Goals for Email Marketing in 2022: 7 Projects to Pursue
The new year is upon us, the time when everyone likes to talk about goals, plans, and how to improve. Have you thought about your goals for email marketing in 2022?
The thing is, this really is a good time to assess your email marketing goals. The start of the year is when many marketing teams conduct email audits, set their email marketing budgets for the year, and outline strategic improvements.
There’s always room for improvement. So, if you need some ideas, we’ve got you covered. Here are seven practical and powerful ways you can adapt and grow your email marketing program in 2022.
Jump to a 2022 email marketing goal to learn more:
- Improve email accessibility
- Implement BIMI
- Optimize for dark mode emails
- Rethink your measurement strategy
- Grow your subscriber list
- Align email with the customer journey
- Test every email campaign
Table of content
1. Improve email accessibility
According to survey results from our report, Accessibility in the Inbox, 57% of marketers consider email accessibility, but only about 14% are using email accessibility testing tools. That’s one clear sign we can do more to ensure emails are accessible to all subscribers.
If you arent considering accessibility, large portions of your audience may be having trouble reading and engaging with your emails. There are many situations and conditions that could impact someone’s ability to consume and act on your messages:
- Visual impairments including color blindness and low vision
- Cognitive impairments such as dyslexia
- Neurological conditions such as ADHD and epilepsy
- Temporary and permanent physical impairments
Add all that up, and you have hundreds of millions of people around the globe who will have a hard time with your emails if you don’t create, build, code, and test them properly. How can you improve email accessibility for all subscribers in 2022? Our email accessibility guide takes you through an array of methods. Here are a few key considerations:
- Code your emails with ARIA and semantic HTML
- Use proper color contrast in emails
- Consider those using keyboard navigation and screen readers
- Use readable email fonts and font sizes
- Write alt text for all important images in emails
- Avoid image-only emails
Beyond accessible design choices, much of what supports email accessibility happens during email development. Check out Megan Boshuyzen’s article on how to code accessible emails for some helpful advice.
2. Implement BIMI
Expect to see more logos in the inbox as more brands work to implement BIMI in 2022. It became a much more attractive idea when Google announced its support for BIMI in Gmail last year.
What is BIMI? It stands for Brand Indicators for Message Identification. In short, BIMI puts an official, trademarked logo next to your email subject lines. But, to get it working, you need to have strong email authentication protocols in place.
Think of getting a BIMI logo as a reward for brands that are taking steps to help mailbox providers prevent email spoofing. But even without the promise of a BIMI logo, protecting your subscribers with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC is a good idea.
BIMI may have some indirect advantages besides inbox branding. One study from Red Sift and Entrust found inbox logos increased open rates by 21%, brand recall by 18%, and the likelihood of purchase by 34%. Find out how to create a BIMI logo.
We published a special report, The Path to BIMI Implementation, for those who want to pursue this goal for email marketing in 2022. Sinch Email on Acid worked to implement BIMI for our brand, and we can help you navigate some challenging roadblocks. The report takes you through our journey and what we learned from the experience.
3. Optimize for dark mode emails
Dark mode for email is growing in popularity. That creates some difficulties for email marketers who want their campaign designs to render as desired in all major email clients. It should come as no surprise that different email clients render things in dark mode differently.
Pathwire and Ascend2 asked email marketers about how they’re handling dark mode, and the survey results revealed some of the biggest dark mode email development challenges.
Topping the list for many email teams is problems with logos and images in dark mode. There are a few different ways to approach this challenge. Check out our article on optimizing logos for dark mode to grab some code and learn more.
While it may be tough to determine whether a significant portion of your subscribers view emails in dark mode, optimizing emails for a dark user interface is a worthwhile goal in 2022. Our survey found that 72% of email marketers are already considering dark mode or plan to in the near future.
4. Rethink your measurement strategy
It was the news that shook the email marketing world to its core in 2021. Apple announced privacy changes that made a longstanding email metric a lot less accurate. Essentially, Apple Mail Privacy Protection makes any measurement connected to open rates unreliable – at least for subscribers using the Mail app.
Apple now gives its users more control over how they are being tracked while using their devices. As the company explained in its official announcement:
“In the Mail app, Mail Privacy Protection stops senders from using invisible pixels to collect information about the user. The new feature helps users prevent senders from knowing when they open an email and masks their IP address so it can’t be linked to other online activity or used to determine their location.”
Apple Newsroom, June 7, 2021
Besides open rates, there are other things the Apple privacy update may impact:
- Subject line testing based on open rates
- List cleaning based on the last time a subscriber opened an email
- Dynamic content that uses a subscriber’s location
- Automated campaigns that trigger a new message after an email is opened
One big question is, how many of your subscribers are affected by Apple’s policy? Pathwire’s Path to Email Engagement report found that, on a global level, only 13.3% of people open emails using Apple Mail. However, research on Apple Mail demographics shows iPhones are much more popular in countries such as the US, UK, and Japan. And, consumers are more likely to use the Apple Mail app than B2B email subscribers.
So, you’ll need to take a look at your list of contacts, determine which clients are most popular among them, and make some decisions. Ultimately, clicks are going to become a much more important email metric. And measuring conversions is really the best way to determine email’s impact.
5. Grow your subscriber list
This one should be on your email marketing goals and objectives list every year. However, there’s another change coming that will make your email list a more valuable asset than ever.
Third-party cookies are about to become an endangered species.
If you haven’t heard, Google recently announced that it’s following through on earlier pledges to eliminate third-party cookies from Chrome, its web browser. With Safari and Firefox having already taken this step, it means it will become much harder for companies to track customer data on other websites using third-party data.
As a result, customer email addresses are about to become even more important because they are a primary source for accurate and current customer information. Email expert, Chad White, explained this in detail for CMSWire:
“Along with phone numbers, email addresses are one of the identity data signals that brands will rely on more going forward… Given the importance of email addresses as an identifier, expect to see more brands intensifying their subscriber acquisition efforts.”
~ Chad White, Head of Research for Oracle Marketing Consulting
So, make it even more of a priority to attract and retain your email subscribers.
Here are some quick tips for acquiring new subscribers in 2022:
- Improve calls to action on signup forms and elsewhere on your site.
- Use more incentives to motivate signups, from first-time customer specials to desirable downloads.
- Give more details about the benefits of joining your email list.
- Add auto-fill to your forms.
As Chad mentioned, phone numbers are the other personal identifier that helps brands collect first-party data. That’s one reason why we’re so excited to be part of the Sinch family in 2022. Sinch offers communication solutions that help brands connect with people through SMS, voice, and email… whatever works for your customer journeys!
6. Align email with the customer journey
Email marketing can play an integral role in moving prospects along the customer journey. But when was the last time you reviewed how your strategy aligns with personas and their paths to purchase?
So much has changed in the last few years that taking a closer look and refreshing your strategy is an excellent goal for email marketing in 2022.
You can produce emails for each step in the customer journey, from lead acquisition to consideration to purchase decisions to upsells. That includes welcome emails, as well as emails that segment customers by product preferences, demographics, interests, and other categories.
You can make your customer journeys even more powerful by connecting them to a variety of buyer personas you develop. Here’s an in-depth look at how to use buyer personas in your email marketing strategy.
This is a big topic. That’s why we surveyed expert marketers to see how they map customer journeys and produced a free report called Effective Customer Journey Mapping: Keys to Success for Email Marketers.
7. Test every email campaign
Your list is changing. Your email campaigns are changing. So are your graphics and copy as you make improvements and updates. And the technology your subscribers are using to open and read your emails is changing too.
With email, everything is changing pretty much all the time.
If you’re not testing your email campaigns before you send them out, all the hard work that went into them is at risk. That’s why making testing one of your top email marketing goals is the last item on our list. Just like personal resolutions, email testing is a habit that can really make a difference immediately and in the long term.
Email on Acid provides a state-of-the-art pre-send testing solution that includes reliable email previews for the most popular clients and devices. You can also take advantage of inbox display optimization, accessibility checks, deliverability monitoring, and collaborative team management features. Plus, with Email on Acid, you get unlimited testing. So, test your emails as much as you need in 2022!
These are just a few of the top goals we’ve heard from our friends in the email industry. What are your 2022 resolutions for email? Let us know in the comments.
