In 2015 email was big business. Its revenue grew astoundingly by 28%. 2016 most likely won’t disappoint.

To ensure that marketers are on the ball, here are some of the email marketing trends you should know about in 2016.

Personalisation

Although personalisation has seen an uptick in recent months, very few marketers use it to promote their emails. This year, email marketing will see marketers deliver more personal messages.

Providing a highly individualised experience for the audience will take centre stage. This comes in the face of an increase in segmented email lists, which ensure that contacts are receiving content that is relevant to their interests and lifestyles.

Personalisation will go even further with localisation, allowing marketers to use factors such as geographic location, language, culture and currency.

Subscriber psychology

Understanding the email contacts’ behaviour will help create more valuable content and tailored experiences.

Email specialist, Guy Hanson, believes that the use of embodied cognition, research surrounding the formative role of the environment and development of cognition, and nudge theory, which is a concept that positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions can influence a desired action, will be widely used in 2016.

Embedded content

2015 saw rich media such as GIFs being used widely in emails. This year, marketers might take a step further and begin using video content. Email subscribers will be able to play video content directly from their emails.

Trigger emails

Trigger emails will also dominate the email marketing environment in 2016. These will allow marketers to send emails based on the customer’s behaviour and information that has already been collected.

Context

Email specialists have been saying that not only should emails be responsive, but they should also be contextual depending on the device their being shown on. Marketers will also explore ways in which the message and design is interacted with when consumed on a specific device.

Machine learning

Machine intelligence will come into its own in 2016. It will allow marketers to save time on mining through data, finding valuable insights in real time. That’s not all, however, machine learning will improve personalisation, automate processes, and ultimately improve engagement and lifetime value of customers.

Interactive Emails

Embedded content isn’t the only design changes email marketing will see a surge in. In fact, interactive emails are on the rise, and 2016 will see emails transformed into website-like experiences. The challenge will be ensuring that such emails will be easily accessible on all email clients and devices.