Email Marketing Trends We’ve Seen in 2024 (and what’s ahead!)

Email Marketing Trends in 2024 and what's ahead in 2025

Trends, by their very nature, come and go. Lots of things change in the ever-evolving world of digital marketing. One thing that remains a steady favourite is email marketing. Naysayers expected social media to take over, but the inherently targeted nature of email has meant it still consistently delivers the best ROI out of all the digital channels. As we near the end of 2024, let’s look at some key trends that have shaped email marketing this year and what we can anticipate in 2025.

Hyper-personalisation

Hyper-personalisation is the first and most immediate trend that has jumped out at us. Previously, it’s been enough to send a “Dear [First Name]” email and call it a day. This year has taken it up a couple of levels by incorporating

  • behaviour-based triggers,
  • purchase history,
  • and real-time data

to deliver targeted content that is entirely personal to the reader. For example, when a customer abandons their cart or lingers on a specific product page, brands have been tagging this behaviour. They can then send a tailored email featuring those exact products or offering an exclusive discount to complete the purchase.

It’s clever stuff made possible by big leaps in data collection and AI. Its enabling marketers to analyse individual preferences and behaviours. Tools like predictive analytics and machine learning have been essential in helping brands predict what customers want before they even know it themselves. That edges into the slightly spooky side of behaviour prediction! Still, it’s effective because it’s based on actual data on previous behaviours.

Interactive content

Another trend in email has been the move towards creating fun and interactive content. Rather than just being passive readers, email subscribers are more often invited to engage directly with content. Marketers are achieving this in a number of ways, including embedded surveys, quizzes, polls, or even product carousels. These interactive elements help keep users engaged not only on a physical level but also emotionally. We all know that consistent engagement helps to build brand loyalty. Customers agree that this type of content improves their customer journey, so creating the feel-good factor around the brand is essential. A popular way of doing this for e-commerce retailers is by embedding a mini-shopping experience inside an email. This allows users to browse products and add items to their cart without even leaving their inboxes!

AI – of course!

It wouldn’t be 2024 without mentioning artificial intelligence, which has gripped the business community. Everyone and anyone is pulling up their AI generator of choice and asking it to create copy. Everything from brochures and training courses to product descriptions and email marketing! One key area in which it’s being used is in the generation of subject lines. Often lamented as being the trickiest part of all email marketing campaigns. It’s also being used to tailor email content and optimise send times based on analysis of previous behaviour of open times!

Dark mode

Dark mode isn’t new, but any marketer worth their pay cheque knows it’s become a bigger deal in email marketing in 2024. As more users switch to dark mode on their devices, it’s essential to optimise designs for both light and dark themes. Dark mode threw a spanner in the design works, and we saw many brands struggle with certain elements. Logos, links, and copy could become unreadable in dark mode. Brands have caught on, though, and have adapted designs. Designs that now work with both light and dark modes regardless of which mode the recipient has opted for.

Marketing generally has taken a more conscious turn toward sustainability and positive ethics. this is driven by consumers becoming increasingly concerned about climate, carbon footprints, and ethical business practices. Brands have responded by beginning to reflect these values in their email campaigns. Popular tactics include using email to promote eco-friendly products, supporting social causes (and telling everyone about it), and being transparent about their environmental footprint – especially when it’s positive news.

What Can We Expect for 2025?

We’re not going to go into this too much as we’ll write a separate article about this soon. As an overview, we expect certain trends to continue and others to evolve and develop. For starters, we think hyper-personalisation will extend into predictive personalisation using advanced data analytics to predict customer behaviour with ever-increasing accuracy. It’s a given that AI will continue to evolve. It’s also likely we’ll see entire email campaigns being generated autonomously and completely – everything from the content to the design and the scheduling.

Micro-segmentation

The evolution of AI will allow for micro-segmentation, where brands break their audiences down into ever-smaller groups with specific behaviours and preferences to deliver even more highly targeted emails. This will be increasingly important as the focus on privacy grows. We saw a big leap forward with this in 2024, with Yahoo and Google following Apple’s lead, and it’s safe to assume the trend will continue. To combat this, marketers will have to focus on building trust with their customers by being transparent about data usage.

Alexa’s going to help

Here’s our final prediction: smart speakers and voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa will get more involved. Using Alexa to make a shopping list and order products directly through the device is already possible. We expect emails to become more voice-friendly, becoming hands-free as they are read aloud by devices, and potentially allowing customers to interact with the content of the email through voice commands.

As always, it’s an exciting time to be in email marketing, and there’s every indication that email will continue to grow in strength and popularity. However, brands will have to stay on point with technology and customer demands to remain ahead of the curve of the competition. Those who continue to embrace innovation while focusing on customer-centric strategies will come out on top.

To get your email marketing ready for 2025, click here to arrange a free call-back

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