Wow… It’s that time of year again! It seems like only yesterday that we sat down to tell you all about what would be in store for your inboxes over the course of 2017. Last year, it was all about personalization, automation, interactivity, as well as leveraging your transactional email experience and telling your brand story through email. So, what do we have in store for 2018? And how different will the world of email be during the next 12 months?
Spoiler alert: it won’t be all that different. But, there are some big changes coming into effect that might alter the way you execute your email campaigns.
Let’s dive into the email trends to come in 2018.
1. Be clear with your message
One of the core principles of GDPR is transparency. This doesn’t just apply to your subscription forms or your privacy policy, but also your email communications. In 2018, it will be ever important to get your message across in a clear and concise way, so your customers know exactly what is expected of them and what you want them to do. Consumers told us in our Emails Innovations research study that essentially what they want from brands is an easy experience. Being clear is part of that. So, let’s declutter your email campaigns so your clients can see a clear path to follow. Not sure what GDPR is, don’t let FOMO take over… find out here.
2. The new -ization is town: humanization
We’ve talked about personalization and being more personal many, many times. In 2018, we’ll see more one-to-one emails, where it feels like each email you receive in your inbox is relevant to you as an individual – this is humanization. “How will this be achieved?”, I hear you ask. The answer is careful profiling of your data and smarter segmentation, with segments becoming smaller.
GDPR alarm bells ⏰ going off again! Profiling will still be possible under GDPR, but again you need to be transparent with what data you are collecting and how you’re using it. Humanization will see the rise of data-driven emails that respect customer privacy, and help you to truly deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right recipient.
3. Interactivity that eases the experience
At the beginning of the year we conducted a study to understand where consumers and email experts think email will evolve into over the next 5 years. One of the big takeaways was that consumers want an easy experience. Interactive features like emails where you can shop within the inbox, without clicking through to a website, and product customization options within the email can help ease the experience for the consumer, as well as offer another dimension to your static emails. In 2018, we hope to see marketers braving new technologies and adding layers to their emails. At Mailjet, we hoped 2017 would be the year of the interactive email, but alas we were disappointed as interactive features are still yet to be widely adopted by marketers. However, now you know consumers crave them, it’s time to get cracking.
4. Talk to the transactions… I mean engaged 😏
We’re not saying talk to your engaged friends, but the customers you should put a ring on.
How? Simply by adding a marketing layer to your transactional emails. We’ve spoken about this many times before, but we are still not seeing the marketing and tech teams working together on this one. Marketers should embrace their technical colleagues, as they are emailing your most engaged group of customers and add marketing elements to your company’s most desired emails. So in 2018, we’ll see marketers conversing with the already engaged audience.
⚠️ There’s that warning alert, again. If you’re adding marketing elements to your transactional emails, you need to be transparent with your customers so these actions adhere to the GDPR.
That’s it for this year, folks. Let’s make 2018 the year we finally get around to implementing the latest version of these email trends. So now you know what to implement, all that is left to be said is… LET’S GET EMAIL RIGHT IN 2018!
We’re always keen to hear your trends or things you’re looking to implement in your own email experiences over the next 12 months. Share your views, opinions and challenges with us on Twitter.