Email marketing is not going anywhere. In fact, it has become increasingly critical year on year as brands strive to maintain a stable mix of digital touchpoints with their customers, and email is one of the most reliable and cost-effective means of communication.
When done well, email marketing can lead to significant conversions and ongoing customer retention. The marketing truism that it is far easier to retain customers than acquire new ones is certainly proven by the success of email marketing campaigns, which are designed primarily for retention. However, email marketing must be done well, and much of what will define email marketing in 2023 will be brands fine-tuning their email strategies to maximize their effectiveness.
Here are four email marketing predictions for 2023:
- Automation will continue to dominate: A successful automation project is likely to generate at least half of a brand’s email marketing revenue. Automation is much less resource-intensive than the production of mass emails, and if brands can fine-tune their automated email system, there’s a lot of revenue on the table as a reward.
To create a successful automated email strategy, a brand will be more likely to A/B test their automated emails at least once per year. Automation naturally requires robust data gathering strategies, so as part of the ‘automation is king’ trend in 2023, expect to see more brands invest more heavily in providing customers with compelling reasons to pass over their data.
- Personalisation will continue to be a priority: Data collected by brands will be used to highly personalise the experience that a customer has with the brand. Brands will know what their customers like and dislike, what they buy, and what promotions they’re likely to respond to. The trend will be towards providing customers with information on a proactive basis; what is coming up next and what is new, rather than more of what they are already aware of.
The ultimate goal is to provide customers with a genuine 1:1 experience with the brand. In 2023, brands will continue to look to email marketing as an opportunity to achieve this goal.
- Predictive marketing metrics will gain more importance: Understanding the success of a campaign before it’s sent out is the holy grail for marketers. Predictive marketing metrics, particularly the customer lifetime value (CLV), will become even more valuable. Machine learning and AI will enhance CLV beyond previous values, making it predictive rather than historical. Predictive CLV will measure insights such as what acquisition budget earns the highest ROI, and what customer attributes assist in creating the maximum lifetime value.
- Emails will continue to become more interactive: Email campaigns will take full advantage of the rich interactivity that modern email enables to include animated GIFs, quizzes, dynamic reviews, search bars, countdown timers, video and image galleries to make those emails as engaging and interesting for the consumer as possible.
Engaging emails from a brand make for emails that the consumer looks forward to receiving in their inbox. In 2023, the old adage “content is king” will continue to be a critical cornerstone in any email marketing strategy.
Finally, a critical trend in email marketing is how integral and linked it will become to the overall marketing strategy. Brands will continue to embrace omni-channel marketing, where email is part of the same set of marketing strategies that a customer may see on TV, research on a website, sign up to an email list, and make the final purchase in-store. Consistency across all platforms will be key, so that the customer has a consistent experience.
For more information on email marketing and how to make the most of this critical platform in 2023, contact the experts at IVE.
