23 Experts

1. Senders Will Move From Open Rate To Clicks

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) came into play recently and, as a result, tracking opens by Apple users has become a shot in the dark.

Luckily, open rates are not the best measure of an email’s success anyway. It helps with measuring the effectiveness of your subject line, but the click rate is a much better measure of the email’s overall effectiveness. So, there will be a greater focus on clicks in 2023.

2. Personalization Will Solidify Its Claim

With the digital noise we all sift through daily, it’s becoming more and more important to ensure that your messaging is hyper-relevant to the recipient. In fact, SmarterHQ says that 72% of consumers claim they will only engage with personalized messaging.

In 2023, we foresee more marketers using personalization as it becomes more mainstream, easier to implement, and more necessary to get, and keep, engagement from email recipients.

3. Machine Learning Will Be Used For Segmentation

Database segmentation is a great tool for sending relevant messages to the right people. And now, with interest-based tags, you can use machine learning to automatically collect data on recipient interests based on the links they click in your emails. This will help marketers get started with segmentation quicker.

1. Brand Indicators For Message Identification (BIMI) Will Go From A Nice-to-have To A Must-have

Open to brands that fully authenticate their emails with SPF and DKIM, and that set up a DMARC record with the preferred “p=reject” policy, BIMI (/bē mē/) allows brands to have their logo displayed next to their sender name in inboxes that support the standard.

While BIMI (/bē mē/) has been around for years, it will go from a nice-to-have to a must-have in 2023 because of new support from Apple. Once Gmail and Yahoo comply with Apple’s BIMI requirements—which they’ve indicated they will—then marketers who adopt BIMI can expect their logo to appear next to their sender name with more than 90% of the emails they send on average. While implementing BIMI requires 6 time-intensive steps, and some significant costs, the effort is more than worth it now for many businesses, especially enterprises and other large organizations.

2. Adoption Of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) Will Increase

The sunsetting of third-party cookies, launch of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection and App Tracking Transparency, and other changes have heightened the need of businesses to utilize their cross-channel customer data to make key decisions in their email and digital marketing programs. Unfortunately, in most cases, that data is scattered across the organization in multiple databases that don’t talk to each other very well, if at all.

Adoption of customer data platforms will accelerate in 2023 because these systems solve this problem by aggregating all customer data in one central repository—as well as cleaning the data, better controlling access to the data, and mobilizing the data for usage across channels. For email marketing, this will lead to more relevant personalization, better segmentation, and smarter automation that leverages a wider array of triggers across channels.

1. Putting A Person’s First Name In An Email Won’t Be Enough Anymore

Personalization is standard. Hyper-personalization is the future. To stand out and increase engagement more email marketers will focus on hyper-personalization in 2023. Hyper-personalization is more than pre-determined segmentation. It’s about using customer data in real-time, through AI and predictive analysis, to personalize and customize the email experience.

2. Modular Email Template Will Be The Future

A modular template has several blocks dedicated to a specific purpose. Then you can move the blocks depending on the type of email you want to send. It’s gaining in popularity because it provides better branding, and saves time putting together emails and getting them sent. They also give you more flexibility and creativity.

3. The Coming Days Will Witness The Use Of Multi-channels To Increase Engagement And Conversions, Leading To A Higher ROI

While email remains the main channel brands use, more and more brands will branch out and add other ones. The most popular channel to add in 2023 is text messaging (SMS). But don’t forget about phone and direct mail as well-established channels that play nicely with email.

1. The Future Will Witness The Rise Of Prompt Craft

In 2023 marketers will finally discover AI-based text and image generation. The email specialist is becoming a hybrid of marketer, creator and master of AI prompt craft. AI can compose the perfect email, create summaries, propose subject lines, draft headlines, and create images as well. All while using proven copywriting formulas, the tone-of-voice and word count you tell it to. Expect AI to slowly start appearing in more email marketing services. It’s like a full-time writing assistant on tap.

2. Email Specialists Will Captain Short-form Channels

Email teams will take more messaging channels under their wing. It makes sense as there’s a similarity in experience and skills already present in the email team. As a result even small market MarTech platforms are combining these channels to one campaign engine. Specifically additions of SMS, in-app, push, and channels like Whatsapp and Viber.

3. Ditch The Default For Automation Templates

“We did the work for you” turns out to be a mirage. MarTech marketplaces make a too perfect pitch with templated automation campaigns. It seems a quick way to get started, but the campaign templates are often very basic and generic. Campaigns need a more specific and inspired, original implementation. So this year, my wish is for marketers to directly ditch that default and step it up with smarter, more insightful and tailored campaigns.

Even though I don't have the gift of seeing the future, there are a few trends that I think will get momentum in 2023:

1. Hyper-personalization And Automation Backed With AI Will Grow To Be A Best Practice

Hyper Personalized Machine Learning based AI email marketing and automation will become more standard and open to the majority of brands and not only for the big budgets.

2. BIMI Will Gain Immense Momentum

BIMI is getting more prominent brands' adoption as we speak. When Gmail, Yahoo! and Apple already support it, enough said.

3. Strike A Balance Between Promotional And Educational Emails

Due to the eventual crisis context and the need to get the most out of their audience, brands will get too cheeky in email marketing and demand too much of their lists to get more sales. A balance between pitch emails and educational/entertaining ones is key to keeping their list engaged.

4. Brands Will Continue To Send Mass Emails

Counter-nature to the first prediction, most brands will still send massive emails without any segmentation or personalization of content subdued by the spray and pray.

Again, I'm no fortune-teller, but this seems almost guaranteed to happen from what I've witnessed recently.

1. A/B Testing Is Back On The Agenda

With there being more education available and knowledge being shared about how to test, we’re seeing more marketers are trying to optimize their email campaigns to ensure they’re delivering the best service they can to their subscribers and customers. Additionally, given the current financial climate, they’re finding that this is an economical way to gain more revenue from their budget.

2. Marketers Will Strive For Smarter Automation

We’re seeing that marketers are building upon their list of automations and these automations are often more advanced in nature than their basic programmes. These automations are being born from insights gained from analyzing their data and understanding the gaps in their journeys, and as such resonate with their subscribers and customers and deliver very high ROI.

3. A/B Testing Will Enter The World Of Automation

Following on from the two trends above, we’re also seeing that not only are campaigns being A/B tested but automations are as well. No longer are automations being treated as ‘one and done’ but A/B testing streams are inherently built into the program. This is something we’ve rarely seen in the past, but with technology advancing and education improving, it’s now seeing a nice pick up.

In 2023, AI Will Have A Profound Impact On Many Areas Of Email Marketing From The Smallest Of Businesses To The Enterprise

This technology has already been adopted by a variety of leading players in the industry and is expected to become even more widespread as it rapidly matures. The first area where AI will be in use is to generate content for emails.

Even small businesses will find themselves using GPT3 type tools in their efforts to generate content for newsletters and campaigns. Others will tailor content on a per segment or even per recipient bais empowered by the power of AI.

Some will find themselves using tools that enable them to utilize AI’s natural language processing techniques to tailor the language used in an email to better match a user’s preferences and tone.

AI-powered technology will be used to automatically tailor and generate images based on individual recipients. Promising levels of customization for their customers which should result in higher levels of engagement and ultimately lead to better results.

Recently available technology like GPT Chat will become more widely adopted and used by developers to generate, fix and tidy up code that renders better across email clients

These just explore some of the areas where AI will impact email marketers. AI will be used to create more effective content, personalize emails, tailor targeting, and optimize automated campaigns to create campaigns that are tailored to the recipient. AI will prove to be a truly powerful tool for email marketers in 2023.

1. Non-gated Content And An Empathetic Tone Will Become Inevitable

2023 will be the year of non-gated content. Companies should be receiving leads because users are interested in a product. Not as a result of a simple transaction “hand over your email - get value in exchange”. Users reach out to your content when they need help, be an empathetic company. In the end, you don’t want to trick people into using your product, you aim for them to trust you.

2. Email Localization Will Enable Better Reach

Localization - is a new king. With so many brands going global in the last few years, we can’t ignore that simple translation is no longer enough. For us as email marketers, it means we’re going to shift our efforts to managing multi-brands companies and influencing global strategy by localizing email content.

3. Segmentation - Is it Always Worth it?

The truth is that personalized experience always makes users happier. However, it increases your marketing expenses significantly: unique content, creatives, landing page, case studies etc. If automation doesn’t sound realistic & there is no option for a dynamic content library - think twice about segmentation, and consider manual efforts spent on building content for each segment.

1. The Future Will See New Email GUI For Consumers

Email is not owned by anyone which allows for frequent innovation. Yahoo announced in October 2022 a new email layout streamlining images, attachments, reminders, orders, subscription services, gift cards and more. It is called top-of-inbox email navigation and it looks very promising.

2. AI Will be Used For Writing Emails

Content is King. For marketers we are always looking for short cuts tools and will likely focus 2023 on diverse content written with AI aided type tools, like copy.ai which actually helped write these predictions.

3. Dark Mode Compatibility Will Be At The Focus

Making email easily read and visually enhanced designing is the new trend. Your email will have to render well across Dark Mode and Light Mode settings.

4. Use Social Media To Build Email List

Inventing new integration to drive people to join your email list: The core "How to build a healthy email list" is consistently trending for the wants and needs of any marketing firm worth their salt. Social media to drive that will be heavily focused in 2023.

5. Visuals And Aesthetics Will Be Of Paramount Importance

A push to improve visual cues to help engage in email, the use of images to convey emotion, more animated GIFs and driving action from email imagery.

1. In 2023, Expect An Increase In The Use Of Video For Email Engagement.

Global brands and organizations will continue to explore, experiment and adopt sending more video in email communications designed to be more impactful and inspires connection to target audiences. It remains important to capture attention, engage and deliver compelling storytelling moments in the email inbox; Video provides a way to show emotion, tone and to personalize a communication experience, and exemplifies the importance of building and sustaining the need for human connection and engagement.

2. Increased Focus On Accessibility With The Inclusion Of Closed Captioning On Videos In Email Experiences, To Reach Broader Audiences.

3. Progressive Use Of More Creative Animation And Motion Experiences in The Inbox.

4. I Predict Email Language & Terminology Will Continue To Evolve.

A shift for example of saying ‘drive’ customers to a call to action, the goal will be to ‘inspire’ a call to action in the email inbox.

1. Are GIFs Getting Too Mainstream?

Much to the chagrin of us millennials who finally felt cool, even in the face of TikTok’s ever growing popularity, pop culture GIFs are falling out of style. We’ll still be seeing brand owned GIFs (like product shots, app dashboards, or even brand personalities) – but meme style GIFs? Say goodbye. Or… is it joodbye?

2. Brands Will Have To Enhance Their Lead Nurturing Strategy (And Build Better Customer Relationships)

The past few years have wreaked havoc on the supply chain, inventory, and shipping predictability. A number of brands have stepped up to the plate email-wise and not just communicated expectations, but implemented creative solutions that actually upped brand loyalty and reduced order cancellations. (Think: heavier+better content nurtures during the waiting period, trade-in communications, waitlist hype, etc.) The smart brands will keep using these strategies, even as inventory stabilizes (if it ever does).

3. Brands Will Have To Prioritize Their Segmentation Efforts

Recession trends show a higher percentage of small “luxury” buys, even as consumers tighten their belts. But smaller buys mean smaller AOV – and smaller profit margins. Acquisition is exciting, but the brands that prioritize their customer segments will see higher CLV and maintain profitability.

In 2023 we will see interesting blends of Humanity and Artificial Intelligence. I'm expecting to see the following:

1. Marketers Will Have A Better Understanding Of The Customer's Journey

Technology and vast amounts of aggregated data may give us a better understanding of our customers and our relationships with them. I hope to see tools helping us understand where our customers are on their journey with us.

2. They Will Experiment With AI-assisted Personalized Email Copy

Some will probably experiment with personalization on a scale. Those who will be the most successful, though, will be the ones who use AI as an inspiration added to their own intuition.

3. Deliverability Testing Will Get Easier With Specialized Kits

When we know to whom and what we want to send, we need to ensure that the message will be delivered. Deliverability Kits will help us test our general deliverability and check if a particular message has risks of landing in the spam folder.

With such great tools, we will be able to focus on building real Human 2 Human relationships.

1. Clicks And Replies Will Become The Prime Currency Of Engagement

With Mail Privacy Protection marking all emails received as opened, the open rate as an email marketing metric will cease to be a KPI in 2023. As such, more stock will be put into getting clicks, and even replies, to email marketing campaigns.

2. Email Marketing Will Become A Two-way Communication Platform

I cannot believe that brands still send emails from “no reply”. This needs to stop and email marketing has to turn into a two-way street. To do this most effectively, email marketers need to start working closely with the customer success teams and start getting replies to emails, which will boost deliverability.

3. The Coming Days Will Be About Permission-based Email Marketing That I Can Understand

Again, with open rates going out of style, email marketers can no longer use this metric as a benchmark for engagement. Therefore, engagement-focused marketers should put more stock in preference centers and make it easy for subscribers to navigate what lists they’re actually on. This will make permission-based marketing more transparent and subscribers will understand exactly which emails they’ve signed up for.

Email, yet again, is about to go through a revolution. The advances in technology and the increased demand for ever-higher quality experiences from the consumer have raised the stakes for marketers across all industries - those not paying attention will be left behind.

1. AI Will Be Used Heavily To Uncover Hidden Trends And Insight Via Email

While marketers were historically combing through data to identify effective tactics, AI can surface hard-to-spot insight that can optimize future campaigns in a meaningful way.

2. Email Platforms Will Build More Seamless Integrations With Product And Customer Data Platforms

The key to email success is timely personalization, and this can only be done by triggering off of user actions within websites, products, and mobile applications.That will be possible through easy integration between email platforms and third party tools or apps.

3. Long-form Email Content Will See A Resurgence

While the guidance has long been "short and sweet" for email content length, savvy marketers are discovering that their readers stick around longer if the content is loaded with value and utility. Daily newsletter curations such as Morning Brew and The Hustle are already proof of this, and 2023 will see many creators and brands jumping on this trend.

1. AMP Up Content And Provide More Interactivity

Winning email marketing campaigns don’t interrupt and try to grab attention - they provide relevant value to the audience. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) enable email recipients to interact directly with the content inside the email and engage with offers.

2. AI Makes Email More Personal And Increases Conversion

Savvy consumers expect personalization beyond their first name, so marketers turn to artificial intelligence to reveal more insight into their audience, predict purchase behaviors and authentically personalize imagery, messages, and offers.

3. Respect For Privacy Wins The Day

Apple’s new Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) and the death of Google’s third-party cookies shine a light on email program privacy measures. Marketers will focus on the longevity of their email programs with utmost respect for consumer privacy by increasing the collection of zero-party data and cleaning up their first-party data.

There are two aspects that, in my opinion, will be reinforced in 2023.

1. Security Of Communications And User Privacy Will Be The #1 Priority

In the coming months we will see how DMARC, an email authentication technique, will proliferate amongst companies that are serious about security and privacy. DMARC is a clear example of a global trend that seeks to strengthen the privacy and security of communications. The implementation of DMARC will also lead to the adoption of a new standard, BIMI, which allows the introduction of visible brand images to consumer inboxes, with the consequent impact on user security and business results (increased open rate, clicks, conversions, and brand recognition).

2. Marketers Will Focus On Streamlining Their Email Production Processes

From a marketing operations perspective, in 2023 we will see how companies commit to incorporating solutions that facilitate the management of the assets involved in a campaign (links, texts, images, tags, HTML modules, personalization conditions, etc.). With increasing email volumes and a marked commitment to personalization, brands need to optimize the processes and operations involved in their Email Marketing activity.

1. Content Reputation Will Continue To Increase in Importance

I've seen some email templates become poisoned in the eyes of providers like Gmail, which means when testing for or trying to improve email deliverability you should consider changing up your entire template format if it has become stale.

2. Google Workspace (The Product Formerly Known as Google Suite) Will Continue Gaining Market Share In The B2B Space

Due to the price point, ease of setup, and similarities to their free Gmail product which the younger generation of workers are more familiar with versus Outlook.

3. Data Privacy Technology Will Be More Powerful

Email marketers need to prepare for a world in which Google implements something similar to Apple's MPP and IP anonymization for open and click tracking into their Android devices or even the Gmail app

4. There Will be Increased Data Privacy Regulation At The State Level

If tech companies don't move fast enough to protect user privacy governments will, and many such as California, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah and Virginia. Further, I think once several states pass legislation the Federal government will be incentivized to pass legislation to reduce the chaos between the multiple conflicting laws.

1. Focus On Delivering Customer Experiences

As the macro-economic changes continue to be a concern for companies, many of them will decide to pull back spending and cut potential projects that they had been planning. For those organizations that are forward thinking, I believe that they will focus on their full customer experience. By looking across the entire life-cycle of a customer from acquisition through retention as one experience, an organization can not only improve their customer loyalty but also create more profitable customers.

2. Emphasis Will Be On Data Collection And Using it to Your Advantage

In order to truly look at the customer experience you have to start from the beginning and look at your company’s overall tech strategy. Many organizations have been building out their tech stack once piece at a time, and we are at a time now that if these systems are effectively integrated it will impact the organizations’ ability to connect with their customers across channels. Ensuring the proper technical set-up and strategy should be the basis of everything we do as marketing professionals because it is all about what data we have and how we use it. Once you understand this piece you can then create an integrated omni-channel strategy and implement the type of experience not only expect but get excited about.

So create a plan that follows these simple steps

1. Understand your current customer life-cycle
2. Map out the ideal customer experience for the future
3. Determine what data you currently have, and what you will need to gather for the future state
4. Ensure your tech stack is built to support your future state
5. Create a comprehensive strategy to implement the ideal experience
6. Continue to test and learn—not every customer is the same so don’t set it and forget it.

1. Advanced Personalization And Segmentation Will Gain More Impetus

People expect more personalization. While personalizaation is always within scope for email marketing, we will see more ways to personalize. And tools to improve personalization will become more accessible and affordable.

Data from CRM tools and MAPs (Marketing Automation Platforms) will allow marketers to provide a better, more personalized experience for users.

From personalized images and videos, to a personalized journey (changing the entire path the customer goes on), companies will be able to more easily give users the information they want at the right time.

2. Marketers Will Be Able To Maintain A Clean Database

We can increase the size of our database with forms that are connected to the CRM and MAPs. In the past, we were at the mercy of the end user to get the data right.

While there is still a heavy reliance on the person inputting the information, tools are available to enrich the data and fill in all the gaps. With the use of webhooks and integrated platforms, you can ask fewer questions and let data companies fill in the rest. This means higher conversions and still maintaining that clean database!

As your database becomes more robust, this allows for even more personalization (and better overall marketing).

3. Marketing Lifecycle Will Be More Effective With The Omnichannel Approach

In the past, email has been a standalone tool. We will see more integration with chat bots, SMS/text marketing, in-app messaging, push notifications and more. This omnichannel approach will provide more consistent messaging across the buying lifecycle.

4. Focus Will Switch To Downstream Metrics

We love email metrics like delivery rate, open rate, and click through rate. This type of data doesn’t really answer the question: what impact are we making? And privacy guidelines are making this data less accurate.

We will no longer look at how many people open the email. But we will measure how many people sign up for a demo. We may not care if they click a link, but we will track creation of an opportunity or a sale from the campaign.

5. Automation Will Help To Achieve The Marketing Triad

We will see improvements in automation for cart abandonment, welcome emails, and more.

More importantly, we will also see automation that helps us define the next steps for users on a behavior-based system. Using the data mentioned before as well as the tools in an omnichannel approach, we will be able to closely match the buying journey and deliver the right message at the right time.

1. Marketing Professionals Will Show An Increased Interest In AMP For Email For Interactive And Real-time Content

Everyone was so jazzed about what AMP could bring to the inbox a few years back–real time pricing for retail, up-to-the minute delivery tracking, ecommerce experience galore–but implementation proved to be slow and difficult. I think email teams are catching up this year and the spark will be rekindled to bring web-like experience into the inbox.

2. AI-powered Tools Will be Used To Create Personalized Content

Creating truly contextual emails is just plain hard. The truth is that the only way to take location, behavior, preferences, time of day and more into account is to use some of the amazing tools out there. Whether it’s copywriting, image selection or sending time, we’re going to rely more on algorithms to decide what our emails look like and who they are sent to. The days of proofing a single static email are long gone!

3. The Years To Come Will Mark The End Of A "Waterfall" Approach To Designing & Building Email

You should plan, then write, then design, then code, then make edits… This old way of thinking about email production should be thrown out the window as we think about reusable blocks of content and layouts that can be easily dragged in and edited in real time via a brand-forward design system.

4. Subscriber Behavior And Inbox Signals Will Be Interpreted More Prudently

Even in the wake of MPP. Apple’s Privacy Protection update was a doozy, but the email community has found brilliant workarounds. We will continue to find new ways to find out if our communications are landing with customers, and even invent new metrics to do so.

Blowing the dust off my crystal ball I can see next year is going to be another great year for Email Marketing. There are a few trends I would like to see become more prevalent:

1. Firstly, Once Again Personalization Will Be Imperative

Personalization will help in getting those lovely subscribers to engage with any brand be it big or small. How they do that will be up to them, but please I beg of you create a strategy so you are not going into blindly or all guns blazing, document your findings.

2. Secondly, AI is Going To Be A Big One This Year, I Feel

3. And Lastly, The One I Am Looking Forward To The Most Is More Interactivity

I have a few brands dropping into my inbox and doing it well like Disney and BBC, but not many have had a go yet. Obviously, not every email needs to be interactive and I would imagine the resources that it would take might not be for everyone. That being said I do believe we will see more and more interactivity making it into our inboxes, and why not, emails are supposed to be engaging aren’t they?

Email marketing is rapidly changing and, in many ways, staying the same.

1. Personalization Is Still The Key To Taking Full Advantage Of The Platform

Understanding who your subscriber is and how you can serve them will drive better engagement and more revenue.

2. Companies Are Looking For Ways To Optimize The Customer Experience

That means collecting more first-party data and using various tools to create better experiences in the inbox. Putting CX in the driver's seat will help small companies grow and email will play a key

3. Use Of AI Will Get More Popular

ChatGPT is all the rage, and with good reason. The capabilities of this new tool need to be understood, and it feels like 1995 again for those old enough to remember. How is this going to change email? I don’t know, but I expect changes.

4. Video In Email Will Take The Center Stage

Including videos in your emails can help to increase engagement and make your messages more visually appealing. Tools like Maverickapp can make it appear that you just recorded a video by using AI to generate a video that says Hi, FNAME! Check it out.

To sum up, email is still a top revenue driver for companies and the companies that use it most effectively. Personalization, CX, AI, and Video are some of the keys to getting the most from it in 2023.

1. Storytelling Will Be At The Spotlight

Empathy was always at the forefront of marketing but post 2020, it has become downright critical. And to weave empathy into your email content, you need to focus on your storytelling skills. In 2023, more and more brands will shun the hard-selling approach in favor of establishing a personal connect with their readers.

2. There Will Be A Rise In User-generated Content

With every passing day, email marketing continues to become increasingly “of the people, by the people, for the people”. Owing to this, over the last few years, there’s been a heavy emphasis on running campaigns driven extensively by user-generated content. Expect this trend to solidify further in 2023.

3. It Will Be Important To Put In A Good Last Word

Unsubscribes are very easy. And inbox fatigue is a very \real thing, meaning subscribers are less hesitant than ever to press on that unsubscribe button. That said, don’t understate the charm of a good last word. Instead of popping a clinical, to-the-point unsubscribe message acknowledging their action, phrase an earnest and witty response which will leave them with no choice but to reconsider their decision. I foresee many brands treating this with gravity in the year to come.

4. Brands Will Go The Modular Way

With rising competition in the market, many brands find themselves ill-equipped to meet their email production goals, particularly during high-traffic times of the year, such as the holiday season. The solution lies in embracing modular templates- editable template blocks that you can slice and dice as you wish! I won’t be surprised to see brands opting for this convenience in 2023.

5. The Key Will Be To Deliver A Smooth And Consistent User Experience

Your cross-channel experiences risk falling flat on their face if they lack consistency. Small things like aligning your email CTA with the landing page header copy or syncing your email’s design with that of your social media feed can go a long way toward improving your customer’s user experience. As brands continue to look for more channels to build their audience, I can see consistency becoming one of their primary concerns.