. The mobile-first design ensures a seamless, enjoyable experience for your audience and maximizes your email marketing efforts. Here’s how you can do it:
- Design buttons that are easy to tap with a thumb. Avoid small buttons or links that frustrate users and deter them from engaging.
- Mobile users have limited attention spans so keep your emails short and to the point. Focus on your main message and include clear CTA buttons.
- Choose an email template that is responsive and can adapt to different screen sizes. This will ensure that your emails look great on both desktop and mobile devices.
- Use images sparingly and make sure they are optimized for mobile viewing. Large images can slow down load times and make your emails difficult to read on mobile devices.
- Before sending out your emails, test them across different mobile devices to make sure they display correctly. Pay attention to font sizes, image alignment, and overall readability.
Imagine you are running a website that helps seniors and their families find the best medical alert systems. To make your design responsive, use media queries in your HTML and CSS to set different styles for different screen widths. Test your email on multiple devices to make sure it looks good everywhere.
Keep your message short and to the point. For instance, you can create a subject line like “Top 3 Medical Alert Systems – Your Guide to Safety” and follow it up with a headline that says, “Discover the Best for Your Loved Ones.”
You can use buttons like “Compare Now,” “See Features,” and “Get Pricing,” ensuring they are large enough and prominently placed. Place buttons with ample padding so that the users don’t accidentally click on the wrong element.
Simplify the email structure with a single-column layout for easy reading. For this, organize your content in a single column, with a clear hierarchy – headline, brief description, comparison table, and distinct CTA buttons at the end.
5. Automate Email Campaigns
Automating makes your life easier and your marketing smarter. It ensures you stay in touch with your audience regularly and simplifies your workflow. Let’s discuss how you can make the best of it.
- Set up automated drip emails that gradually provide more information to keep your audience engaged over time.
- Identify key moments that trigger automated emails. This could be a new subscriber, a purchase, or specific user interactions.
- Plan your automated sequences strategically. Map out a series of emails that guide users through their journey with your brand.
- Choose a platform that fits your needs. Popular tools like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or Sendinblue offer user-friendly interfaces and advanced automation features.
- Regularly check your campaign performance. Analyze open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. Tweak your automation sequences based on what works best for your audience.
For example, imagine you run an online platform that helps people find cheap flights. You can create a series of emails to greet new subscribers and introduce them to your flight deals platform. In the first email, thank them for subscribing, and then gradually introduce them to your flight deals and services.
Set up automated emails to engage users who abandoned their flight searches to complete their booking. Include a link to their search and offer an incentive, like a discount or exclusive deal, to encourage them to finalize their booking.
You can use data on users’ past flight searches or browsing history and set up automated emails to send personalized flight recommendations. This can help increase bookings by showing flights they are interested in.
You can also send automated birthday emails to users on their special day. Include a personalized message and offer them a birthday discount or freebie on flights to make them feel valued.
Post-trip, automate feedback requests. Learn from your users and use the insights to improve your service. You can also follow up after a successful booking with travel tips.
6. Tell Stories Through Email
Creating a narrative that engages and aligns with your audience is the latest trend in email marketing. Stories evoke emotions and emotions drive actions. They humanize your brand and go beyond product features. This gives your audience a glimpse into the values, people, and culture behind the brand. Here’s how you can implement this trend.
- Share real stories about your team, customers, or the journey of your products to add a human touch.
- Keep the story going. Create a series of emails that build on each other to entice your audience to follow along.
- Understand who you are talking to. Customize your stories to resonate with the experiences and interests of your audience.
- Visuals add depth and make your narrative more captivating. Use images, graphics, or even GIFs to increase the emotional impact of your story.
- Start with a hook to grab attention from the beginning. Your email’s subject line and opening should spark curiosity and invite your audience to keep reading.
Let’s say you run an online platform selling harmony gummies for females. You can create the character of a female professional in a bustling city life. You can begin with her initial challenges – the stress, the fatigue, the feeling of being out of sync.
Then, take users on a journey as she adds them to her daily routine. The arc peaks with her rediscovery of being connected and rejuvenated. Use visuals to show her daily routine, the moment of trying the gummies for the first time, and the positive changes she experiences.
Now invite your readers to join in. Your CTA should be compelling. Ask your customers to share their personal stories or testimonials about how your products have improved their intimate experiences. Feature these stories in your series of emails to create authenticity.
7. Optimize Email Content For Voice Search
People are talking more than they are typing. So customize your email content to align with how people use voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant to search for information. This way, you make it easier for your audience to engage with your emails, especially when they are on the go.
Here are some strategies to catch up on this trend:
- Add long-tail keywords that show the way people ask questions verbally.
- Include location-specific phrases. Voice searches include local queries like “near me” or “in [city].”
- Structure your content like frequently asked questions. Voice searches take question form, so be the source of the answers.
- Write your email content in a conversational, natural language. Think about how people speak when using voice search.
- Use voice assistants to test how your content performs. If it sounds natural and provides accurate information, you are on the right track.
For instance, you sell complete residential solar power systems. Instead of a stiff tone, your emails should talk to the reader about the benefits of solar power in simple, relatable language. Use phrases like “How can solar power save me money” or “Tell me about sustainable home energy” to match voice search queries.
Make sure your email content provides simple answers to common solar power questions like “How do I choose the right solar power system for my home?” Include a clear and compelling CTA that encourages users to take the next step. It could be visiting your website for more information or contacting your team to schedule a consultation.
Most important of all, use schema markup in your emails to give search engines additional context about your content. Monitor and analyze the performance of your email campaigns to see how well they are optimized for voice search and make adjustments accordingly.
8. Measure Beyond Opens & Clicks
Email marketing is moving beyond just opens and clicks to measure its effectiveness. The introduction of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) now prevents email senders from knowing when an email is opened and hides the user’s IP address. It has forced marketers to rethink their measurement strategies.
This has been a blessing in disguise. Opens and clicks are good but they don’t tell the whole story. Measuring beyond lets you understand how engaged your audience truly is. You get a clearer picture of what your audience likes and dislikes.
Let’s see how you can benefit from this trend.
- Invest in tools that provide deeper insights into user behavior and preferences.
- Add UTM parameters in your links. This helps you see where your traffic is coming from.
- Monitor how different email clients handle your emails, especially in the context of Apple’s MPP.
- Track actions beyond clicks – sign-ups, purchases, downloads. These are the real indicators of success.
- Map your customer journey. Understand the role of your emails in the overall customer journey – from awareness to conversion.
Let’s say you run an online job board offering graduate internships and jobs. When sending out marketing emails, set up tracking to see who’s applying for jobs or submitting resumes through your emails. You can add UTM parameters in your email links to identify which specific jobs or internship listings are attracting the most attention.
Use event tracking to monitor specific actions within your emails, like the number of users who watch a video about job-seeking strategies or fill out a skills assessment form.
You should also look at what graduates do after clicking on a job listing – do they explore other job categories, update their profiles, or directly apply? Understanding these actions provides a clearer picture of user engagement.
9. Integrate Email With Other Platforms
Integrating email with other platforms is a smart move to level up your marketing efforts. It extends your reach and your message hits your audience on multiple fronts. They see a consistent message across platforms. A unified brand voice – may it be on email, social media, or your website – builds trust and reinforces your key messages.
Here’s how you can take advantage of this email marketing trend.
- Define what you want to achieve with the integration – lead generation, social media engagement, or improved customer support.
- Pick platforms that easily sync with your email marketing tool. Popular choices are CRM systems like Salesforce or marketing automation tools like HubSpot.
- Make it easy for recipients to share your email content on social media by including social sharing buttons in your emails. This helps increase the reach of your campaigns.
- Sync email subscribers with social media through apps like Facebook Custom Audiences or X’s Custom Audiences. This lets you target your email subscribers with ads on social media.
To understand this in more detail, let’s imagine you are heading an insurance company’s marketing department. Your CRM captures all interactions and social media integration shows customer engagement. The result? A complete profile for personalized email campaigns.
You can integrate customer data from email and website interactions to send targeted emails suggesting customized insurance policies. When a customer files a claim online, the CRM triggers an email acknowledging the claim and providing a step-by-step guide. Seamless, timely, and comforting.
Similarly, your email surveys gather feedback and the CRM absorbs it. You can use this data to improve your services and show customers they are valued. You can send out an email introducing a VIP SMS club. Promise exclusive updates, quick insurance tips, and maybe some special discounts. Include a clear CTA for them to opt into the SMS club.
10. Adopt Sustainable Email Practices
This trend focuses on reducing the environmental impact of email marketing campaigns while still achieving marketing goals. Sustainable email practices reduce the carbon footprint. Also, when you trim down unnecessary emails, you are trimming your costs.
Let’s discuss how you can achieve it.
- Choose email hosting services that prioritize renewable energy sources.
- Fine-tune your email delivery processes to reduce server loads and energy consumption.
- No one likes a flood of emails. Set a frequency that suits your audience. Quality over quantity – always.
- Regularly scrub your email lists. Remove inactive subscribers and those who’ve opted out. Keep it fresh and relevant.
- Make it easy for people to opt out. Yes, you read it right. It is better to have a smaller engaged audience than a disinterested, large one.
For instance, imagine you offer online safety courses through your website. You can optimize course images in your emails while maintaining quality. Opt for simple graphics and avoid heavy videos in your emails.
Segment your email list based on relevant criteria to send targeted course emails to the right audience. For example, send trenching & excavation course emails to construction industry professionals and materials handling course emails to warehouse and logistics professionals. This minimizes the overall volume of emails sent and helps conserve energy and data.
To promote faster rendering and lower energy consumption, optimize your email’s HTML code for efficiency. Encourage participants to access certificates and course materials online. This reduces the need for printed materials and promotes a greener approach.
Also, make sure that your email templates are designed responsively. Responsive design improves the rendering on various devices and reduces the need for extra energy.
Conclusion
Inbox fatigue is a real concern and you should be vigilant not to contribute to the noise. Following the latest email marketing trends is the golden ticket to overcoming this challenge. For this, listen to your audience and continuously adapt.
The trends are there, the tools are at your disposal; now, it is your turn to use them wisely. One such tool is Hyperise which is designed for hyper-personalization. You can add dynamic layers to existing images and include personalized elements like greetings, product demos, or call-to-actions within videos.
It integrates with many popular sales and marketing platforms so you can easily use its features within your existing workflow. Start your free trial today and see how you can add a human touch to your emails.
Author Bio
Burkhard Berger is the founder of Novum™. He helps innovative B2B companies implement revenue-driven SEO strategies to scale their organic traffic to 1,000,000+ visitors per month. Curious about what your true traffic potential is?
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