64% of Enterprise Marketers Find Email Automation To Be a Major Trend in 2023
Marketers use several digital marketing channels to connect with their audience, engage them, and convert them into customers. Email is one of these channels, which is highly crucial for marketers. According to a Litmus study, email marketing offers an average ROI of $36 for every dollar spent.
However, the fast-changing landscape, especially in data privacy, has made reaching the target audiences with a personalized email experience at the right time complex. So, how are enterprise marketers executing emails to maximize the results?
To understand this, OMI partnered with Ascend2 to conduct a study. The following are a few key takeaways from the study.
Marketers Rely Heavily on Emails
According to the study, marketers still rely heavily on email marketing to achieve their strategic objectives. Marketing leaders still ranked email as a top channel for driving ROI. About 94% of marketing professionals agreed to various degrees that executing an effective email marketing program is a critical part of the overall success of a marketing strategy in the coming year. Only 6% disagreed to some extent.
See more: 4 Ways To Improve Email Marketing Campaign Deliverability
Marketers Believe Their Email Strategy Is Successful
A good percentage of enterprise marketers from the study believed that their email marketing strategy was quite successful. About 28% of them believed it to be very successful or best-in-class in achieving the objectives set for it, but there is still significant room for improvement. About 67% experienced some success from their email marketing programs, while 5% believed their email marketing strategy was unsuccessful.
Marketers Also Face Several Challenges to Success
Despite seeing some success in their email marketing strategies, enterprise marketers still face a few barriers. For 59% of marketers, increasing engagement is one of the greatest barriers to achieving success in their email marketing program. For 47%, it is measuring performance and ROI. High-quality email marketing data can enable better targeting to improve engagement. That said, 36% believed integrating email data with other data was challenging.
Top challenges to the success of email marketing program
Source: Email Marketing: New Research for the Enterprise Marketer
Email Marketing Automation Is a Major Trend To Look For Next Year
As we slowly start bidding adieu to 2022, there are key trends to look for in the year ahead. One major trend, according to 64% of respondents, is email marketing automation. About 59% of enterprise marketers believe mobile-friendly design is a major trend, and 54% believe personalization that goes beyond the first and last name will be a key email marketing trend to look out for in the coming year. About 24% also believe AI in email marketing is a key trend to watch for.
Email marketing trends for the next year
Source: Email Marketing: New Research for the Enterprise Marketer
Current Martech Stack Doesn’t Allow to Measure Performance
Measuring email performance is essential to its optimization. However, only 36% of respondents reported that their current marketing technology (martech) stack allowed them to extensively measure their email marketing’s impact on overall marketing performance. About 52% said their martech stack could only partially measure the impact on overall marketing performance. About 12% felt it almost or did not allow measuring the impact.
Marketers should realize that without high-quality audience data, even the most sophisticated martech stack will fail to reach its full potential.
Email Marketers Can Perform Various Tests To Understand the Performance
Marketers must be able to continuously perform certain tests to understand what is working and what is not in an email. According to the study, marketers can do certain tests. According to 39%, email personalization tactics beyond first and last name is the most important test they can perform. For 38%, it is timing and frequency, and for 35%, calls to action (CTA) are the most important tests they can perform.
Most important tests marketers can perform
Source: Email Marketing: New Research for the Enterprise Marketer
Marketers Believe AI in Email Marketing Helps in Various Ways
For enterprise marketers, using artificial intelligence (AI) with email efforts is useful in many ways. For example, it can help in better email retargeting (39%), understanding customer lifecycle (39%), and improving deliverability (34%). Further, it can also help personalize email newsletters (32%), optimize sending times (28%), automate email copy (26%), and make segmentations (20%).
Click Through Rate and Return-on-Investment Are the Top Measured KPIs
Marketers need to measure various key performance indicators (KPIs) when evaluating the effectiveness of their email marketing efforts. Regarding the KPIs they will measure in the year ahead, CTR topped the list of most effective KPIs for 46% of respondents. About 42% rank ROI, and 36% rank conversion rates as the most effective KPIs. About 34% rank click-to-open rates, 24% rank list growth rate, 19% rank unsubscribe rate, and 14% rank bounce rate as the most effective KPIs in the coming year.
See more: Future of Email Marketing: Can AI Write Our Emails?
A Look Toward the Future
As we slowly move toward the end of 2022, we may expect to see a few interesting trends in email marketing in the year ahead. Here are a few of them.
- The Apple iOS 14 update impacted email marketing and how marketers measure results. Hence, as we move forward, instead of measuring vanity metrics, marketers should focus on metrics, such as conversion rates, that impact the organization’s bottom line.
- AI has already been increasingly implemented in various marketing channels. More marketers, too, may be expected to use email platforms in conjunction with machine learning (ML) and AI. This will help them offer better personalization and automate emails.
- Talking about personalization, it is necessary for marketers to go beyond first and last names. Truly personalizing emails appeal to subscribers’ unique needs, add value, and increase conversion rates. Use subscribers’ data to identify topics and types of content that may resonate with them, schedule emails, and provide the right offers.
- Leveraging customer data collected across marketing channels is key to better email personalization. However, given that third-party cookies are looking at an eventual demise, marketers will need to focus on collecting zero-party and first-party data. The benefit of this data is that it is more reliable and compliant with data protection policies.
- Interactive emails have been around for a while. But expect it to grow stronger in the year ahead. Interactive, responsive emails boost subscriber interaction and engagement significantly. A few interactive elements marketers should consider are animated CTA buttons, interactive images and product carousels, and surveys and polls.
By staying updated with the trends in a continuously-changing marketing landscape and preparing for the changes, marketers can ensure their email strategy is ready for the coming years.
What do you think are some of the email marketing trends to look for in the year 2023? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Image Source: Shutterstock
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