Every year Jordie van Rijn collects all of the trends and predictions on email and marketing automation into an EPIC post called “The Future of email marketing”.

Now the outlines of email marketing trends start to take form, here are a few of this year’s favorites.

Email production automation will become the norm

We know email content automation is the email trend that nobody is really talking about yet. A lot of time spent in email creation can be automated using email templates and dynamic code. More and more marketers are making use of dynamic content as a time-saving email strategy. In combination with the right type of email template, it can be a big step forward in personalisation as well.

According to Litmus’s state of Email report, the most time that’s spent on email production is graphics & design (4.1 hours) followed by coding and development (3.8 hours).

That’s almost 45% of the time spent on email tasks (the others include: copywriting, data pulls/logic, testing and troubleshooting, and post-send analytics and analysis). There’s no reason as to why so much time should be spent in email content creative creation. More and more marketers are making use of dynamic content as a time saving email strategy.

‘Mailable ‘Microsites’ are set to continue its winning spree.

Jaymin Bhuptani of emailmonks talks about the mailable microsite, also known as Interactive email. These smart mails allow the user to interact with email within the inbox. Interactivity in email is all set to continue its winning spree in 2018.

An interactive email is an email where a click triggers an action within the same email. Interactive emails can keep the inbox interesting and unique. What type of interactions are there?

* Integrated forms and surveys,
* Social sharing,
* Gifs, videos, and animations,
* Search in email,
* Menu options / navigation bars,
* Rotational banners / carousels and Countdowns.

Now the fresh new part of this story is the news from google AMP for email, which allows to do a lot more in at least Gmail. However this is still a

The Interactive email essentially hands your audience what they need from inside the email, with much effort for them. They do not need to click through from the inbox to view content, interact with video or complete surveys – increasing the chance of engagement.

Even simple effects can make a (lasting) impression. See this example by TOMS, the live email uses interactivity, on interacting with the switch, the images updates and gets switched to the glow in the dark version.

Embrace the contextual email

Jamie Bradley from Emma gives the head up that Contextual Email is, well, quite cool.

More and more brands will use tools that integrate with their ESP to provide contextual email. Think things like a progress bar in a confirmation email that automatically updates the shipping status of something you ordered.

Or maybe a poll or survey where the results update in real time. The way to stand out in the inbox is to be more relevant and useful than your competitors, and contextual email is one (really cool) tactic to do just that.

An interesting development in that area is the announcement of Google AMP for Email, which could be opening more option to interact in the inbox (or at least Gmail). We will have to see just how that will turn out.

Emoji use will skyrocket 🚀

Mike Ragan, Designer at ActionRocket says: Emojis are a fascinating evolution of digital language and – crucially – becoming more and more integrated into our favourite “formal” tone of voice channel: email.

This emoji acceptance can be illustrated by companies such as Monzo, a bank keen to be seen as trustworthy and legitimate. But also real, human and reasonable. Kudos.

Emojis are great in email because they distil a lot of information, and convey it quickly. We predict being genuinely emoji literate will continue to be a coveted skill in 2018 and beyond.

A research published on econsultancy by Parry Malm, concluded  that emojis don’t always work, but basically are a result amplifier. They either make a bad subject line worse (40% of cases) or a good subject line better. (60% of cases).

I have Data, Automation, AI and personalisation on my mind.

How do brand side marketeers think email marketing will evolve? Econsultancy asked it to their panel of marketers: Out came a word cloud with the topics of Data, Automation, AI and personalisation to be most mentioned / top of mind. Of course there is much more to say, read the complete article with the summary with 100+ email marketing trends 2021 or the newest