Welcome to the future of email marketing and Marketing Automation. My annual review of all email marketing trends and predictions. This is the 12th edition. 

We’ll dive into the email marketing trends of today that will shape the email marketing industry of tomorrow… And lay out the email marketing and automation tactics you’ll need to succeed in 2023 and beyond. Let’s get into it.

– your guide, Jordie van Rijn

Note: I’ll update this post to include new trend articles as they come out. If you have any additions, comments, just like to say “HI”, post a comment below.

Email marketing trends for 2023 and beyond

The team at Adobe had a good look at email marketing trends before them and shares these insights.

1. New primary KPIs, but which?
The open rate is out, unreliable, and out of fashion because of Apple mail privacy protection (MPP). But what is there to take the king’s throne as the new main KPI? Adobe says it depends. Click-through rate (CTR), conversion, and other engagement metrics

2. Microsegmentation, smaller segments, big engagement
There is a wealth of data. Microsegmentation helps marketers niche down creating smaller and smaller segments. Audiences are now based on behaviour, sentiment, shopping patterns, precise location, seasonality, and more. It requires marketing software that can handle it and is effective.

3. Hyper-personalization, personalization on overdrive
With dynamic content, user data, and automated messaging that adapts to recipient behaviour, we can hyper-personalise. Yes, {first name}, go personal and aim to stand out. Buyers will share their data if they believe they will get a high-quality personalised experience.

4. AI and automation, the smartest glowing trends
Hopes are high for AI. Throw in a bit of automation and we have smart campaigns. What does it do? Streamline and enhance email campaigns. AI can clean email lists, predict effective subject lines, and identify inefficiencies in your campaigns. 

5. User-generated content, because the user said so
User-generated content (UGC) directly spinal-taps your email into your audience’s brain. Customer reviews, photos, or video testimonials are worthy of trust. More than a cutter marketing message at least. Use UGC to spread peace of mind and convince customers to buy. Transform customer-shared inspiration into email content.

6. Customer appreciation, thanks
Build strong customer relationships. Make ‘m feel appreciated and heard. Thank you for your purchase, customer. Here is a milestone email for your birthday or anniversary. Combined with a special offer, early access to a product, or discount of course.  Increase engagement and customer positivity!

Top email design trends for 2023

2023 is about showing, not telling. Graphics and photography move to the forefront of email design, according to 99designs. They looked at the freshest designs in their email inbox. We will see combinations of imagery with more risky colour and animation this year, these email design trends stood out:

1. Floating products
Designers favour products and photos that appear to float in mid-air! Focusing on large product photos shows how the product might actually look and gives a sense of 3D realism. A reader could reach through the screen and grab it!

2. Irregular frames and nostalgia
While rectangles are most common for digital images, emails are turning to irregular frames, like starbursts, pill shapes, and weirder, fun and playful abstractions. The effect is amplified by using bright colours, duotones, and sticker-book style. Resulting in a casual, youthful composition that makes you feel nostalgic.

3. Animated product displays
Nothing brings an image to life like animation. For 2023, animation sequences display the product in action. Animations are often simple, with just a handful of frames looking like stop-motion more stylish and mesmerising. Products move on their own in a coordinated dance, the real advantage is that this trend shows how the product looks and works in a visual way.

4. Mixed dimensional doodles and photos
Going into 2023, many email designs are mixing opposing techniques pairing simple doodles with professional photography. This trend creates contrast, making photos stand out. And the combination is inherently whimsical. Cartoonish, brightly colored and free-flowing qualities of doodles make the email feel less formal and more friendly.

5. Overlapped lettering
One of the most important elements of your email is the headline. But headlines aren’t just there to be big and bold—they have to contrast with the email’s design. This year’s email trend for styling headlines is most counterintuitive: designers are creating dynamic headlines that overlap with images, colours and even other text. It creates a basic visual interest and deliberately obscures the text. It blurs the line between text and graphics turning the email into an organic work of art that reflects a global sentiment of rebellion toward the current economic environment and political climate.

10 Email Marketing Trend Predictions from the Experts

In the spirit of knowledge-sharing, Litmus asked 10 experts to share what they predict is in store for email marketing in 2023.

1. Email and social will cross-pollinate
Marketers that rely only on social media to grow an audience are losing out, reveals Hank Hoffmeier. Social media platforms have the problem that the audience isn’t portable. So we will see demand for talent that can navigate both social media and email marketing. Cross-pollinate audiences and plan email campaigns so they could go ‘viral’. Adding first-party data, segmenting, targeting and personalising their emails for maximum effect.

2. AMP email will change email’s role
New tools and resources facilitate building AMP emails. Through AMP email, users can complete tasks normally only done on a landing page or app. The role of email will start to change if AMP email becomes more widely adopted, foresees Benjamin Djang.. Companies will need to think about what emails should be responsible for, in relation to their other products.”

3. Email will become a rich interactive medium
Easier interactive email tooling becomes available in 2023, so Akshaya Dinesh anticipates a big influx of interactive emails being sent from brands. Brands can use email as a rich interactive medium to help audiences go into action mode quicker. It may include shoppable emails, interactive surveys, product reviews, and many more 

4. AI-creation tools will move the entire industry forward
AI writes the content and paints the picture of whatever may be in your mind.  Writers and designers need to pivot, says Aaron Beatty. Embracing these tools as a starting point for their human intuition to enhance. It should move the entire industry forward. 

Marketing teams will be using Stable Diffusion (open source, local AI) or DALL-E 2 to create images for their emails. Spend time setting up systems that let the AI do what they do best, and free up people to do what they do best.”

5. BIMI will be the accelerator for trust in email
DMARC may just be a means to an end for marketers to adopt BIMI, but the benefits of DMARC in authenticating legitimate mail and stopping exact-domain spoofing are for the entire organisation so make BIMI a cross-functional initiative.

 Brian Westnedge is very enthusiastic about BIMI in 2023. Apple has started supporting BIMI with iOS 16 and macOS Ventura. Combined with Google and Yahoo’s support, it will bring BIMI to the forefront for marketers in 2023. 

6. Email teams will get more into omnichannel messaging
We’ll see more email marketing teams take on other channels. Managing and reporting on SMS and push. It is a mobile-first world, says Lee Munroe. Email marketers are in the best position to own and adopt these channels with their experience, and with the parallels in strategy and execution. 

7. Email will see a shift towards user autonomy
User personal data, user preferences, and user experience will reshape email marketing in the coming years. There is value in collecting express consent for marketing emails from users, is the prophecy of Ali Mahad for 2023. Take measures such as targeting/segmentation and email personalization to deliver relevant and high-quality content. But also sorting, filtering, and blocking email senders based on AI that starts to use engagement and more aggressive spam scoring.”

8. Email A/B testing becomes more intentional
In 2023 we will see more digital marketers pursue meaningful A/B testing, Rebekah K. Josefy hopes. Will digital marketers move away from subject line testing now that open rates are no longer a reliable metric? Will they shift towards more meaningful tests on click-through and response rates? Let’s pair critical thinking with the analysis of experiment results in a way that informs future strategy. 

9. Accessibility will move companies away from image-based emails
The need and awareness for accessibility is growing. So Alicia Garside is hopeful that 2023 will be a big year where more companies say goodbye to image-based emails. 

10. Customer data platforms will put the spurs on email’s potential
Privacy changes have businesses scratching their head. The sun is slowly setting on Third-party cookies, Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, and App Tracking. Chad S. White sees cross-channel customer data is needed to make key decisions in email marketing programs and operations. But first, the data needs to be aggregated in a central repository and made fit to use. customer data platforms will accelerate in 2023. For email marketing, this will lead to more relevant personalization, better segmentation, and smarter automation that leverages a wider array of triggers across channels.

New directions in Email Marketing – a Compass for 2023

In 2023, our email marketing strategies must evolve now we can go outside again. How will we navigate the shifts in buyer behavior? That is what Bharat Baghel explores in his piece over at Smaily. Will they spend more time researching, more knowledge of what they need as a solution, and higher service expectations? Here are 5 ways to use as a new compass for email marketing in 2023.

1. The machine learns: Cloud and Artificial Intelligence will transform email Marketing
Like travelling on a budget. AI will automate and enhance many parts of email planning and management. And give small business owners the tools to create significant email campaigns without large budgets.

2. Personalization is more important than ever
Your journey isn’t the same as someone else’s. People simply open and respond to emails that are targeted to them. Predictive personalization tell in advance what content or products a specific consumer will want to see when they visit your website. Based on combining historical data with real-time contextual data about the consumer, such as location, time, date, and weather.

3. Interactive email to close the deal
It isn’t a good trip until you do something, make it an experience. Email marketing experts predict that more interactive emails will revolutionise the business in the years to come. Interactive emails contain interactive elements that encourage users to interact with your emails. Images, attractive video content, shopping carts, reviews, and other elements are among these

4. Email Marketing or captivating storytelling – it is the same thing
Everyone enjoys a good story, so your email marketing strategies should show it. Customers want to have relationships with a company. Newsletters can show the workforce, culture, social conscience, and future plans of a business. The customer feels like they are traveling with the business as a result.

5. Sharing is living – encourage user-generated content
People are living the good life according to their Instagram feed. Products that other people recommend are more likely to be purchased by consumers while online shopping. When you include user-generated content (UGC) in your marketing emails, you show that genuine people purchase your products and like them enough to tell other people about them.

You can automatically send emails asking customers to post reviews with images following purchases to collect UGC. Then, you can add these evaluations and pictures to your communications.

8 Email Marketing Trends For 2023

Email marketing trends come, stay, or go. Whenever you read about things like interactivity, mobile-first, AI, and personalization always approach these with caution says Andrew Kordek. For 2023 Andrew dishes up pragmatic email marketing trends that can be implemented and quickly show results. (although mileage may vary).

1 – Confirmed Opt-in Optimization 
2023 should be the year to review the how/why/what of your confirmed opt-in messaging. Typically the first interaction of the mailbox. Think about  word count, cadence, frequency, branding, tone, and, most importantly, the place and messaging of the links needed for the subscriber to confirm their email address. Your conversion rate will thank you.

2 – Reimagine the email Subscription Form Page
Organizations fear the unsubscribe so much that sometimes they hide their unsubscribe link as unfindable as possible. And then ruin the experience.  Make the email unsubscribe branded, the copy on point, and take the time to make it an experience and offer an unsubscribe option before saying goodbye.

3 – Re-Welcome
As email marketers, we should all know the virtues of a solid welcome email campaign. But what if they haven’t done anything in the 30/60/90 days? Enter the re-welcome series for those new to the list, Replace the odd-sounding “we miss you” tone, because what is there to miss if there wasn’t anything anyway? Instead, set a more vibrant and engaging voice to re-introduce yourself.

4 – Know your user sentiment
Put things into perspective by taking a client-centric approach to success vs. just looking at numbers. Start identifying what “they” really think. Ask for user feedback often and in every email you can. Capturing user sentiment through a homegrown system or third party should be something you look into in 2023. There are plenty of user sentiment tools for every budget.

5 – Slim down to five fit segments
Segmentation. Segmentation. Segmentation. It is standard practice, not a trend. But the trend for 2023 is to Simplify your segmentation. Paring down your segments to just five – fewer segments but better ones. Because where organisations typically fail is having too many segments with insufficient content and data to justify them.

6 & 7 – Email Deliverability Budget & keep it to engaged
Email deliverability is the gateway to program success, without shortcuts. You as a sender are responsible for your deliverability. So email deliverability services should be a line item in your budget. Related is the trend to Remove Unengaged Subscribers. Create an opt-out campaign or simply drop them from your list.

8 – Throw away the Dumpster Fire Mentality
It’s time to put a stake in the ground at your organisation and reject that everything is a dumpster fire and needs to happen immediately.
When there is a lack of patience to do things right, it leads to issues and mistakes, and the channel is riddled with a “dumpster fire” mentality. Embrace a more controlled flame. Long live email.

Email trends 2023

Email marketing has evolved into a sophisticated channel, with layers of expertise including strategic, creative, technical, operational, and analytical. For ambitious businesses, trends are a way to understand the key priorities for the coming year. This is why Halon and Komal Helyer put together a deep dive into the priority email marketing trends for 2023 from 20 global leaders in the email industry. Here are a few snippets and insights from over 30+ email trends for 2023.

Strategy

• Komal Helyer, Fractional CMO – Brands that plan their strategy around adding extra value and reducing friction in the buying process will be more successful in what will be a difficult year for most.
• Ryan Phelan, RPE Origin – Email has to live up to its recession-proof reputation. Tin challenges will be the evolving state of the global economy and adopting email to survive.
• Jakub Olexa, Mailkit – 2023 is going to be the year of going back to basics for many. Only when the fundamentals are in place, can you start working on improving your baseline and leveraging advanced technologies.
• Matthew Dunn, Campaign Genius – Martech spend and sprawl will get a checkup from old Dr. Profitability resulting in a new focus on coherent brand-wide marketing strategy, Email to gain budget and acknowledgement, while Social media and paid advertising are in for a rocky ride.
  While SMS will get a pass — it’s still experimental.
  Historically, email is the counter-punch champ during economic down-cycles. The next year or so looks more like a ‘super-cycle’, as massive shifts in the digital space (cookies, privacy laws, consumer taste) coincide with economic turbulence.

Data

• Jennifer Nespola Lantz, Kickbox – Data transparency is crucial in 2023. One that needs planning and to be a top priority for 2023.
• Frank Brooks, Dotdigital – Customer intent will help you maximise previously untapped opportunities to engage and convert shoppers.
• Beata Linz, Beata Linz Consultancy – email marketing will come to the rescue when Google says goodbye to third-party cookies.

Design

• Kath Pay, Holistic Email Marketing – Master Templates let you provide a variety of layouts in your campaigns, whilst retaining brand and coding integrity and streamlining your campaign management process.
• Adeola Sole, Holistic Email Marketing Interactivity in emails can help with branding exercises, customer satisfaction, engagement and driving incremental revenue.

AI

• Matthew Dunn, Campaign Genius identifies that AI in design is going to fundamentally change design professions, and it must be embraced by everyone from C-Suite to designers.
• Yanna-Torry Aspraki, Email Consul explains how AI and Machine learning will come to the rescue of unreliable and ever more complex data and email metrics.

Personalisation, Content & Automation

• Jaina Mistry, Litmus believes that in 2023 hyper-personalization will be the norm. She explains why marketing operations are crucial in delivering this.
• Rebecca Godwin, The Lumery – In 2023 brands need to be conscious of their customer segments and customer needs, ensuring they are not just serving the masses.
• Dela Quist, Alchemy Worx – Email marketers need to become even more responsive to business needs than usual. Brands that fail to take advantage of automation are likely to suffer.

Deliverability & Security

• Fredrik Poller, Halon says that The email landscape in 2023 is expected to be focused on security and privacy, particularly on technologies to protect against cyber threats and maintain trust in digital communications.
• Matthew Stith, Spamhaus explains that in 2022 informational listings were up significantly, and as a result, it is why businesses must have a keen eye on improving the basics of their sending practices. Email needs nurturing or your deliverability will suffer, and your emails may get blocked.

How Modern Data Trends will Impact Marketers in 2023

What technology will truly impact big enterprise organisations in the modern tech stack in 2023? Over at Messagegears Joseph Lee, Chris Marriott, Jared Hillam, Per Caroe, and Ryan Phelan put on their data lab coat and inspected it from a data angle. So from multi-channel communications strategies to data-driven personalization and strategic tech investments what are the trends in data and MarTech for 2023?

Which trends are advancing data maturity across marketing, operations, and I.T. teams?

• Centralised data that teams can trust is crucial. Advancing data maturity starts with the strategy layer before the tactics. Data maturity is about the consolidation of data in one place and the actionable way that you use it.
• Ask yourself: That’s great data, but how are you using it, and how is it informed by those actions?” 
• There is also a move to decentralised use of the data. Email marketing activities moving to brand marketing teams to the frontline workers–QSRs owners, regional branch & brand managers.

What does 1:1 personalization at scale mean in 2023 when marketing to millions of customers?

• Purchase and browse behaviour are clearly valuable data points,  adding other data depending on your vertical. The key is to bring the data into the email template at time of send to so you are using the most up-to-date data for each email.
• Personalization at scale means ‘customizing content to individuals’, changing the mindset from static to everyone to dynamic. How will you use dynamic content? How will you use model scoring and supplemental tables in a database that is full of products and images and then build each email at time of deployment?

How to build and strategically invest in a modern martech stack?

• A centralized data point that people can trust is always priority #1. Next is making it available in various channels without recreation.
• Getting the right ESP is more important than anything else a brand can do.  Modern ESPs are multichannel, marketing automation, journey orchestration, and revenue drivers.  If you don’t get your ESP right, the rest won’t really matter.
• Stop buying technology because it’s cool. Your tech stack should allow you to act on data effectively and quickly.  Your tech stack should reflect your priorities, processes, people, and logistics.

What marketers need to prepare their 2023 plans

There’s so much we don’t know about events in 2023. One thing is certain: Expect many twists and turns in the online marketing and real world! Ryn Phelan gives directions to help set goals and looks at what marketers need for their 2023 plans. 

Get ready for a global recession
Some companies are already pulling back ad spend and starting layoffs. Because email proved its value in the pandemic, I don’t expect email budgets to shrink, but we’ll test if email is still recession-proof. Companies could go back to pandemic tactics, informing customers and building relationships through email. Or they could revert to their business practices in the 2008 recession and just discount everything to hit their revenue targets.

Segmentation for inflation-weary customers
Consumers pulled back on spending during the pandemic. Now, inflation is driving less spending as well. Instead of higher discounting and email frequency, marketers should rethink their list segmentation to keep revenue flowing.

CDPs need to prove value
Vendors have sold CDPs as the road to using customer intent, predicting purchase behaviour, and data orchestration. The Mid-market is now starting to adopt CDP technology. Next year, we will see if CDPs are indeed the bridge that leads to more automation, targeting, personalization, and intelligent marketing .

Martech stack scrutiny
Today, brands have evolved and need support that can meet them where they are now. The need for technology that’s better, faster, more complex and more capable to meet their needs because they. More companies

Email Marketing trend supported best practices for 2023

New year, new challenges, and opportunities for email marketers. So what trends should you put on your list of most important email marketing trends for 2023? Don’t expect any new insights from this article, but rather basics to stick to, from vertical response.

1. Mobile email rises even further
66% of all email opens originate from mobile devices according to mobile email trends. Make sure your emails are optimised for mobile devices, or risk being ignored or deleted.

2. The need for more personalised emails
People are now used to getting highly personalised content and they expect that level of personalization from brands they’re subscribed to. Want to stay ahead of the competition?  Better start personalising your emails.

3. The importance of adding value
When your subscribers are bombarded with marketing messages daily, they are only going to pay attention to ones that offer value for instance in the form of helpful content, an exclusive coupon, or early access.

4. Growth of automated email marketing
Email automation isn’t new. But adoption is up and marketing automation trend will continue in 2023. Email automation sends emails automatically, based on trigger events. Like a welcome email for new subscribers or reactivation emails.

Email marketing trends for 2023

Keeping up with the times and technology, Hanna from Stripo is. It is time to assess if  your email marketing strategy is up to date. So which approaches are trending this year? And even more important, why should we care? Here is why and the numbers to back it up:

1. Personalization in emails, because it gets you 2x the conversion, 14% increase in CTR and a whopping 760% increase in revenue.

2. Data privacy,  consumers have big privacy concerns, but so do marketers. 63% say Apple’s MPP (litmus) is their biggest worry, 37% loss of  Google’s  third-party cookies.

3. Artificial intelligence in email marketing (AI), because you can Send, Segment, Recommend, persona-ment better with AI.

4. Interactivity and AMP in email, because you’ll get higher engagement and conversion on your emails. +520% survey response rate +322 user engagement. 

5. Responsive email designs, because 46% of smartphone users prefer to interact with businesses via email, over half of emails are opened on mobile.

6. Automation in email marketing, because it pays. For instance +320% revenue from welcome emails and +342% revenue from milestone emails.

7. Gamification in email, because it will lead to 2X times higher conversion, +300% revenue. Plus it is showing something new and fun.

8. Modular design, because it will bring 25% reduction in build-time and you can update over 100 emails at once due to module synchronisation

9. Dark mode & Email accessibility, because 81.9% of people use Dark mode on Android. 2.2 bln people have visual impairments and regulation requires accessible emails.

Compelling points, compelling numbers. Obviously, mileage will vary depending on how good your strategy and execution are.

Conclusion: 12 years of email marketing trends

As any MarTech philosopher, digital marketing time traveler, or social media science fiction aficionado will say, nothing as hard to predict… as the future. In the digital marketing world, change is the constant.

Interesting about this year is that everybody lived through the impact of absolute change and felt how it makes a big difference. (In rapid pace).
Futureproofing your business is no joke.

Part of trends are technology driven, part is creativity, part is changing consumer behavior and the a last part: “Start using best-practices”.

PS: As more and more future of email marketing articles are published, I’ll be updating this post to include all the trends. If you have any additions, comments, questions or just like to say “HI”, post a comment below.