Email marketing is an inexpensive and effective way to engage with clients and reach new leads. It continues to be an impactful channel for marketers, so much so that 62% of B2B and B2C marketers have increased their budgets for it within the past year.
In 2024, new capabilities are changing how marketers use email, and shifts to privacy and security features are forcing them to reevaluate how they measure success. These are the email marketing trends to watch in 2024.
#1 AI at the Forefront
Artificial Intelligence has exploded within the past year, with its influence already extending to email marketing. The ability to personalize content creation, generate effective messaging, and segment audiences intelligently is increasing AI’s popularity among marketers.
Marketers are using AI to:
- Deeply tailor content based on user behavior, preferences, and purchase history
- Optimize send times based on AI algorithms
- Enhance subject lines, body text, and CTAs for higher engagement
- Automate content creation based on brand voice and audience preferences
- Analyze email deliverability and spam scores to get more messages to customer inboxes
- Predict unsubscribes and proactively start reactivation campaigns
AI is likely to play an even larger role in the future of email marketing practices as time goes on. As it continues to evolve, so will its use cases for this marketing medium.
#2 More Interactive Emails
Interactive elements such as quizzes, polls, sliders, and interactive infographics are increasing email engagement and helping marketers gather real-time feedback directly from email campaigns. This engagement not only enhances the user experience, but also provides marketers with valuable insights into preferences and behaviors.
Interactive emails must be tested and optimized for different devices. Engagement must be continually refined to the strategy of the brand or campaign.
#3 A Shift to First-Party Data
Browers are eliminating third party cookies and forcing marketers to adopt cookieless attribution to collect marketing data. As a result, first-party data is now driving email marketing strategies for many teams.
First-party data offers a goldmine of insights and, as a bonus, is more accurate than third-party data because it is collected directly from the email subscriber. Email sign-up forms, newsletters, and surveys are all ways to collect first party data..
Transactional emails, such as purchase confirmations and appointment reminders, can include surveys or feedback requests. This helps enrich customer profiles and enables more tailored email marketing strategies.
By gradually collecting more data on subscribers over time, marketers are gaining deeper insights into customer behaviors and preferences without relying on third-party cookies.
#4 Embracing User-Generated Content (UGC)
Seventy-two percent of consumers believe reviews and testimonials from UGC are more credible than a brand talking about their product. Reviews, photos, and videos created by customers are embedded into marketing emails to lend credibility and trust to brand messaging.
Marketers are encouraging customers to share experiences and tag their brand to showcase real-life applications and results. While this practice is most popular in the B2C space, B2B marketers are increasingly implementing UGC through their own social channels, customer video reviews, community forums, and collaborative ventures with other businesses.
#5 The Introduction of BIMI
BIMI stands for “Brand Indicators for Message Identification” and it’s a relatively new concept for email marketing in 2024. This email authentication protocol enables companies to display their brand logo alongside their email messages in customers' inboxes. It’s currently supported by Google, AOL mail, and Fastmail.
The primary goal of BIMI is to increase the trust and visibility of a brand in a recipient's inbox, helping to distinguish legitimate emails from potential phishing or spoofing attempts. By prominently displaying a familiar brand logo next to the email, recipients are more likely to recognize the email as genuine.
Aside from the improved trust and credibility that can come with BIMI, marketers are using it to increase brand recognition, boost email open and engagement rates with stronger familiarity and trust, and differentiate from competitors who have yet to adopt it.
#6 Refocusing Metrics on CTR
Open rates used to carry a lot of weight for tracking email campaign performance. However, several privacy-related changes (including the removal of cookies) are forcing marketers to reconsider this metric. Apple’s new privacy settings, for example, prevent marketers from tracking when and where users open email, or seeing which device they used to open it.
Open rates can also be misleading for technical reasons; for example, an email is marked as "opened" if the email client loads the images, which might not always mean the recipient actively read the email.
Clicks are a more definitive action, showing deliberate interest or curiosity. Click-through rates measure how many people clicked on a link within the email or advertisement, demonstrating a higher level of engagement. A click signifies that the content was interesting enough to prompt an action.
Clicks are a closer step to conversions than opens, too. When someone clicks on a link, they are usually directed towards a landing page or a product page which is a step closer to completing a purchase or another conversion goal. Open rates don’t provide this level of insight into the conversion funnel.
Conclusion
Staying on top of the latest email marketing trends is not just about keeping pace, it’s about leveraging innovation to maintain the competitive advantage.
Marketers who capitalize on the latest strategies and technologies are evolving with their customers and driving more impactful marketing results.