1. Personalization within email marketing will become more important to leverage, yet more difficult to implement.
With iOS 14, 14.5, and 15, the visibility we have as marketers seems to be diminishing by the day.
Yet, we still need to provide just as personalized of an experience as we always have, if not, more.
We'll need to tie back as much data as we can into our email platform so we have this data accessible.
Everything from where someone discovered us, to the onsite actions someone has taken, to their purchase behavior, and so on.
2. Creating experiences directly within the inbox will become more of a focus.
With recent technological advances, being able to create experiences within the inbox will become more feasible and more important.
And this goes beyond just leveraging something like a GIF within an email.
You'll want to allow people to answer surveys within an email, leave a review within an email, and even down the road, transact within an email.
Emails will need to act more like landing pages.
More info to come on this topic in 2022.
3. Every smart brand will be leveraging SMS.
This one should be straightforward but the engagement (opens, CTR, and CVR) of SMS is incredible.
4. The brands that scale the fastest will be those that perfect word of mouth / referral marketing.
Top of funnel has become more difficult and unpredictable.
As such, brands that can foster relationships and build true communities will be those that win in 2022 and beyond.
Your customers should be creating content, sharing your brand, and providing valuable feedback.
5. More brands will mix-in plain-text emails.
While my team creates beautiful emails for our clients, and I'm also building a badass email design tool that anyone can use (launching in 2022), I do think plain-text will become more prevalent than it currently is for DTC brands.
Plain-text can feel more personal and can potentially lead to hitting the inbox more often than the promotions folder.
Let me know if you enjoyed this post by liking the post as well as leaving a comment, thank you in-advance!
This video outlines five critical marketing trends for 2022, focusing on the shift toward deeper personalization, the utilization of high-engagement channels like SMS, the power of community-driven growth, and the strategic use of plain-text communication to bypass promotional filters and build authenticity.
Here are five marketing trends that you need to pay attention to in 2022.
Number one, personalization within email marketing is going to become even more important,
yet so much more difficult to actually implement.
Why?
Well, iOS 14, 14.5, and iOS 15 is taking away some of the visibility that us marketers currently
have.
So we still need to provide personalized experiences, yet it's going to become harder.
So what do we do?
What we're going to have to do is we're going to have to aggregate and tie in as much data
as possible into our CRM or our ESP.
So tying in things like where someone found us, TikTok, SEO, affiliates, Facebook, etc.
All the way through, what are people doing on our site?
They're reading this blog post, they're viewing this product, they're adding that to cart,
they're starting checkout, and what they're buying.
We need to aggregate as much of this data across as many platforms as we can, so that
way we can actually leverage it.
And then from there, we need to kind of talk about how we create experiences with this
data.
So creating experiences directly within the inbox is going to be such a big focus.
And how?
So through AMP and some other technological advancements, being able to create personalization
and dynamic content and interesting content within email is more feasible and going to
be way more important.
And that goes beyond just like things like a GIF.
A GIF is cool and all, we all have a great GIF.
However, this is going to be things by allowing people to fill out a survey within your email,
allowing people to review kind of products within your email, and even in the future,
allowing people to transact directly within your email is going to be so important, right?
So look at this in 2022.
I've got some cool stuff coming out here, you know, pretty soon.
So stay tuned on that.
Number three, no surprise, but every smart brand is going to be and needs to be leveraging
SMS, the engagement.
So the things like the open rates, the click through rates, the conversion rates of SMS
are through the roof.
One of the best revenue per recipients, one of the most engaging mediums and platforms
absolutely out there.
It's truly incredible.
Don't sleep on SMS.
If you're looking to offer a great service, SMS is a great one to jump into.
And on the brand side, make sure that you start collecting phone numbers, you know,
secondary to email, at least start collecting it.
Even if you're not going to use it, at least have it.
Number four, I think the brands that are going to scale the quickest and fastest are going
to be those brands that leverage referral marketing and word of mouth.
If you can perfect your word of mouth and referral marketing program, you're going to
have the golden ticket.
Top of funnel is so unpredictable and it's so expensive.
By empowering and kind of empowering your community to create content, to share the
word and kind of give feedback on where you're going and even things that you're maybe not
thinking, it's going to be so important.
Those that can build and foster community are going to win in 2022 and beyond.
There's no question about it.
And then last but not least, to kind of round this out, number five, more plain text emails,
so not too many brands are doing plain text emails in the DTC e-com world.
Everyone's leveraging beautiful design and those are great.
It definitely serve a purpose and those are going to be massive.
However, you need to incorporate more plain text emails.
While we create great, beautiful emails for our clients and whatnot, and while also building
an email design platform, it's so important that you do plain text from the founder, from
the community manager, from some spokesperson.
Makes you feel more personal and it does help increase the chances of you reaching the primary
folder versus the promotions folder.
It's not a guarantee and just because you have a designed email does not mean you'll
be in promotions all the time.
You also could be in the primary, but it does help you and it allows you to mix up the content
and ultimately feel more personal.
Let me know your thoughts.
Let me know if you guys like this and I'll see you guys in 2022 with some killer content.
Cheers.
