8 email marketing trends and strategies to follow in 2023

The year 2023 appears to be tough for marketers. People are more concerned about data privacy and only sharing it with businesses they trust. The demise of third-party cookies will make it even harder to target audiences through ads. Thus, marketers would need a medium that allows first-party data collection. Welcome to the new delightful world of email marketing. 

The Pathwire research states that about 84% of consumers tend to check their emails at least once a day. This provides great opportunities to get your business in front of a very large audience. While many of you already use email marketing, are you using them effectively? The new year demands new strategies. 

So, what are the best email marketing trends in 2023? Look at 8 of the best email trends 2023 and improve your email marketing activities. 

1) Audit and clean your email lists

You should already be aware of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection and Google’s demise of third-party cookies in 2024. This has made it difficult for marketers to capture and use data. It is now even more important to ensure customer information protection. 

Email is a great example of an important first-party data source. It is consensual information, and you should do your best to secure that information. That makes it important for you to audit and clean your database. Make sure you have consent to use every email address on your lists. If someone chose to unsubscribe, ensure to take them off the list. 

Reach out to inactive subscribers and try to re-engage them. If it is no longer relevant, offer to remove them as a subscriber. Ultimately, it is better to have a smaller responsive database than a database of a lot of uninterested people. 

Establishing responsive email lists requires some other measures as well. Instead of prioritizing open rates, pay attention to the metrics with impact, like conversions. This change enables you to demonstrate the impact of your company’s email marketing. You can assess your email marketing growth when you focus on metrics that impact your company’s bottom line. 

Use the PosterMyWall mailing list management tools to remove invalid or unsubscribed emails from your list. Make use of the many filters in the mailing list to make the audit process swift.

2) Email Marketing Automation

The next email marketing trend for 2023 is automation. It is not a new strategy but add it to your repertoire if you want to surpass your competitors in 2023. Email automation ensures cohesive and consistent communication between you and your subscribers. 

Why email automation? 

Emails sent out using drip campaigns are more responsive and perform better than regular emails. It creates much friendlier communication between subscribers and the brand. According to Campaign Monitor, automated emails generate about 320% more revenue as compared to non-automated emails. 

How to implement email marketing automation

Automation does not require overwhelming effort. However, automated emails give you more time to focus on other business activities. Below are some key elements for email marketing automation to get you started:

• Automate list scrubbing
• Include automation in the onboarding process with a series of email drips
• Dispatch automated transactional emails to your customers
• Make use of email templates

You can set automated emails to stimulate when recipients take certain actions on your website. Since they have a link to subscribers’ actions, automated emails are an extremely effective way to engage leads. If you require help preparing for the future of email marketing, we offer a Content Planner to help with scheduling and planning campaigns. 

3) Interactive content 

What is the ultimate goal of email marketing? To get conversions, right? Right. 

Those days are gone when you had to force users to click a link and take your desired action. Interactive emails let customers see live stock levels, update their carts, and even complete a checkout right from their inboxes. 

Importance of interactive content in email marketing

Consumers want interactive emails. Almost 60% of people said they are likely to engage with interactive email content. Service providers can make great use of interactive emails. Their subscribers can book an appointment through email, without the need to land on the website. Including in-email AMP bookings can boost conversions by 300%. 

It’s been a while since this trend came in but is going to grow excessively in 2023. Interactive content in emails is the holy grail of email marketing. To get you started, here are some specific email essentials that are expected to sizzle this year: 

• CTAs and animated buttons
• Rollover effects to showcase products
• Accordion features to make long emails more compact
• Polls, surveys, and user-generated content

4) Track the right metrics

The new year solicits new email marketing trends. The launch of privacy protection means that you cannot track when – or if – your recipient opened your email. At least, not accurately. 

So, what is a marketer to do?

Dump your reliance on generic tracking methods and focus on metrics that matter. Your email marketing platform probably offers analytics. However, be sure to add your own UTM parameters too. 

Focus on click through rates 

Your goal should not be getting opens but clicks. People who click are your engaged audience. Besides including interesting content to make the audience click, try to add a quick feedback option at the bottom as well. This provides a reason for the recipient to click. You can also gather valuable information about the likes of your audience this way. 

Conversion rate

Once the recipient has clicked through your email, the goal is to get them to convert on your offer. Whatever your email has to offer to the audience, people who take that offer are considered as a conversion. You can measure it by dividing the total people who completed the desired action by the number of total emails delivered. Conversion rate is directly related to the call-to-action within your email. Therefore, we can conclude that conversion rate determines the extent to which you are achieving your email marketing goals. 

Bounce rates

Bounce rates are the percentage of your total emails sent that could not be successfully delivered to the recipient. Soft bounces are the result of a temporary problem from the recipient’s end, such as a full inbox or a problem with the receiver’s server. Hard bounces happens when an email is sent to an invalid, closed, or non-existent email address. Your task should be to try sending emails where a soft bounce occurred. However, you should immediately remove hard bounce addresses from your list. You should cater bounces right away as ISPs consider them to determine a sender’s reputation. 

Pay attention to your subscription ratio 

As discussed, open rates are of no use anymore. Those numbers have never been accurate due to the plethora of privacy tools available in email applications. Thus, it is better to pay attention to your subscription ratio as a quick synopsis of your overall list health. Have a look at the advice by Chad S.White and dig deeper into key metrics. 

5) Personalization 

Email personalization is no more just a nice gesture. In 2023, subscribers expect it. They receive hundreds of emails every day. Thus, you need to use personalization to make your emails stand out from the crowd. Personalization enables you to apply marketing data from several other platforms to add value for subscribers – and persuade them to buy. Personalized emails let you appeal to subscribers’ unique interests and needs. They boost conversions and drive better results.

Does personalization even work? 

As a matter of fact, personalization works. Merkle’s Customer Engagement Report 2022 discovered that consumers spend more when their experience is personalized. However, Salesforce’s ‘State of the Connected Customer’ tells us something else. Despite the outstanding results, customers still feel that businesses are not living up to their expectations. This prompts a necessity to incorporate innovative trends every once in a while. 

Utilize personalization to its fullest 

In 2023, you will need to take personalization a step ahead of just including subscribers’ names. Here are some quick ideas to get you started:

• Use previous data to pick out topics and content types that resonate with your subscribers 
• Include questions in sign-up forms such as your subscribers’ interests and budgets 
• Schedule emails according to recipients’ time zones
• Include dynamic content to personalize emails

Personalized emails are one of the most progressive b2b email marketing trends in 2023. Incorporate personalization to not only drive the open rate but engagement. Make sure to send emails from a person, not a business. This will create a good connection between you and the recipient. 

6) Let your customers speak with user-generated content

Next on the list of email marketing trends is user-generated content in email marketing. UGC is any form of content created by end-users. There is much more to user input than just asking your subscribers to send feedback. You can use their content in your email campaigns. 

UGC increase conversions

There is evidence to propose that user-generated content elevates conversions. About 82% of consumers claim that user-generated reviews are exceptionally valuable. Most consumers base their buying decisions on ratings and reviews from other users. 

You can employ UGC by simply getting your customers to send pictures or videos of themselves using your product and giving reviews. The effect is noticeably enhanced if you can request the services of an influencer. 

7) A/B test based on feedback

Since customer preferences change over time, it is important to identify what strikes the right chord. Your email campaigns can help you with a robust testing regime. All features can be tested – appearance, content, or timing. 

Whether you want to refine your subject lines, use a different tone, or add GIFs and animations, you must carry out A/B testing in any way possible. This means that you must prepare two versions of an email campaign. Send them out to two different sets of subscribers. Analyze the performance of each and send the winning version to the remaining subscribers. Just make sure to send out test emails to subscribers with similar preferences. Also, make sure to test one element at a time for reliable results. 

You can also include user feedback in your emails for testing. It is interesting how recipients like being asked about their opinions. You may get useful data upon requesting your subscribers to share their likes and dislikes. 

8) Accessibility 

Finally, get ready for the future of email marketing by making your emails easily accessible to everyone. You will surely miss out on valuable leads if this is not part of your 2023 email marketing. 

Mobile responsive

At this time, more than half of internet traffic comes from mobile phones. With increased traffic through mobile devices, you need to ensure that your emails display correctly on all devices. You can drive the best results by making your emails mobile responsive. 

A crucial part of making your emails usable on mobile is by setting up sections and columns without cluttering the content. If you’re new to the PosterMyWall email maker, here’s a quick video guide:

ADA Compliance 

In the U.S. alone, one in every five people lives with a disability. Thus, you should make sure your email campaigns comply with ADA standards. ADA compliance is more than a trend in 2023. To make your email ADA-compliant, you will need to:

• Use adequate fonts and line spacing
• Use alt text for images
• Ensure HTML tables are accessible to screen readers

Keep up to date with the latest email marketing trends

It is already said that 2023 is about to be an interesting but challenging year. If you want to make improvements, make sure to keep up to date with the latest trends. There are a lot of new emerging trends and older ones still in force. Now, it is up to you whether you take advantage of them and slay the competition.