Four SFMC Email Marketing Trends to Look Out for in 2022

Many new marketing channels have emerged in recent times. However, email remains one of the most powerful means of connecting with audiences and building brand awareness. Email generates a staggering ROI of 4,200% and can drive major revenues for businesses with very few resources. No wonder 64% of small businesses love email marketing, and that the global email marketing market is projected to increase to $17.9 billion by 2027.

So, if you plan to either adopt or continue to use email marketing with Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) – you’re making the right choice. To help you get the most out of your brand’s SFMC email marketing program in 2022, we have put together a list of email marketing trends. These trends will play a key role in driving results and help you power your SFMC email marketing campaigns in 2022 and beyond.

1. Email Designs Will Become Minimalist

Your brand is already fighting the battle for the inbox. An average person receives 100+ emails a day. To stand out from the crowd, you may find it tempting to make your emails as “loud” as possible – with fancy fonts, lots of text, a crowded layout, and too many design elements.

But this approach will not work in 2022.

For email marketing in 2022, less will be more. Email recipients will demand minimalist emails, easy-to-read text, and a clear message. You can meet this demand by:

• Using a generous amount of white space
• Selecting SFMC templates with a clean look-and-feel
• Avoiding complex layouts, jazzy designs, and too many graphical elements
• Using colors wisely and sparingly
• Including clear CTAs
• Balancing text with imagery

This simple referral email from Casper ticks all the minimalist boxes with ease:

Try to convey your message in the least amount of text possible. Avoid sales-y text, and use a combination of text and graphics to tell your brand’s story with each email. Use animations and illustrations to support your message. Wherever possible, use animations to create a sense of curiosity or urgency and encourage the reader to take immediate action.

In addition to minimalism, 2022 will also be the year for dark mode-compatible emails. These emails make content more legible, which is why about 82% of people already use dark mode to read email on their devices.

This dark mode email from Brightwave looks classy and elegant – and is easier on the eye.

2. Subscribers will Expect Hyper-personalized Emails 

In 2022, subscribers will demand personalized emails that meet their unique needs and address their specific pain points. So, they will open and click on emails that:

• Address them by name
• Are tailored for their specific demographic (age range, gender, location, etc.)
• Consider their purchase or interaction history to provide recommendations or offers
• “Talk” to them in a warm, friendly, and engaging manner

Neutral, run-of-the-mill mass emails will just not work, so 2022 is a great year to change your personalization strategy.

Fortunately, SFMC provides a bunch of features to help you personalize your email campaigns and make your readers feel valued and privileged. One such feature is the availability of dozens of customizable templates that you can either send as is or update as per your brand’s requirements:

• Text templates
• HTML templates
• Custom HTML templates
• Visualforce templates

In all four types of templates, you can include text, merge fields, attachments, dynamic content, and personalization strings. Use SFMC Email Studio to build personalized emails, from basic campaigns to sophisticated 1-to-1 messages. Leverage its intuitive features and a drag-and-drop interface to create tailored, real-time content for any kind of campaign, including:

• Welcome and onboarding
• Event invites
• Newsletters
• Engagement and re-engagement
• Drip campaigns
• Surveys
• Promotions
• Special occasion emails
• Informational emails
• Trigger-based emails

In all these emails, you can insert specific subscriber details like their name, location, company name, address, etc., to the subject line, pre-header, or body. To further boost your personalization goals, you can:

• Choose SFMC templates based on the kind of conversation you want to have with each subscriber
• Include clear CTA text that encourages action
• Offer specific discounts or offers based on the reader’s profile or prior purchase history
• Send newsletters with valuable, personalized content
• Establish a connection with readers from the first line

In addition, SFMC offers AI-powered personalization so you can personalize many crucial elements of your email, such as:

• Subject line
• Greeting
• Offers
• Content
• Signature

You can even personalize send times using SFMC’s Einstein Send Time Optimization (STO) feature. More and more marketers will take advantage of these capabilities of SFMC in 2022, so make sure you do as well.

Grammarly usually does a great job sending personalized “update” emails to subscribers. The below email does not include the subscriber’s name. However, they know at a glance that the content is 100% tailored to their Grammarly activities.

3. Interactive Experiences Will Become Popular

More email marketers will appreciate the power of interactive content in 2022. This is because interactive content can increase email open rates by 73%. By adding a video to your email campaigns, you can increase click-through rates by as much as 300%.  Moreover, interactive content also generates 2X (70%) more conversions than passive content (36%). Customers, too, will demand more interactive experiences in the coming year.

Interactive emails are a great way to delight subscribers with unique brand experiences. By adding a video, gif images, quiz, product carousel, etc., you can impress existing customers and convert potential leads into customers. You can also include live shopping, menu bar, carousel sliders, discount coupons, quick checkouts, and other interactive features to simplify in-email navigation and encourage customers to shop more.

SFMC supports many interactive elements you can leverage for your email campaigns, such as:

• Videos
• Product carousels
• Survey or feedback forms
• Quizzes
• Image/button rollovers
• Countdown timers
• Live polls
• Live local weather
• Store locators
• Interactive maps

Here’s a cool interactive email the BBC designed using SFMC. Subscribers can tap on the “+” icon under each animal to reveal more information about five animal families. The email is a great way to garner curiosity about BBC’s program “Dynasties”.

Leverage SFMC’s Journey Builder, Content Builder, and pre-built templates to set up interactive and personalized emails and engage with specific target audiences. With gamified elements and interactive emails from SFMC:

• Subscribers can participate more fully in your brand’s email marketing experience
• Take advantage of interactive lead forms to capture or update lead information
• Design relationship and loyalty email marketing campaigns to enhance brand recall and loyalty
• Collect user information to improve your personalization strategy, audience engagement, and brand connection

These emails will also help you promote specific products, improve accessibility, and share useful information in a user-friendly format – all of which can ultimately enhance user experiences and create more loyal subscribers.

4. Focus on Data Privacy Laws Will Increase

New rules and regulations are already changing how companies can collect and use user data in their marketing programs. Technological developments are also playing a part in increasing the importance of data privacy. For example, in late 2021, Apple rolled out new privacy features, such as:

• Mail Privacy Protection
• Hide My Email
• Hide my IP address

Email marketers will have to work within the purview of such features and regulations as they design and implement new campaigns in 2022. All teams will have to deal with challenges related to the data they can use for audience targeting. Simply put, not all subscribers will be willing to share their data with you, say, about preferences or needs, so you should be prepared for some pushback. This may affect the way you create audience segments and design your personalization strategies.

In 2022 and beyond, make sure you respect users’ private information. Implement double opt-in in SFMC to ensure that you only email those subscribers who actually want to hear from you. In addition, to retain subscribers and prevent spam complaints:

• Enforce SPF and DMARC protocols to establish safe email connections
• Remove all spammy words from email content using Content Detective
• Use SFMC Einstein tools and profile data to create compelling subject lines, identify highly engaged subscribers, and recommend valuable, personalized content that resonates with the audience
• Review audience preferences to connect with audiences at a time and frequency of their choosing
• Create mobile-friendly emails using Email Studio’s responsive email templates and Content Builder

You should also make it easy for subscribers to leave if they want to by including a visible unsubscribe link with every email. Also include a link to the user’s account and a link to manage their preferences, as well as contact details for the support team. Ultimately, in 2022, you will need to work harder to convince your subscribers that you value them as individuals and that you respect their privacy. 

Wrap Up

2022 will be another exciting year for email marketing. Give your email program a much-needed boost with SFMC and Email Uplers. To know more about our work with the world’s best brands, click here.