Guessing games are fun.
Who doesn’t love Battleships?
But nobody wants to play guessing games with their 2022 email marketing plans.
That’s a sure way to miss the boat… or should I say ship? OK, I’m done.
Instead of playing guessing games with your marketing in 2022, why not take the advice of the pros?
Marketers who’ve done this for years. Who spend their days and nights studying marketing. And who can pretty accurately predict what’ll work in 2022.
That’s why I emailed 12 email marketing pros and asked them two questions:
- What email marketing trend will take off in 2022?
- What email marketing trend will help marketers succeed in 2022?
I gave them the option to answer one question or both questions. Either way, I was looking for their best wisdom for 2022 email marketing trends. And boy, did they deliver.
1. Social proof
Dave Gerhardt (Chief Brand Officer at Drift & Founder of DGMG)
Q: What email marketing trend will help marketers succeed in 2022?
Two words: More. Emojis. Kidding, kidding. No, I think one trend that people sleep on way too much is incorporating social proof into your marketing emails. You could write a three-paragraph email (you shouldn’t, but you could) about how great your solution is, and all the features that make you better than the competition.
It will never be as impactful as a singular quote from a customer saying, “This product increased my revenue by 78%. I can’t recommend it enough.” The word of your customer will always be more powerful than your word as an employee because customers have nothing to gain from promoting you. Your customers are an incredible marketing asset. Use them.
2. Growth loops
Eddie Shleyner, Founder, VeryGoodCopy.com
Q: What email marketing trend will help marketers succeed in 2022?
It depends on your goals, of course, but if you’re trying to grow an email newsletter, for example, start creating growth loops from your emails to your social media posts to your newsletter’s signup page. Email is a great opportunity to compel your existing audience, big or small, to take action somewhere else (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora), where their engagement (e.g., likes, comments, shares) begets more engagement, exposure, and ultimately, sign ups.
3. LinkedIn newsletters
Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder of Orbit Media
Q: What email marketing trend will help marketers succeed in 2022?
For years, we warned against “building on rented land” and recommended growing your own email list and body of content on your own site. But when the location of that rented land is amazing and the cost is low, you should go ahead and rent. For the lucky few who have built up an engaged audience on LinkedIn, a “Start newsletter” button will appear on the “Write article” page. Click it. LinkedIn will invite others to subscribe and then email them your article.
The growth of these newsletters is staggering…
4. Listen to your customers, get to know them, and large bold fonts
Matthew Smith, Design Goofball and Founder Really Good Emails
Q: What email marketing trend will help marketers succeed in 2022?
Is it a trend to listen to your customers and get to know them? I think people are awakening to how crappy it feels for a brand or company to feel self-obsessed without reading the real and personal needs of their customers. The people who listen empathetically and then provide value based on what they learn will win.
Q: What email marketing trend will take off in 2022?
Now that I’ve shared from my soapbox, I’d say a real trend will be large bold fonts that themselves are visually appealing and engaging while pulling people in with great meaning from the words themselves.
5. Being human with your audience
Ryan Robinson, a blogger, podcaster and (recovering) side project addict that teaches 500,000 monthly readers how to start a blog and grow a profitable side business at ryrob.com
Q: What email marketing trend will help marketers succeed in 2022?
I’m a firm believer that there’s no replacement for simply being human with your audience over email. Regardless of the type of business you’re in, customers you serve, or size of your marketing team, if you can build a process around taking a step back from heavy sales messaging when you sit down to craft your email campaigns — and instead think about exactly who your recipients are and how they’re going to feel when opening your emails, that’s the first step to building stronger relationships with your audience.
Short-term trends like using animated GIFs in your emails, testing emojis in your subject lines, and experimenting with tactics to boost opens and clicks will always come and go. If you’re able to build a foundation of establishing meaningful connections with your audience — based on trust, genuinely fulfilling their needs and trading value — then you’ll be traveling down the right path.
6. Personality, personalization, storytelling, and plain-text emails
Kaleigh Moore, eCommerce writer
Q: What email marketing trend will help marketers succeed in 2022?
I think 2022 will be about three things for email marketing: Personality, personalization, and storytelling. Long gone are the days of just blasting out promotional emails around sales and new product launches. Today’s consumers want to see behind-the-scenes life and to feel like a true part of the organization (not just a possible sale).
Q: What email marketing trend will take off in 2022?
Plain text. I think we’re going to see a lot of companies ditch the templates and go for a paired-down, highly deliverable email format.
7. Omnichannel visibility and attribution
Chad S. White, Head of Research for Oracle Marketing Consulting and author of Email Marketing Rules
Q: What email marketing trend will take off in 2022?
Omnichannel visibility and attribution will be a huge focus in 2022, especially for large brands, because of how Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection is impairing email marketers’ ability to determine which of their subscribers are active and therefore safe to mail. Early signs during the holiday season indicated that this problem will get much worse during 2022, when MPP adoption is set to exceed 95%.
As marketers’ visibility into real opens diminishes, they will need to compensate by increasing their visibility of web visits, app sessions, purchases, and other cross-channel activity and factoring that into email audience selection. Increasingly, marketers will need to assume that an active customer who is a subscriber is also an active subscriber, even if they’re not seeing any real opens from them.
8. Modular email design and full-body background images
Anne Tomlin, Founder of Emails Y’all and Email Loot
Q: What email marketing trend will help marketers succeed in 2022?
The email marketing trend that will help marketers succeed in 2022 is the rise of modular design systems. I built many modular systems in 2021, so I think the idea is becoming more mainstream. Whether you make one in an ESP, use a third-party tool like Dyspatch, or store modules in git, a modular code repository has so many benefits. It speeds up your email creation process; you get fewer errors; and with a system like Dyspatch, the non-coders on your team can use custom code via a visual editor.
Q: What email marketing trend will take off in 2022?
The email marketing trend that I think will take off in 2022 is wider adoption of full-body background images. I’ve seen more and more of them in the last few months of 2021, and they keep getting cooler! They look great and can be useful in dark mode, but they do take a bit longer to code because Windows 10 Mail doesn’t display images on top of background images. To solve this, use a separate VML image surrounded by a MSO 2016 conditional in addition to your regular image.
9. Data collection, aggregation techniques, and AMP for Email
Dylan Moore, Director of Customer Success at Dyspatch
Q: What email marketing trend will help marketers succeed in 2022?
Apple’s “Mail Privacy Protection” will force marketers to redefine success from vanity metrics towards more concrete engagement. To fixate less on open/click/unsubscribe/spam rates and hone in on data collection and aggregation techniques. I expect more marketers to use methods like the double opt-in to ensure they have the best quality lists. I also expect a large uptick in Customer Data Platform (CDP) adoption, like Segment and Simon Data, as marketers unify their data to confidently measure the effectiveness of their messaging across all channels.
Q: What email marketing trend will take off in 2022?
With increased regulation around privacy and tracking, marketers will turn to technologies that facilitate better relationship building. Technologies like AMP for Email will enable marketers to show live and relevant information to their customers. AMP will also enable in-email survey and feedback responses that marketers can take action on.
10. Plain-text emails and standing out in the inbox
Brian Minick, COO at ZeroBounce
Q: What email marketing trend will help marketers succeed in 2022?
Understanding that you’re competing for the inbox just like everyone else – but the competition of email senders grows and grows every day.
So, make sure you’re doing the right things to get into the inbox and stay there. Create engagement by focusing on getting click-throughs and replies. Just opens are not enough anymore due to all the changes from Apple. Also, give people the content that they asked and signed up for. Be smarter and segment your audience based on their past interactions with your campaigns.
The more you fine-tune their experience with your company, the more likely they are to engage, and that will help you land in the inbox.
Q: What email marketing trend will take off in 2022?
We’ve been seeing more plain-text emails being sent by B2B companies and expect this trend to take off in 2022. It’s something we’ve tested ourselves at ZeroBounce – with positive outcomes.
Interactivity and spectacular designs will still be common, especially in B2C. But plain-text emails eliminate distractions and allow people to focus on your message. A good topic and compelling copy go a long way in getting your subscribers to interact with you.
11. Segmentation and personalization
Rachael Pilcher, B2B SaaS copywriter
Q: What email marketing trend will help marketers succeed in 2022?
Over the past year I’ve noticed companies putting more thought into how they segment and target their subscribers, and I feel this is a trend which will continue to grow in 2022.
12. Don’t give plain-text the cold shoulder
Andrew and Pete, Founders of ATOMIC
Q: What email marketing trend will help marketers succeed in 2022?
Business email is still dominated by highly produced newsletters, all dying for attention in the inbox. So don’t discount the less-is-more approach for getting your messages heard and seen. Plain-text, shorter and to the point emails, written in a way you might chat to a friend via email is a great way to get your message heard in 2022.
Because consumers are smart — if it looks like marketing, smells like marketing, talks like marketing — it’s marketing. And don’t think they don’t know where their ‘mark as spam’ button is. They do, and they’re not afraid to use it.
So use plain-text emails to create a personal connection with conversational email marketing that treats subscribers as people, not a number on a list. Some of our ATOMIC members are reporting better results from their email marketing, by sending these plain-text, shorter, conversational emails, more frequently. And even though they are sending more emails, it’s taking them a fraction of the time it took them to send one highly produced email.
Let’s wrap things up and my 2022 trend…
AMP for Email.
I don’t know whether or not it’ll take off in 2022, but I do know that marketers who use it smartly will succeed.
Here’s why …
- It enhances the user experience for subscribers. It makes it easier for them to act on calls to action and to interact with design elements within email.
- It’s a way to stand out. Most people aren’t using AMP for Email. While this is still the case, it’s an incredible way to stand out. The inbox is crowded. It’s competitive. This is your ticket to the top.
- You’ll be an early adopter. Many people wait to adopt new technology. They want to see if it takes off before they’ll use it. But the forward thinkers who take the risk of being different? They’re the ones who benefit most from new tech. One word: Bitcoin.
Give AMP for Email a try. Nowadays, there are platforms that make it ridiculously easy.
P.S. Email marketing consultant and founder of emailmonday, Jordie van Rijn, included this article in the 2022 edition of his popular future of email marketing post. If you’re a trend hungry email marketer, check it out for more predictions from industry experts.
