Our best practice email marketing trends for 2022
In the ever-changing digital landscape, email marketing remains one of the oldest, yet most effective digital channels of today, with no signs of slowing down in 2022.
Email marketing is often described as “the glue that sticks digital marketing channels together” and is a key platform that can be used to directly communicate with and inform your audiences. With 4 billion email users daily, email marketing continues to stand as one of the most powerful communication tools used to connect and engage online audiences (HubSpot, 2022).
This year presents new opportunities, growth, and innovation for email marketing – so if you aren’t currently harnessing the power of your email marketing strategy, you are ignoring a key channel that otherwise could be utilised to connect with your audience and drive ROI.
To help your brand stand out in a cluttered inbox, stay ahead of competitors and drive conversions this year, we’ve put together our best practice email trends for 2022.
Clean your mailing list regularly
Many people assume that the more subscribers in your database, the better. However, while having a larger audience may be tempting, it can be detrimental to your email campaign – effecting your open rate, click-through rate and ultimately limiting your campaign from driving valuable results.
Removing unengaged contacts is vital to keeping your email database clean, improving your overall deliverability, trusted sender status and ensuring that you are getting an accurate open and click-through rate. Not only will this allow you to remove inactive subscribers but it will also save you money and cut down unnecessary costs – the more subscribers you have, the more expensive it is to run your account.
If you are seeing a high number of bounces, spam complaints, or declining open or click-through rates, that is an indicator it’s time to start cleaning your email lists in 2022. Think quality over quantity!
Utilise sleek email designs
Research shows the average humans attention span is now officially shorter than a goldfish, which means to drive conversions, the design of your email campaign is king. Emails must be visually friendly with eye-catching aesthetics, meaningful copy and a consistent, on-brand look and feel that will be easy for readers to navigate.
The forecasted trends for 2022 highlight a key shift towards efficient, simple, clean graphics – getting rid of unwanted and unnecessary content that may deter viewers. The main rule of thumb? Stick to fewer than three type-faces to avoid clutter and create a seamless visual experience for your audiences and keep your email around 500 to 650 pixels wide for functionality. Remember, it’s all about the aesthetics!
Optimise subject lines and preview text
Hundreds of emails flood your audiences inbox each day – so your email marketing campaign needs to stand out with a killer subject line and compelling preview text to capture the attention of your readers.
Draw in your audiences with a short and snappy subject line that offers a strong call to action and a sense of urgency – then use the preview text that sits underneath to briefly expand on the content of the email and excite your audiences.
Audiences don’t want to read the same message twice, so be sure to differentiate your preview text from your subject line to further engage and entice your readers. As best practice, a subject line should only contain between 30 and 50 characters (including spaces), as email providers will often cut off any text that exceeds this length. Subject lines and preview text could mean the difference between your reader deciding to open or ignore your message – so make it count!
Personalisation
Generic email sends are officially a thing of the past. There, we said it!
In 2022, we’ll see a strong shift towards personalised content that is relevant and tailored to the behaviours of your subscribers. An email campaign that packs personality and personalisation is more likely to appeal to your audiences and drive strong engagement and return on investment (ROI).
Utilise your subscribers data and incorporate custom fields to offer your audiences personalised email greetings, subject lines, and promotions to gain trust and build a relationship with your readers. To connect and resonate with audiences, personalise your “to” and “from fields” in your emails, this assists in ensuring they recognisee your email came from an actual human, rather than just a business. Personalisation will be key in allowing your readers to feel heard and seen, all whilst standing out in their inbox and driving conversions.
Desktop vs mobile
This year mobile phone usage is expected to increase and will continue to overtake desktop. With 60% of emails now being viewed on mobile, ensuring your email is mobile-friendly should be a top priority, rather than an afterthought (Truelist, 2021).
Ensure your call-to-action (CTA) buttons stand out front and centre with contrasting colours and enough padding to ensure that your readers can easily tap their finger through to where you want them to go. “Padding” refers to the spacing that surrounds your button, and if it is structured correctly with enough spacing, it will make it easier for readers to click through to the correct button, rather than using intext links.
Ensuring your email is optimised for dark mode will be key this year, with 91.8% of people now choosing to switch to the dark mode theme since its launch in 2019 (Uplers, 2020). Essentially, dark mode is a user interface theme that displays light text on a dark background, and its use is intended to reduce light exposure and reduce eyestrain. While the popularity of the dark mode continues to grow, you’ll need to pay special attention to your email’s design – and use transparent images wherever possible.
Lastly, test, test, and test again! Be sure to send preview tests and view your emails on multiple devices to ensure your email functions and is formatted correctly across different screens.
Digital marketing is constantly changing and evolving, but email marketing is here to stay. Make certain to keep email marketing at the forefront of your digital strategy to remain competitive, connect with your audiences and drive engagement in 2022.
Want to stay on top of email marketing trends this year? Get in touch with our Digital Director, Sophie Viallard, via [email protected] to see how our team of digital experts can help.