Email Marketing Trends in 2023: the experts speak out
As we do every year, Digital Response wants to reflect on the key trends and aspects that will dominate email marketing in 2023.
We are also doing so with the participation of very prominent professionals who have wanted to share their points of view.
There are two aspects that, in my view, will be consolidated in 2023. One has to do with communications security and user privacy. The second relates to how to streamline email marketing production processes.
In the coming months we will see how DMARCDMARC, an email authentication technique, will proliferate among companies that are serious about security and privacy. DMARC is a clear exponent of a global trend to strengthen the privacy and security of communications. The implementation of DMARC will also lead to the adoption of a new standard, BIMI, which allows visible brand images to be introduced to consumer inboxes, with the consequent impact on user security and business results (more opens, clicks, conversions and brand recognition).
From a marketing operations point of view, in 2023, we will see companies moving towards solutions that make it easier to manage their marketing operations. assets involved in a campaign (links, texts, images, tags, HTML modules, personalisation conditionals, etc.). With increasing sending volumes and a firm commitment to personalisation, brands need to optimise the processes and operations involved in the execution of email marketing.
CEO and Founder - Digital Response
In email marketing strategies, the consumer demands concrete, unique and valuable messages focused on them and on improving the brand experience. When we talk about online customers, I think it is necessary to understand what needs the consumer has and how I can meet them. And if we talk about needs, there is one very clear one: the need to be cross device and responsive in email marketing. In terms of conversion, triggered emails, which are those communications based on the interactions that consumers make in e-commerce, continue to be the protagonists. And of all of them, the triggered email to recover abandoned carts is the most important for the results it achieves. If we talk about trends, in 2023 we will see a very clear one: hyper-personalisation; and data will be at the heart of any email marketing strategy, which is why it is vital to have technologies that ensure that campaigns comply with privacy regulations such as GDPR and are efficient. Partners with good data management certifications will become relevant.
Brand & Communications Manager - Blueknow
2022 has been the year we have seen significant advances in BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification), which allows brands that have adopted this protocol to differentiate themselves by displaying their registered corporate logo on every email sent. Recent support from Apple with the release of iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, combined with support from Google, Yahoo and a few others, means a shift in how organisations use their email, not only to boost brand awareness, presence and open rates, but to provide visual confidence of authenticity, on every email sent.
I believe that based on the growing support for BIMI seen over the past 12 months, 2023 will be the year that companies will begin to realise the benefits of BIMI and its brand enhancement. While the DMARC protocol may be seen by the marketing department as just a means to implement BIMI, the security benefits DMARC offers in authenticating legitimate mail and eliminating exact sender impersonation emails will benefit the entire organisation and brand. Therefore, I believe that BIMI will be adopted as a multi-disciplinary initiative in many of the businesses that choose to implement it.
Account Executive - Iberia & Italy - Red Sift
Machine learning (ML), where it is possible to identify patterns from historical data, is going to grow in importance until it becomes one of the essential tools for any data-based campaign, including email marketing. In addition, it will allow small and medium-sized companies to match the work and results of large corporations or more demanding budgets.
This subset of artificial intelligence (AI) will enable decision-making using the latest data. Using more advanced computational techniques, it allows them to extract the essence of the Big Databy capturing user behaviour. For example, so-called "affective computing" will make machines understand and simulate human emotion and it is well known that an emotional message has a much greater impact on key business KPIs.
AI algorithms use these insights to make predictions, recommendations and decisions that enable unprecedented personalisation and segmentation at every stage of the customer journey, not only to reduce costs or increase profits, but also to achieve greater brand attachment with impacts that are increasingly personalised to the user's needs at any given moment.
Today we know that through predictive and prescriptive analytics it is possible to anticipate when a customer will buy again, or when they are at risk of churning. In these eventualities, AI generates personalised offers that, combined with the right email marketing workflows, boost the lifetime of a customer and reduce churn rates.
CEO - CoRegisters
At Data Innovation we believe that email marketing, as part of CRM and more generally marketing and communication strategy, is still an important tool, even more so in the context that many companies acquire the vast majority of their traffic and new prospects/customers and make themselves known through the triopoly of Meta, Google and Amazon or Tiktok (depending on the profile). However, I think the big change in 2023 is going to be in Meta's push into the marketing of WhatsApp Business. It will be a challenge for all of us to know how to incorporate WhatsApp efficiently into the omni-channel strategy and a further blow to the email channel.
Looking further into the trends we will see in 2023 in email marketing and CRM, I would specify 3 of the most important ones:
Use of artificial intelligence: If you haven't started using OpenAI ChatGPT or any other AI tool to diversify and optimise content, I highly recommend it. AI is playing an increasingly important role as an assistant and tool in email marketing and CRM, allowing, for example, the automation of repetitive tasks or advanced data analysis, improving the personalisation of messages and even detecting the right proportion of users given their level of activity per domain to prevent messages from reaching SPAM.
Process automation and platform integrationMany companies are integrating their email marketing and CRM with other tools, such as social media or data analytics platforms, to gain a more complete view of their customers and improve the effectiveness of their campaigns. Companies and projects such as Airflow, Zappier, MuleSoft, FastETL have provided important frameworks and connectors for any level of task, but in many cases teams have to proactively work on automating processes.
Optimisation of profitability: Profitability I think is going to be a key word for 2023 even for email marketing and CRM. Under economic pressure, inflation, big tech layoffs, uncertainty... it's wise to act in a way that every interaction with a consumer not only provides value, but also adds value to the company's bottom line. Thanks to Apple MPP's pre-cached openings, in 2022 we have wasted a lot of shipments and collected events that lack value and disrupt all the customer journeys and so on. But not only that, you have to take stock of results at the level of each interaction, each prospect and channel and so on: how much it costs me, how much it brings me, what net benefit I get and, at the same time, be honest, pragmatic and consistent with the objectives of the company.
CEO & Founder - Data Innovation
This is the experts' opinion and predictions about the future of email marketing in 2023. What do you think, do you agree, what other trends do you think we will see?
