As we move into 2024 and beyond, digital marketing trends are constantly evolving. From web and app development to affiliate marketing and digital strategy, including UI, UX, SEO, paid search, marketing automation, and social, HX and digital marketing agency GODigital are experts in identifying the top trends in the field. Here are the top 5 trends to watch out for in the coming years.
1. Zero-party data
With all the types of data collected from audiences now, we might as call this portion a data party. Jokes aside, you’ve probably — and most likely endlessly — heard of first-party, second-party, and third-party data. As far as digital marketing is concerned, these collected data types help businesses know more about the audiences and clients they’re targeting or looking to service. It isn’t a new term, but the end of 2024 saw the rise of zero-party data.
Zero-party data is any data willingly given by audiences to businesses — directly, consciously, with clear knowledge that they are handing over their information. This could be via sign-up forms, surveys, or questionnaires. For this reason, zero-party data is considered to be the most accurate form of data any business can collect. It’s straight from the source. Since you know where and how you got it, you won’t question its validity.
Data is the guiding light of digital marketing campaigns. It provides direction and allows digital marketers to gather more information for foresight to happen. Zero-party data is the future of data-driven digital marketing campaigns.
2. Email marketing facelifts
Source: teenvio.com
No, email marketing is not obsolete; we’re far from that happening. Fact: 89% of marketers still consider email marketing among their primary tools for carrying out campaigns and hitting key metrics. What digital marketing experts have to consider is that there are email marketing trends that will also determine the success of their future email marketing campaigns.
Discussions on this can go on and on, but here are some of the digital email marketing trends you must watch out for.
Hyper-personalised email marketing
Did you know that 68% of recipients will automatically delete electronic mail that doesn’t resonate with them? There is also a 54% chance that people who receive electronic newsletters will hit the unsubscribe button from the get-go. One way to lessen these chances is customizing digital mail to suit a certain audience segment’s preferences and behaviors. Of course, this should be guided by reliable data that will give insights about the people you’re targeting. Use data to make sure that your email marketing campaign has the kind of personality your intended audience will like.
Email marketing automation
Digital marketing trends are supposed to do at least either of these two things: make your job easier or get results more efficiently. Automation does both. How you go about email marketing automation is up to your business. You can create templates, improve email scrubbing, and even develop ways to nurture potential leads such as follow-up emails or abandoned cart emails.
Email marketing interactivity
Source: mailerlite.com
There will come a time when good-looking static emails won’t be enough to hold your audience segment’s interest. Improve user engagement with the power of creative technology! Email marketing interactivity will involve dynamic features in your newsletter or digital mail such as videos, toggles, music, quizzes, and various moving parts on screen. The average person gives only an initial eight seconds of their attention span before swiping up or down (or out of the frame) — make it worth their while, visually and from a storytelling standpoint.
Mobile-first email marketing
Speaking of swiping, when it comes to email marketing, be in a mobile-first state of mind from UI to UX. Most people read emails from their mobile devices these days. Consider that the next time you run an email marketing campaign in 2024.
3. Influencer marketing 2.0
While influencer marketing has been booming in the past decade, the digital marketing sphere will see several shifts in how businesses and agencies interact with influencers. We now move from a number-based influencer game to one that gives more premium on quality. What does this mean? Simply, the number of an influencer’s followers will not be the only metric for determining their saleability. In the next few years, digital marketers will move away from influencer-centric marketing and spend more time thinking about who is actually influential in a certain audience segment.
These may be good ol’ influencers from macro to micro and nano scales, or even a business’ own employees or clientele. This will certainly involve employee engagement and conversational marketing trends. Digital marketers will now take on the challenge of determining what kind of influence will drive genuine or real, usable action from intended audiences.
4. Instant gratification via online interactions
Source: revechat.com
Technology, the Internet, and handheld devices have only furthered audiences’ appetites for instant gratification; which is why this will become a defining digital marketing trend in the next decade. Marketers need to be more creative about ways online interactions can be rewarded instantly — with a promo code, fun filters, freebies, trial run, and real-time service, to name a few.
Plain and simple, if your intended audience doesn’t feel rewarded through online interactions with your brand, you will lose them to competitors whose instant gratification campaigns make the most of digital platforms. Time to get (even more) creative. A tip: How would you want to be rewarded almost immediately if you were in your audience segment’s shoes?
5. Real-time messaging as data hubs
With instant gratification comes real-time messaging. If targeted audience segments expect to be rewarded instantly with certain online interactions, all the more will they expect to be assisted in real-time — even when conversations aren’t face-to-face in the physical sense. Investing in a good real-time messaging platform, strategy, and campaign will also double as a data centre where businesses can gather information about their clients.
Real-time messaging platforms can also be a venue for companies’ knowledge bases to shine and evolve. Use them as your foundation for reliable real-time customer service. As real-time messaging continues to evolve through chat apps and virtual assistance, digital marketing practices will evolve, too. Stay on top of this digital marketing trend.
The rising popularity of both voice search and visual search opens new pathways for optimising brands’ searchability campaigns.
These upcoming digital marketing trends make up, as they say, just the tip of the iceberg. Which one is your business most interested in trying out? If you haven’t already, that is. Any other digital marketing trends you’re keeping up with in 2024 and beyond?
Source: nordvpn.com
