Technologies are constantly changing and developing. Yet, email remains one of the most powerful marketing channels so far. However, to keep up with the times and keep customers engaged, you need to know what’s happening in the world of email and what approaches are trending this year.

We’ve divided all the trends into two groups:

• email marketing trends;

• email design trends.

Email marketing trends 2022

Sticking to the trends below will help you run successful campaigns.

1. Personalization in emails

Personalization in emails is a complex thing and goes way beyond addressing by name.

Put simply, it includes all the data a subscriber shares with you: Name, gender, age, country of residence, and preferences.

Personalized offers make your emails relevant for every customer, which results in:

Benefits of personalization in emails:

• generates 2x times higher conversion (NeverBounce);

• 80% of customers are more likely to buy from a brand that uses personalization (Litmus);

• 14% increase in CTR (WebFX);

• 760% increase in revenue (HubSpot).

2. Artificial intelligence in email marketing (AI)

Through data collection, observation, and analysis, artificial intelligence determines the solutions that ensure the effective interaction of the company with its customers. It helps brands deliver better experiences to their customers.

Benefits of AI:

• send time optimization;

• better segmentation;

• individual product recommendations;

• better customer persona.

For more information on how to use AI and AI tools in email marketing, please refer to our “Improve Your Email Marketing with AI” blog post.

3. Automation in email marketing

A number of marketing processes are almost impossible to perform manually. Like sending trigger and transactional emails. However, they are utterly useful for your businesses. This is when automation helps. 

Automation along with AI makes personalization possible and powerful.

Benefits of automation:

• +320% revenue from welcome emails (WordStream);

• +342% revenue from milestone emails (CampaignMonitor);

• $314 646 819 Mailchimp clients got from abandoned cart emails in 2020 alone (Mailchimp).

4. Interactivity and AMP in email

Interactivity requires a customer's actions right in emails. 

A few years back, interactivity was supposed to entertain recipients. But today its goal is to make emails more functional and to prevent customers from taking extra steps in order to make certain actions, like sharing feedback.

AMP for Email enables real-time and dynamic content in emails. 

You can use both interactive and AMP content in email marketing to:

• run surveys and polls in emails;

• collect user feedback;

• provide users with real-time content;

• utilize gamification.

Interactivity opens new opportunities for email marketers. According to Litmus, 91% of users expect interactive content in emails, but only 23% of marketers have given interactivity a try. What did they get for their effort?

Benefits of interactivity and AMP in emails:

• +520% survey response rate (Stripo);

• +225% user engagement (AWeber);

• +82% conversion in abandoned carts (Ecwid).

5. Gamification in email

Gamification is crucial for email. Not only does it help your business go viral, increase user engagement, but also it lets your customers relax and have some fun in YOUR emails, which is good for long-term relations.

In our high-competitive world, every company has to be “effectively creative” — do something catchy and engaging to boost sales.

With the help of Gamification, you can definitely do it all.

Benefits of gamification in email marketing:

• 2X times higher conversion (Stripo);

• +15% to average check (Inbox Marketing);

• brand virality increase (Stripo);

• 300% higher revenue (Promodo).

We know that building gamified emails can be time-consuming and expensive. So, in order to optimize these costs for you, we prepared a number of ready-to-use game mechanics. You will only need to slightly customize them. Find them along with the best practices in our “Email Gamification” eBook. 

6. Data privacy

Personalization drives great results. To implement the former, we need data, like users’ geographical location, preferences, etc. And users are willing to share it with us. According to Litmus studies, 73% of users are ready to share some personal data with us so we can deliver better experiences. But they also need us to be careful with this data.

There are lots of data privacy regulations, like GDPR, CCPA, etc. And we learned to live with them. But in 2021, Apple released its Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), and in late 2023 Google will phase out support for third-party cookies (they postponed it from January 2022).

This all means we need to learn and analyze customer data according to the law.

So, what are marketers most worried about when it comes to data privacy?

• 63% Apple Privacy Protection (Litmus); 

• 37% Google Third-party Cookies (Litmus).

7. Modular design

Even though the modular system is not new, it is on the rise now. Some call it “Modular email architecture”.

So, what is it, anyway? 

Let’s define modules. 

A module is an email element (some call it “block”) that is designed, pre-tested. It contains just a little piece of information/content. You can mix and match different modules to make a new email.

So the modular email design is the new approach to email building. It lets you combine emails by using these content modules. And saves time!

Benefits of the modular email design:

• 25% reduction in build-time (Oracle);

• no-code email production — designers build it for you once, and you reuse it across multiple campaigns (Stripo);

• ability to edit/update over 100 emails at once due to module synchronization (Stripo).

Oracle measured: The Modular email architecture reduces the email production time by 25%. That doesn’t sound impressive enough?

Then it’s time to do some math:

Litmus says it takes an email marketer 27 hours to build a promo email. This means, when you use modules, you save almost hours! Now that is impressive!

Some of you know that this Summer we ran a series of interviews with our clients. They all said that Modules are one of the best things they have ever tried in email building.

Important

Stripo offers a wide range of diverse Content Modules built by our professional designers. They are divided into categories like header, footer, product cards, surveys, ratings, etc.

Email design trends of 2022

Stick to these email design trends to stand out in users’ inboxes.

8. Dark mode

The dark mode, also known as a dark theme, is now active not only on desktop but on mobile devices also. And email clients are not an exception here.

You never know what mode your customers prefer. Well, you will if you look at the chart below:

Stats on how many people use dark mode:

• 81.9% of people use Dark mode on Android (Night Eye);

• 55-70% use Dark mode on iOS (Night Eye);

• 64.6% of readers expect Dark mode to affect web pages automatically (Night Eye).

Among those users who prefer the dark mode, 74.6% use it constantly, and the rest 25.4% toggle from dark to light depending on the environment. (Dev Channel on Medium).

This means your emails should look fabulous and be pretty legible both in dark and light modes.

(Source: Outlook)

In the “How to Optimize Emails to Dark Mode” blog post, we show what steps you need to take to fully optimize emails to the dark theme. The same applies to black and white emails — you need to work on them so they look well on devices with the dark and the light mode.

And in the near future, in the Spring of 2022, when we release the New Version of the Stripo editor, you will be able to preview emails with the eyes of those who prefer the Dark Mode on their devices right in the editor by switching the Preview mode from the Dark mode to the Light mode and back. It eliminates the need to send lots of test emails.

9. Email accessibility

Email accessibility requirements were developed to enable marketers to create emails that can be “read” by all people.

These rules make email readable for screen readers, for those who suffer from dyslexia, and those who don’t see colors.

Why care about email accessibility:

• 2.2 bln people have visual impairments (WHO);

• 15% of the world’s population have dyslexia, which makes every 7th person on Earth! (Dyslexia-Reading-Well.com);

• 300 mln people are color blind, which is 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women (Colour Blind Awareness).

Those who are blessed to see, hear, read, should take care of those who can’t enjoy reading. 

Why else?

• regulations require it;

• we all sometimes listen to emails/news/etc. when driving, cooking, etc. So we need those screen readers to be able to “read” our emails to customers, as well.

In our “Email accessibility” blog post, we share all the requirements. By following them, you will make your emails fully accessible.

10. GIFs in emails

We use GIFs to showcase our products, draw users’ attention to certain elements, or just slightly decorate email copy.

Did you know that GIFs have a positive impact on your email?

Benefits of adding GIFs to email:

• a 103% increase in conversion (Marketing Sherpa);

• gifs are attention-grabbing;

• they serve as teasers;

• a 109% increase in revenue (Marketing Sherpa).

In our “Examples of GIFs in Emails” blog post, we shared 16 great examples and simple rules on how to use gifs in emails so that you do not cause photosensitive epilepsy seizures among subscribers. 

11. Email subject lines 

Of course, sticking to all the email design trends we’ve mentioned above will make your emails up-to-date. But how are readers supposed to find it out? That is right, you need to come up with a powerful line.

What makes a powerful subject line?

• emojis in the subject: 4% increase in OR (Stripo); 

• personalization (either addressing by name or mentioning something that lets users know the offer was curated specially for them): 29% increase in OR (Experian);

• direct subjects: 2X times higher OR (Stripo).

What do we mean by “Direct Subject Lines”? You get straight to the point — no hints, no guessing, no general info — just tell users what the email is about.

Please compare two subjects:

1. Are you ready for Christmas?

2. Stripo Webinar: How to create Christmas emails.

And these subject lines:

1. Stripo September update. 

2. What’s new: How to update emails, created in Stripo and exported to Mailchimp, with 1 click.

In the first case, subject number 2 showed 2 times more opens than subject number 1.

In the second case, subject number 2 showed 3 times higher open rate than subject number 1.

In our “Effective Subject Lines” blog post, we share over 140 subject line examples. Get inspired!

Final thoughts

In the era of fast-developing technologies, we need to keep our fingers on the pulse and stick to email marketing trends and give a try to email design trends in our emails ASAP.

Luckily, Stripo enables you to implement them in no time.