Getting the Most out of Email Marketing in 2024

Jan 24

For decades, email marketing has been among the best ways for businesses to get the word out, with easily understood success metrics and a high return on investment. Whether you have just a handful of email addresses or a robust and growing contact list of loyal customers, email is a logical, easy place to start your regular outreach, communication, and promotional efforts.

While social media and SMS text marketing have grown in popularity over the last few years, small businesses often find that email marketing provides a solid foundation for those efforts, with a higher rate of engagement and return. 55 percent of people prefer email as their preferred way to hear from businesses and nonprofits, outranking text messaging, social media, Google Ads, and other methods of digital communication.

More than half the world’s population (over 4.2 billion people) will be active email users globally in 2022. By the end of 2026, that figure is projected to go over 4.7 billion. So despite the perception that people are increasingly tuning out email marketing, the numbers paint a completely different story.

Let’s take a closer look at the numbers behind email marketing to discover how businesses are using it and how consumers respond to it.

Current State of the Email Marketing Landscape in 2024

Here are some key statistics regarding email marketing to consider as we gradually wade into 2024.

More than 90 percent of survey respondents say email marketing is important to their company’s success.
Email is considered one of the most effective channels for marketing, with 79 percent of growth-focused marketers placing it in their top 3.
The global market for email marketing software was worth $7.5 billion in 2020. By 2027, it is estimated to reach $17.9 billion.
More than half the world’s population (over 4.2 billion people) will be active email users globally in 2022. By the end of 2026, that figure is projected to exceed 4.7 billion.
55 percent of consumers say email is their preferred digital channel for business communication.
According to the Constant Contact Small Business Now report, 55 percent of consumers who want to keep up-to-date with businesses they support say that email is their most preferred means of communication, far outpacing other methods like text messaging and social platforms. SMS was preferred by 17 percent of these consumers, with Facebook coming in at 14 percent ahead of all other social platforms

Brands made $36 for every U.S. dollar they spent on email marketing. More specifically, according to Statista, retail, e-commerce, and consumer goods businesses had the highest return on investment (ROI), at $45.

With everything that email marketing has going for it, it is hard to imagine why email marketing often is overlooked as a key part of the strategic mix for businesses looking to spur growth. In this article, we will examine why email marketing ought to be front and center as part of the growth marketing fundamentals at your business in 2024 as well as which elements growth-focused marketers should key in on to maximize revenue growth.

Despite perception, businesses consider email to be a key part of their growth marketing fundamentals in 2024

More than 90 percent of businesses say email marketing is important to their company’s success. 41 percent say it’s very vital—up nearly 30 percent since before the pandemic in 2019. Hence, email is considered one of the most effective channels for marketing, with 79 percent of marketers placing it in their top 3 .

Email marketing revenue is growing

By 2027, the worldwide email marketing market will be worth 17.9 billion dollars, up from its 2020 estimate of 7.5 billion dollars. To get an idea of how email marketing revenue has grown over the years, please see the chart below.

Projected Email Marketing Revenue Growth Til 2027

Email Marketing Myths to be on Guard for in 2024

In the ever-evolving realm of growth marketing, email should continue to remain a constant for businesses seeking to connect with their audience. However, amidst the plethora of information circulating, several myths about email marketing persist. Let us debunk 5 common misperceptions about email marketing that should be put to rest in 2024.

Email marketing is dead

This myth about email marketing is a popular one stemming from most probably, the perception that people are generally overloaded with promotional emails that they barely glance at. The reality is that when email marketing doesn’t work, it’s often because of the strategy, not the channel.

If your business’s email marketing strategy, however, isn’t delivering on expectations, conduct an audit and look at the following:

Your email marketing goals
Your email marketing campaigns
Your subscriber lists
Your send day and time
Your content and whether it fits what your customers need and how they process information

Sending too many emails kills email marketing efforts

When it comes to email marketing myths, it’s easy to believe that sending too many emails can ruin your email marketing campaign. What tends to happen, in reality, is that businesses go too far and spam users with emails that offer little value. Your company, however, can send frequent emails successfully if you ensure they provide value.

An e-commerce store offering a holiday sale, for instance, will likely benefit from sending multiple emails promoting the sale. Those emails remind shoppers about the offer and provide them with quick access to the sale.

How often you send emails depends on a multitude of factors

Industry
Email goals
Subscribers
Products or services
The availability of past business data on email send frequency and what works best
What is your audience looking to get from emails?

There is a right time of the day or day of the week to send emails

Search for the best day to send emails, and even Google will reveal this email marketing myth. The search engine compiles results that credit various days of the week as the best day, including:

Tuesday
Thursday
Saturday

Almost all base their recommendations on different studies and data points — and that’s fantastic. The problem is that these recommendations become facts for businesses getting started with email marketing.

While you can use Tuesday, Thursday, or another recommended day as your starting point, you want to test different days. Your business, industry, product or service, subscriber, and email content are unique. What you’re offering and who you’re offering it to may result in a top-performing send day that doesn’t match the general and generic best practices for email marketing.

That’s why it’s critical to test your send days and use your data to determine the best send day for your business. If you don’t test, you’ll never know, which can hold back your entire email marketing strategy.

The same holds for the time of day that you send out emails. Experimenting with your send times can help your company achieve the best engagement rates, as well as get the most value from your different email campaigns, whether they are designed as being for promotions, lead nurturing, or client retention. Use the industry’s recommended time, 4 p.m., as a baseline for your test effort, but do not be fixed on it.

Short Subject Lines Are Essential for Effective Email Marketing

Your subject line is your gateway to getting subscribers to open your email and act on your offer inside. While most studies point to 41 characters (or seven words) as the optimal subject line length, many mention that your optimal subject line will depend on factors related to your business, like your brand, products or services, audience, and more.

Again, similar to the myth about the best day to send out emails, you want to test. Test different lengths, whether by word or character count, for your emails and see what works best. This is where AB testing, where you test 2 different subject lines to 2 different subscriber subsets, comes into play. A/B testing can help you uncover the ideal length for your subject lines. What's more, you might also discover words, phrases, or angles that work well with your subscribers, which can lead to more opens, clicks, and conversions across your email marketing campaign.

People Just Do Not Read Emails Anymore

It's a common misconception that people don't read emails anymore.

The reality however is that email marketing remains one of the most effective ways for businesses to connect with their audience.

Research by Campaign Monitor shows that:

Over 58% of consumers check their emails every morning
More than 80% of smartphone users regularly use their device's email app

That being said, you must ensure your emails are relevant and engaging enough for your subscribers.

Sending generic or irrelevant content with flashy subject lines won’t cut it anymore. Personalization is key. Messages need to be tailored specifically for every subscriber on your list.

You Need a Huge Email List to Succeed

Many believe that a massive mailing list is crucial to email marketing success

However, this isn't true.

Engagement matters far more in email marketing. Even with a large list, reaching uninterested people won't help you succeed.

In contrast, an engaged small audience who regularly interacts with your emails will likely see better results than someone with an unengaged huge list.

Key Drivers of Success for Email Marketing in 2024

As we pivot towards 2024, the landscape of email marketing is evolving at a breakneck speed. Staying abreast of these changes is not just an option but a necessity for businesses aiming to thrive in the competitive digital space. In a realm where consumer preferences and technological advancements are constantly shifting, understanding key drivers in terms of getting the most out of your email marketing efforts is paramount. Let us look at 10 such factors for email marketing success.

1) Personalization:

Many overlook personalization in email marketing, believing it's not worth the extra effort.

However, personalized emails have a 29% higher open rate than non-personalized ones.

Understanding your audience and tailoring messages accordingly improves engagement rates while increasing customer loyalty and retention.

Quick Tips for Effective Email Personalization:

Use recipient names in subject lines and greetings
Segment lists based on demographics or behavior patterns
Send targeted content based on previous purchases or interests
Use dynamic content blocks that change depending on who is receiving them

2) Mobile Optimization

Over 70% of email opens occur on mobile devices, making it imperative to optimize emails for smartphones and tablets.

Mobile optimization involves designing emails that are easy to view and navigate on smaller screens with touch-enabled interfaces.

This includes:

Larger fonts
Shorter subject lines
Simplified layouts
Clear CTAs
Responsive design that adjusts automatically based on screen size
Reducing image file sizes for faster loading times

By optimizing your emails for mobile devices, you can:

Improve user experience
Increase engagement
Boost conversion rates
Enhance brand perception
Gain a competitive advantage

3) Developing a Clear Email Marketing Strategy

An effective email marketing strategy starts with aligning to your overall business goals and objectives. Common goals include increasing sales, generating leads, driving website traffic, building brand awareness, driving prospects through the purchase process, and retaining customers, and encouraging repeat purchases. With clear goals in mind, you can shape your strategy to optimize emails accordingly.

The key to this is identifying your target audience. Ideally, you'll have customer data to segment your lists, such as demographics, purchase history, interests, and engagement levels to ensure your emails are personalized to the greatest possible degree.

Determine what types of emails you'll send, such as promotional campaigns, transactional confirmations, newsletters, and product notifications, among others. Find the right balance between marketing, informational, and operational communications based on your objectives.

Finally, establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to track how your strategy is progressing. Useful baseline email marketing metrics include open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, unsubscribe rate, deliverability, list growth, engagement levels, and ROI.

4) Building Your Email List

Building a quality email list is one of the most important steps in developing an effective email marketing strategy. Your list serves as the foundation for all of your email campaigns, so you'll want to focus on growing your list with engaged subscribers who want to receive your emails.

There are several key tactics for building your email list:

Collect Customer Contact Info

- Ask customers to join your list during the checkout process, or include a sign-up form or checkbox on your website. Make it easy for visitors to subscribe.

- Collect email addresses in person at events, trade shows, or your brick-and-mortar location if you have one.

- Add a pop-up or banner inviting visitors to join your list. But don't make it too intrusive.

- Offer a lead magnet or freebie in exchange for an email address. This provides an incentive to subscribe.

Use Opt-In Forms and Checkboxes

- Always use double opt-in signup forms. This verifies the email address and ensures subscribers want to be on your list.

- Use checkboxes allowing customers to select topics or categories they're interested in. This allows you to segment your list.

Offer Incentives for Joining Your List

- Lead magnets like ebooks, coupons, or free trials encourage sign-ups. Offer something of value in exchange for an email address.

- Hold contests and sweepstakes for subscribers only. Special offers increase sign-ups.

- Alert visitors to exclusive deals, early or private access to sales, and subscriber-only content.

Segment and Organize Contacts

- Group contacts by interests, demographics, purchase history, etc. Then target campaigns accordingly.

- Tag past customers and use automation to send them unique offers. Identify loyal buyers.

- Import contacts from CRM systems, events, or past purchases. Add relevant tags to each.

Building a segmented list of engaged subscribers ensures your future email campaigns will reach the right audiences with relevant content and offers. Invest time upfront to collect quality leads interested in your brand.

5) Email List Management

Managing your email list is crucial for successful email marketing. Here are some tips for proper email list management:

Maintain accurate and current data. Keep your list updated by allowing subscribers to update their preferences and information. Perform regular list hygiene by removing hard bounces and inactive subscribers.
Grow your list over time. Focus on building your list through lead generation. Offer incentives like discounts or content offers in exchange for emails. Make sign-up forms prominent.
Follow anti-spam laws and regulations. Honor unsubscribe requests immediately. Don't purchase email lists or use tactics considered spam. Stay up-to-date on regulations like GDPR.

Proper email list management takes continuous effort but pays off through higher deliverability, open rates, and conversions.

6) Creating Effective Email Content

Creating compelling and relevant email content is key to keeping subscribers engaged and driving conversions from your email campaigns. Here are some best practices for effective email content creation:

Personalize Your Subject Lines and Messages

Personalization can dramatically increase open and click-through rates. Include the recipient's first name, mention their company or location, or reference past behaviors in subject lines. Tailor content and messaging to subscriber segments whenever possible. Tools like mail merge can help to automate personalization at scale.

Keep Content Relevant, Concise, and Scannable

Only send emails highly relevant to each subscriber. Get to the point quickly and use shorter paragraphs, bullet points, and lists for easy mobile reading. Emails should be scannable at a glance to maximize engagement.

Include Images, Infographics, and Videos

Visual content makes emails stand out and drives more engagement. Relevant images reinforce messaging while infographics neatly present data and videos add a multimedia element. However, visual content does not just focus on images. Font size and style, for instance, can play a huge role in helping to ensure that your emails are presented in a more aesthetically pleasing fashion. The key is to ensure a balance of text and images and optimize visuals for email rendering.

Write Compelling Calls-to-Action

Effective emails guide the reader to take action. Maintain a clear CTA focus and place buttons for easy access. Match CTAs to the stage of the customer journey, promotions or campaigns. Test different CTA variations (e.g. wording, color, size) to determine what resonates best with your audience.

7) Email Design Best Practices

A well-designed email newsletter enhances engagement and drives action. Consider these best practices for email design:

Use Mobile-Friendly Responsive Templates

With the majority of emails now opened on mobile, having a responsive design is essential. Your template should detect the device screen size and adjust its layout accordingly. Text should resize without overlap, calls-to-action should be prominent, and horizontal scrolling should be avoided.

Responsive templates also provide the benefit of a consistent experience and branding across devices. Test your emails to ensure proper rendering on desktop, tablet, and mobile.

Maintain Clear Branding and Messaging

Every email you send represents your brand. Include your logo, color scheme, fonts, and tone to strengthen brand recognition.

Again, in line with the previous point about mobile optimization, consistency is key. Headers, footers, color blocks, image sizes, and placements all should avoid unnecessary variations between campaigns.

Just as important is to reinforce key messages and value propositions throughout your email content and design.

Use Simple Layouts and Formatting

Email clients filter out complicated coding and rendering. Stick to a simple linear layout with sections, minimal formatting, and basic table structures.

Prioritize the most important content at the top. Break up long sections of text with headers, lists, or images.

Limit styling to bold, italic, underline, and highlight color. Generally, it is considered best practice to try to use font sizes between 10 and 18 points.

Maintain a Consistent Structure

Having a consistent template structure trains subscribers to look for key content in predictable locations.

For example, hero images and headlines at the top, followed by a brief intro paragraph, sections for featured content, key product details, closing text, and a clear call-to-action at the bottom.

This helps guide the reader through your content efficiently. Avoid unpredictability or complicated non-linear layouts.

With a focus on responsive design, strong branding, simplicity, and consistency, you can create engaging email newsletters that are clear and make your content stand out. Test regularly and refine based on your CTR and conversion rate metrics.

8) Timing and Frequency Considerations

Finding the right cadence for your email marketing is crucial for maximizing open and click-through rates. You want to send frequently enough to stay top of mind, but not so often that you overwhelm or annoy subscribers.

Test Different Days and Times

Run A/B tests to see when your audience is most engaged. Weekends tend to have lower open rates, while early morning or mid-day on weekdays often perform better. You can also experiment with sending at different times of the day to determine if your subscribers prefer morning, afternoon, or evening. Track open and click rates to identify the optimal timing.

Avoid Oversaturating Subscribers

Too many emails in a short period can often lead to fatigue and disengagement. Spacing out your messages gives subscribers sufficient time to fully digest and absorb each email. As a general rule, no more than one commercial email per day. For retail/promotional content, 2-5 emails per week is typical. With educational/informational content you can sometimes get away with more frequent emails.

Continually refine your schedule to maximize open and click-through rates. There's no one-size-fits-all solution. Monitor performance data and survey subscribers to ensure you've found the optimal balance between valuable content and inbox clutter.

Use Triggers and Life Cycle Emails

In addition to general newsletters and promotions, use triggers linked to user actions and the stage of the product or service lifecycle. Welcome new subscribers, wish them a happy birthday, or send cart abandonment reminders. Tailor your content and cadence based on the subscriber lifecycle stage.

9) Integrating Email with Other Marketing

Email marketing can be even more powerful when it is integrated with other digital marketing campaigns and channels. Here are some key ways to connect email with the rest of your growth marketing efforts

Coordinate with Your Social Media Campaigns

Your email and social media strategies should work together to amplify your messaging. Share your emails on social media to reach new audiences. You can also repurpose email content into social posts. Use social media to promote email signups and vice versa.

Drive Traffic to Landing Pages

Place links to targeted landing pages in your emails to convert readers into leads and customers. Encourage email recipients to visit key pages on your website through personalized CTAs. Conversion rate optimization is key here to track how well your landing pages generate the desired actions (conversions, sales, signups, etc.) stemming from these emails.

Link to Online Ads and Promotions

Email is a perfect medium to direct people to special offers and deals promoted through online ads and other channels. Create consistent messaging and visuals across emails and ads. Use emails to provide details on promotions featured in ads while adding email sign-up forms to ad landing pages can help encourage prospects to take the requisite actions..

Track Leads and Sales Data

Make sure your email and CRM systems are integrated. As our previous point highlighted, this allows you to track the customer journey from email to lead to sale. Identify which emails drive the most conversions. Personalize future messaging based on lead and customer activity was shown via emails. Moreover, this data can be used to optimize your email and cross-channel marketing.

10) Tracking the Appropriate Email Marketing Metrics

To get the most out of your email marketing efforts, you need to continuously track and analyze campaign performance data. This allows you to identify what's working well and what can be improved.

Some key metrics to track include:

Open rates: This shows what percentage of subscribers opened the email. A high open rate means your subject line and preview text are enticing while a low open rate can potentially raise questions about deliverability as well as the level of interest in the email's subject matter.
Click-through rates: This shows how many recipients clicked on links within the email. This helps gauge engagement and interest.
Conversion rates: Ultimately you want to track how many emails result in desired actions such as purchases, sign-ups, etc. This indicates how effective your call-to-action is.
Unsubscribe rates: If many people are unsubscribing from your list, assess why. Too many emails? Irrelevant content? Then consider experimenting with a different frequency while considering alternative content or content angles..
Spam complaints: High spam complaints lead to lower deliverability. Review email content and sending behavior.

Use A/B testing to experiment with different email elements like subject lines, content, layouts, timing, and calls to action. For example, test different subject lines to see which generates more opens. Send half your list version A and half version B. The version that performs best wins.

Best practice takeaways: It is extremely important to constantly monitor campaign analytics and optimize your strategy over time. Email marketing requires regular refinement and tweaking to maximize results. With an agile, optimization-focused approach, your email marketing performance will steadily improve.

10 Email Marketing Trends Growth-Focused Businesses Need to Key In On in 2024

Now that we have established some of the drivers of email marketing success and established how important a part of the growth marketing mix that email marketing remains, let us now look at some trends that growth-focused businesses need to keep in mind in trying to make the most out of their email marketing efforts in 2024 and beyond.

1)Hyper-Personalized and Segmented Email Marketing Campaigns

What this involves is having email marketers delve deep into subscriber data to create tailored content that resonates with each recipient on a profound level. From product recommendations based on previous purchases to content recommendations tied to browsing behavior, these emails are designed to make subscribers feel like each message was crafted exclusively for them.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are very much at the forefront of making hyper-personalization a reality. These technologies analyze massive datasets to identify preferences and behaviors that allow marketers to predict which content will most likely resonate with each recipient. Real-time data integration ensures that personalization involves adapting dynamically to each subscriber’s actions and preferences, creating an email experience that is constantly being tailor-made to people’s changing interests and preferences.

How to Incorporate Hyper-Personalization into Your 2024 Email Marketing Strategy

Product Recommendations: Analyze each recipient’s purchase history and browsing behavior to provide tailored product recommendations in emails

Behavior-Based Segmentation: Segment subscribers based on their behavior, such as website visits, email opens, clicks, and past purchase history. For instance, create a segment for frequent website visitors who haven’t made a purchase recently and send them tailored offers to re-engage them.

Abandoned Cart Reminders: Send personalized reminders to customers who abandoned their shopping carts, including the specific items left behind and an incentive to complete the purchase.

Birthday and Anniversary Emails: Send personalized birthday or anniversary greetings along with exclusive offers or discounts to make subscribers feel special on their important days.

Location-Based Segmentation: Divide your email list by geographic location to send region-specific promotions, event invitations, or content relevant to local interests and events.

Engagement Level: Segment subscribers based on their engagement history, separating highly engaged subscribers from those who have been less active. Send special rewards or re-engagement campaigns to the latter group to reignite their interest.

Lifecycle Stages: Segment subscribers based on where they are in the customer lifecycle, whether they’re new leads, first-time customers, or long-term clients. Tailor your messaging to their specific needs and motivations to improve your click-through rate.

These hyper-personalized email marketing efforts can help businesses can build stronger relationships with their subscribers, increase email engagement, and drive higher conversion rates in their 2024 email marketing campaigns.

2) Mobile-First Optimization

With a staggering 81% of all emails opened on mobile devices, mobile-first optimization is one trend that will be impossible to ignore in the coming year. The majority of consumers will continue to rely on their smartphones and tablets to access their email in years to come, and businesses must prioritize mobile optimization to capture their attention and drive conversions effectively.

Embracing a mobile-first mindset in 2024 will be essential for email marketers looking to connect with their audience effectively and maximize the impact of their campaigns.

Utilizing Mobile-First Optimization in Your 2024 Email Marketing Strategy

Responsive Email Design: Ensure that email templates are responsive and adapt seamlessly to various screen sizes and orientations. This way, the content remains legible and visually appealing on smartphones, desktops, and tablets.

Mobile-Friendly CTAs: Design clear and easy-to-tap call-to-action (CTA) buttons that are well-spaced and visible on smaller screens. Consider using buttons with contrasting colors to make them stand out.

Concise Content: Craft concise and scannable content for mobile users. Use shorter paragraphs, bullet points, and headings to break up text, making it easier to digest on smaller screens.

Optimized Forms: If you include forms in your emails (e.g., for newsletter sign-ups or surveys), make sure they are mobile-friendly and easy to complete on touchscreen devices.

3) Data Privacy

Data privacy isn’t exactly an email trend. It’s an overriding concern that all businesses need to be cognizant of in 2024 and beyond. As data protection regulations become more stringent worldwide (including measures like GDPR and CCPA), businesses must prioritize the security and ethical use of customer data in their email marketing efforts. Consumers are increasingly aware of their rights regarding data privacy, and they expect transparency and responsible data handling from the brands they engage with. The key thing to realize here is that data privacy isn’t merely a compliance requirement but a cornerstone of trust-building with your subscribers and customers.

In 2024, businesses must prioritize obtaining explicit consent for collecting and using customer data, clearly communicating their data handling policies, and ensuring that data is securely stored and protected. This means implementing robust data security measures, regularly auditing data practices, and being prepared to promptly respond to data breach incidents. As email marketers continue to leverage customer data for personalization and targeting, they will need to strike a delicate balance between delivering personalized experiences and respecting individuals’ privacy rights.

Utilizing Data Privacy in Your 2024 Email Marketing Strategy

Explicit Consent: Ensure that subscribers provide explicit consent before collecting and using their data for email marketing purposes. Clearly explain how their data will be used and allow them to opt in voluntarily.

Transparency: Communicate your data handling policies in your privacy policy and within your emails. Inform subscribers about the types of data you collect and why you collect it to ensure they feel confident providing it to you.

Data Security: Invest in robust data security measures to protect customer data. Encrypt sensitive information, regularly update software, and conduct security audits to identify and rectify vulnerabilities.

Data Breach Response Plan: Develop a comprehensive data breach response plan that outlines steps to take in the event of a data breach, including notifying affected parties promptly.

4) Accessibility

Similarly, accessibility isn’t a trend but a fundamental aspect of email marketing that has become the standard heading into 2024. As businesses increasingly recognize the importance of inclusivity, creating email campaigns that are accessible to all subscribers regardless of disabilities or impairments is becoming a non-negotiable requirement. Prioritizing accessibility not only complies with legal requirements like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). More importantly, it also has the impact of broadening the reach of email marketing campaigns and fostering a positive brand image.

Utilizing Accessibility in Your 2024 Email Marketing Strategy

Semantic HTML: Use semantic HTML to structure your emails logically. Headers, paragraphs, lists, and links should be appropriately marked up to improve comprehension for screen reader users.

High-Contrast Design: Design emails with high-contrast color schemes to ensure that text and important elements are easily distinguishable. Avoid using color as the sole means of conveying information.

Alt Text for Images: Include descriptive alt text for all images in your emails. This allows screen readers to convey image content to visually impaired subscribers.

Accessible Links and Buttons: Make clickable links and buttons easily identifiable with clear and descriptive labels to avoid relying solely on color or visual cues.

Implementing these accessibility practices in their email marketing strategy enables businesses to create more campaigns that ultimately reach a wider audience.

5) Interactive Content

Interactive elements are set to become a hallmark of successful email marketing campaigns heading into 2024. This trend goes beyond static emails and encourages marketers to transform their messages into immersive experiences. Interactive elements might include features such as clickable carousels, polls, quizzes, and embedded videos that provide subscribers with opportunities to engage directly within the email. These elements work to grab the attention of your subscribers, making them more likely to spend time with your email content and engage with your brand/business.

One key advantage of interactive elements is their ability to gather valuable data and insights about subscriber preferences and behaviors. For instance, interactive surveys can provide marketers with direct feedback that enables them to fine-tune their strategies and tailor content more precisely to individual preferences.

But it goes beyond just providing data. It can also help improve your revenue-generating efforts in multiple ways. With interactive emails, customers can see live stock levels, add an item to their cart, and even complete a checkout right from an email. For service providers, your subscribers can complete an appointment booking inside an email, without the need to click out to a landing page. This convenience of in-email AMP bookings can boost conversions by up to 300%.

6) Video

In 2024, the integration of video is poised to take center stage in email marketing, turning once-static messages into dynamic experiences. Video content within emails transforms the way brands engage with their audience, as it enables them to convey messages more vividly and memorably than words and images alone might be able to convey.

The power of video lies in its ability to share information in a quick and entertaining format, making it an ideal medium for our fast-paced inboxes. Whether it’s a a heartfelt brand story that connects on a personal level, or a webinar invitation that provides immediate value, video content within emails captures attention and encourages engagement.

Ways of Incorporating Video in Your 2024 Email Marketing Strategy

Product Demonstrations: Include short video clips demonstrating how your products work or showcasing their key features. This can help customers visualize the product’s value and functionality.

Customer Testimonials: Share video testimonials from satisfied customers. Hearing real people speak about their positive experiences with your brand adds authenticity and more importantly, credibility for your business.

Animated Explainers: Use animated videos to simplify complex concepts or to tell a compelling brand story in a visually engaging way.

Personalized Video Messages: Send personalized video messages to subscribers on special occasions, like birthdays or anniversaries, to enhance the personal connection with your brand.

7) Storytelling

Storytelling in email marketing isn’t merely about conveying information. It’s about creating an emotional journey that resonates with subscribers, builds brand loyalty, and fosters a sense of connection. These narratives may take the form of brand stories, customer success stories, or even personalized customer journeys that align with each subscriber’s interests and experiences.

One of the key advantages of storytelling in email marketing is its ability to transcend the transactional nature of typical marketing messages. By weaving narratives into emails, businesses can humanize their brand in a way that makes it relatable and memorable.

Utilizing Storytelling in Your 2024 Email Marketing Strategy

Brand Origin Stories: Share the story of how your company was founded, its mission, and the values it upholds. Highlight key milestones, challenges overcome, and the vision for the future to create an emotional connection with subscribers.

Customer Success Stories: Feature real-life testimonials and success stories from satisfied customers. Share how your product or service solved their problems or improved their lives to emphasize the human aspect of your brand.

Educational Storytelling: Use storytelling to educate subscribers about industry trends, best practices, or how-to guides to help establish your business as a thought leader

Interactive Storytelling: Develop interactive email campaigns that allow subscribers to engage with and influence the narrative’s outcome, making them active participants in the story.

8) Increased Use of Complex Automation:

One example is switching from a single system-generated email to a multi-email series of branded, optimized messages aimed to engage new subscribers and move them to act, such as creating an account or completing a purchase or signup that they had started previously.

The resulting do-it-yourself approach, which no longer needs the same degree of IT involvement, has made automation more accessible. On average, 81% of marketing organizations use some form of automation, according to Salesforce.

This means email marketers are getting more sophisticated about automation since these more complex automation are ultimately resulting in increased revenues and improved customer retention.

With automation, brands can collect and manage individual preferences automatically and call on those details to create more relevant and personalized communications. This helps brands meet customers’ expectations for receiving messages that they are interested in.

9) Use trust and authentication for greater inbox visibility:

But now marketers must do even more to prove to mailbox providers and subscribers alike that their emails are inbox-worthy. Fortunately for email marketers, they have more tools today to get their emails into more inboxes and to help subscribers trust the messages enough to open and act on them.

These include BIMI {Brand Indicators for Message Identification) and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance), an email authentication, policy, and reporting protocol.

BIMI to build trust: Email fraud is on the rise worldwide, as is the financial damage it can inflict on people and companies who fall prey to attacks. Wary subscribers are more cautious about falling victim to email fraud. However, they can often go too far with this, and discard or report genuine emails as spam or fraud. BIMI is gaining more traction as a trust signal, thus creating a better customer experience.

BIMI is an email specification that standardizes logo display across mailbox providers. Because it requires the sender to verify that it is authorized to send email with that logo. It can also assure subscribers that a message is from an authentic sender and not someone spoofing the brand.

DMARC validation becomes a must-do: While the customer experience impact isn’t as obvious here as it is with BIMI inbox trust signals, it does ensure that the emails people look forward to seeing in their inboxes show up there.

As part of this process, in the fall of 2023, both Google/Gmail and Yahoo! Mail announced plans to tighten sender requirements to place messages in their users’ inboxes. It’s no longer enough to show a subscriber gave active permission to send email.

Now senders must also authenticate their sender IP addresses and domains using SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) as well as DMARC with at least a p=none policy, which tells inbox providers to deliver email even if they fail SPF and DKIM checks.

Email is a growth marketing driver for businesses in 2024

Email marketing is an ever-evolving industry, and the trends discussed here are just the tip of the iceberg. You must be able to stay on top of the latest developments if you want to ensure your email marketing campaigns are designed to get results. Of course, this is easier said than done when you have a business of your own to run.

By following these email marketing developments and orienting your strategies with these factors in mind, you improve your chances of boosting email your ROI in 2024.

However, to truly win with email marketing in 2024, you need a well-thought-out strategy, one that leverages proper planning and awareness of how to best leverage email marketing for your particular business.

That's where we as expert growth marketing consultants come in.

Growth marketing consulting that is available on demand to serve as an outside source that can evaluate your overall strategy, as well as specific campaigns and tactics, and give you specific recommendations (as well as work to implement them) to help achieve growth is an asset that few businesses take advantage of.

With that being said, if email marketing can be a major driver for growth in your business, why not reach out to us for an initial meeting? Our expert email marketing consultants look forward to meeting with you, learning more about your businesses, examining your existing strategy, and determining how email marketing can best serve and drive growth for your business.

John Kurien