Email Marketing Content Trends 2022 In 2021 82% of marketers reported using content marketing, up from 70% in the previous year. That’s an impressive increase, and a clear indication of the ongoing importance of content for both marketers and consumers. But content isn’t just about blog posts, reports, or video. Content filters into every marketing channel, especially email. With an increasing amount of consumers opting to shop online, inboxes are busier than ever as eCommerce brands battle fierce competition. For brands to make the most of their communications, stand out from the crowd, and ensure continuous engagement, keeping on top of the latest email innovations is key. To help them out, here are our predictions for email marketing content trends in 2022. For email marketers, better starts here. Hyper personalisation Personalisation has remained a email marketing trend for the past few years. And it’s likely to continue over the coming years. That’s because the personalisation of email content will forever be key to successful marketing communications. After all, personalised emails deliver 6x higher transactional rates, receive a 50% better open rate, and 63% of consumers will stop buying from brands that use poor personalisation tactics. But the more that brands personalise their email content, the more advanced personalisation tactics have become. Meaning that personalisation is now the norm, and hyper personalisation is what brands and businesses should be aiming for. This form of personalisation goes beyond simply calling a recipient by their name or segmenting an email list. Instead, it utilises their individual demographics, behaviours, needs, wants, and desires. Creating a perfectly tailored email experience for each individual recipient. Our recommendations Behavioural targeting Utilise behavioural data, such as pages visited and products viewed, to automate highly personalised emails incorporating the products and services your recipients are interested in. For instance, if a recipient has browsed women’s dresses multiple times but has yet to add anything to their basket, automate an email campaign promoting the most popular selling women’s dresses. Post-purchase Marketers can also utilise purchase data to automate highly personalised post-purchase communications. This could include upsell opportunities, such as the chance to upgrade a hotel room or flight. Or add on products and services, such as shoes to complement a dress a recipient has purchased. Product recommendations This brings us neatly only product recommendations. Many brands will send out one-size-fits-all product and sales promotions. Potentially offering basic personalisation based on demographics or segmentation. With behavioural and purchase data, marketers can ensure all of their product recommendations are highly tailored. This could include only promoting products in the ranges that are most browsed, related to past purchases, or based on products that have been added to baskets but never purchased. Dynamic content All of the above is achievable through the use of dynamic content. Instead of creating individual communications for each individual, which is near impossible, dynamic content allows marketers to pull through data on each individual to change the content of an email. This could be the imagery, products, copy, and even currency. The opportunities to use dynamic content for personalisation are vast. From product recommendations based on past purchases or the weather. To live pricing and availability updates for products regularly browsed. Interactive content The average attention span of a consumer is just 8 seconds. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that consumers love interactive content. It catches their attention, keeps them engaged, and offers some form of reward or delight. That’s likely why an impressive 96% of consumers who start BuzzFeed quizzes actually finish them. And after the last couple of years we’ve all had, marketing which is fun and brings a smile to our faces is exactly what we need. Particularly for those traditionally B2B brands who had to pivot their business offering and focus on a more B2C or D2C audience. Our recommendations Mobile first Before we get carried away, let’s start with the basics of ensuring content is interactive. Making sure it actually displays correctly. Mobile users are forecast to grow by several hundred million over the next few years. And over 40% of consumers check their email on mobile devices. Therefore, if your email content isn’t looking it’s best on desktop and mobile you will likely lose recipients’ interest immediately. Animated GIFs Instead of using the standard static images in email, animated GIFs offer movement which will immediately catch recipients’ attention. GIFs offer content that is more engaging than imagery, but without the resource and hassle of creating and embedding a video. And they can be used in a wide variety of contexts, such as ticking clocks to emulate a countdown, scenes from movies or TV shows, showcasing products, or even fireworks for celebrations. The list is endless, and allows marketers to flex their creative muscles. Countdown timers If you wanted to take your countdowns to the next level, instead of a ticking clock, you can incorporate a dynamic countdown timer that reflects how many days, hours, and minutes are left in real time. Countdown timers are a fantastic visual, and also add urgency to sales and events so that recipients don’t delay in purchasing, booking, or enquiring. Quizzes and polls Quizzes and polls are our favourite way to incorporate interactive content into emails. And even better, there’s so much choice. Marketers can include polls or surveys to gain feedback from their recipients. Quizzes and competitions to help nurture and engage. Or even send simple NPS emails to check in with customers. AI technology Hopefully by now you know that AI isn’t just another marketing buzzword. Instead, the future of email marketing lies with AI. It can help brands and businesses to streamline their processes, cut down on cost and resource, and offer better customer experiences. But what do we mean by AI in marketing? AI (artificial intelligence) refers to a variety of technology such as machine learning, computer vision, deep learning, and natural language processing. These technologies have been created to enable machines to perform certain tasks as well as, or even better than, us mere humans. Examples include voice assists such as Alexa or Siri which uses AI to understand your voice commands. Or Netflix, which uses AI to determine the programs of most interest to each individual viewer. Our recommendations Subject line optimisation Whilst often overlooked, the subject line is one of the most important elements of email content. After all, if the subject line doesn’t hook the reader, then your email won’t even get opened. Finding the perfect subject line has traditionally been a time consuming process. But nowadays, AI can take care of this work for the marketer. By using subject line testing and optimisation, marketers can test a variety of subject lines on a group of recipients. The technology will identify for the marketer which subject line has the highest open rate, automatically sending this to the rest of the recipients. Personalisation We’ve already discussed hyper personalisation, but AI technology is key to achieving the highly personalised content that recipients crave. AI can automate highly relevant emails based on recipients’ demographic, purchase, and behavioural data. Including pulling through relevant product suggestions, events and stores nearby, and different copy to suit the recipient. Dynamic content Also with the use of AI, once an email is sent out, your content doesn’t have to be set in stone. With the use of dynamic content blocks, marketers can include content that updates every time an email is refreshed. So that is always up to date and relevant. For instance, using dynamic content, an email can update with a product’s latest price, availability, and reviews. All in real-time. User generated content (UGC) User generated content (UGC) refers to content that is created by users, consumers, and customers that directly relates to a brand, their products, and their services. UGC has been particularly popular in content marketing for the past few years, and is now finding it’s way into email marketing too. That’s because user generated content reassures other potential customers that real people are purchasing from a brand, and they’re really happy with the product or service. Our recommendations Product promotions Happy customers are arguably the best way to promote your products. They provide brands with their objective opinions, new and varied product shots and videos, and benefits that a brand may not have even considered. Encourage your customers to get active on social media and then incorporate their product photos into your email campaigns. You can even link back to their social accounts to give them a little extra promotion, and show they are a real person! Reviews and testimonials Reviews from other customers can be powerful. In fact, 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations to make a purchase. And this content can be found in lots of different places. Brands can gather their own reviews and testimonials via their website or third party review platform. Or, they can incorporate social media posts from customers that include reviews of the brand or the product, such as product demos or unboxing videos. All of this content can easily be incorporated into email campaigns in the form of quotes and images. Influencers We couldn’t talk about UGC without mentioning influencers, could we? For consumers, influencers offer a wealth of product and lifestyle advice and of course, influence. Including influencer content within your emails is a great way to reassure potential customers, encourage a little FOMO (fear of missing out), and also increase your reach within their own following. Content atomisation After a couple of years where many brands struggled; losing customers and losing team members, marketers are always on the look out to do more with less. When it comes to email marketing content, content atomisation is key to achieving this. Content atomisation refers to taking a single piece of content, ideally a lengthy, meaty piece, and breaking it down into smaller pieces of content. As well as enabling the marketer to do more with what they have, this tactic is ideal for improving how engaging email content is for the individual. Our recommendations Welcome series For many brands, the welcome email is the first main moment of contact with a new recipient. So it’s important to make a good first impression. This may mean wanting to communicate lots of information from the start. Offering a warm welcome, contact details, social channels, popular products, reviews, store locations. The list could go on. And whilst we recommend featuring as much information as possible in a welcome email, this can be overwhelming for the recipient. Instead, split all of this information into a welcome series; dedicating a single email to different categories of information. Such as a simple welcome email, then bestselling products, reviews and ratings, and finishing with contact details and social channels. Content series This recommendation is particularly useful for B2B or content-focused brands. For marketers who are launching a guide, report, or campaign, emails can be split into a series to help promote the content. This could include taking summaries, quotes, videos, or statistics out of the content and spreading them through a series of emails to help promote the main piece. Re-engagement For many brands, a re-engagement campaign will consist of one email that attempts to entice the recipient back with a discount code, recommended products, or latest reviews and ratings. But the reality is, it can take a lot more than one single email to grab the attention of a disengaged recipient. So instead, break all of the above into a re-engagement series. Start gently with a friendly reminder of what’s new in your brand, featuring some of your latest products. Follow this up with your latest reviews and ask for feedback from the recipient. And then finish by bringing out the discount code or offer, for that final nudge. Are you looking to improve your email marketing in 2022? Our all-in-one AI email & web marketing platform alongside our dedicated team of experts have a wealth of experience in all things email marketing. Get in touch for a friendly chat and a little inspiration.