Where Should You Focus Your Marketing in 2024?

• Discover emerging trends in the many marketing channels you can use to reach your prospects and customers in 2024: email, social media, SMS, push notifications, omnichannel marketing, intent-based marketing, and more.
• Companies such as Interest Media specialize in assisting advertisers and publishers with omnichannel marketing and intent-based marketing approaches, making budgets more efficient and driving higher earnings. 
• Learn the strengths of each channel and approach to determine the best strategy to focus your marketing on in 2024.

Email Marketing in 2024

There are several trends in email marketing anticipated for 2024. Recent legislation has made some of these trends inevitable. At the same time, improvements in technology and artificial intelligence will also drive other trends.

Interest Media can help you with taking your email marketing to the next level.

Trends in email marketing for 2024

A few of the trends you can anticipate are:

Email Authentication: There will be an increased focus on email authentication, with Gmail and Yahoo laying down new requirements for bulk email centers in late 2023. The focus will be on getting bulk senders to adopt the DMARC protocol (domain-based message authentication, reporting & conformance).

Data Management Practices: There will be stricter data management practices, due in large part to 16 states introducing privacy bills during the 2022-2023 legislative cycle.

Customer Data Protection: There will be stronger customer data protection to prevent phishing attacks.

Email Campaign Simplicity: There will be increased simplicity in email campaigns due to the inclusion of AI tools that will make the entire process easier. From subject line generators to AI template builders to the act of writing itself, more tasks will be automated and/or assisted.

Customer-Centric Communications: Email communications will be more customer-centric as consumers demand increased personalization. Email segmentation will be a critical part of the process.

Visual Storytelling: Email content will focus on visual storytelling, with interactive emails that include videos, GIFs, carousels, and clickable features. Although the creation of interactive emails is no easy task, ruthless competition is driving the need to stand out. Interactivity can also improve the inbox experience while nudging your audience to take action. Hopefully, more tools will come along for developers that make the task of designing interactive emails easier.

Social Media Marketing in 2024

Video is predicted to be at the top of dominant trends to continue on social media in 2024.

Trends in social media marketing for 2024

Social selling via video

Selling products on social media, particularly through video content is expected to increase. Influencers are expected to make an impact selling via live video on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms. Shopify has partnered with TikTok to allow merchants to sync their product catalogs and create a mini storefront.

Expansion of social commerce capabilities

Social media platforms will expand their shopping features. The ultimate goal is to allow users to transition from discovering products to making purchases without leaving the platform. Brands could see engagement and commerce activities on social media rivaling that of their own websites or that of sites like Amazon.

AI-powered personalization

Consumers will continue to seek hyper-personalized interactions with brands and this will carry over into social media. Look for AI-driven personalization to be the tool for driving engagement through enhanced user experiences. These AI tools will analyze user behavior, interactions, and preferences to offer personalized content recommendations. Brands should seek to tailor their messages and products to specific audience segments to achieve higher conversion rates and ROI.

Gamification-driven engagement

“Gamification increases content discovery and feed engagement by 68%,” –StatusBrew

Challenges, games, rewards, and competitions are all elements of gamification on social media platforms that can drive engagement by making user experiences more enticing and interactive.

Interest Media can help you by providing sweepstakes and other co-registration offers to generate leads.

Social media search overtakes Google

“Nearly half of Gen Z is using TikTok and Instagram for search instead,” – Business Insider

The youngest generation with shopping power is no longer turning to Google to search for products or content. Generation Z (ages 11 to 26) goes directly to its favorite social media platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram instead. The takeaway to marketers is to prioritize product discovery efforts on these platforms to reach this particular demographic.

Reactive content

The trend of reactive content is expected to continue and grow into 2024. With this, brands are expected to jump into the conversations more often. Brands are cautioned to be careful when trying to capitalize on trending topics. The key will be adding something of value to the discussions already happening.

Social responsibility and sustainability

“54% of consumers are more likely to be loyal to brands with sustainable and ethical business practices and that strive to be environmentally responsible,” –Vericast

Consumers are expected to continue to seek out brands that incorporate sustainability initiatives, as well as feature purpose-driven content in their feeds. However, authenticity is also important to create a genuine connection with socially conscious audiences.

SMS Marketing in 2024

As both mobile and omnichannel marketing become more important, SMS/text messaging will play an increasing role in digital marketing. Hyper-personalization, text-to-pay and text-to-give, actionable transactions, and greater interaction with businesses are a few of the emerging trends.

Interest Media can help you with delivering a powerful SMS solution.

Trends in SMS marketing for 2024

Mobile-first marketing

Already, marketing automation is being focused on a mobile-first approach. Marketing strategies will start with a mobile audience in mind, no matter the channel. The first among these will be SMS marketing.

Hyper-personalized messages

Customers are demanding individualized-sounding messages, not generalized texts aimed at everyone. These messages will need to be “smart,” referencing customer data such as past purchases, past behaviors, preferences, wants, needs, and more.

“Conversational commerce”

“46% of consumers want to text businesses for sales inquiries,” –TextRequest

The ability to buy within text messages, even whole transactions from beginning to end, is expected to increase via SMS.

“69% of consumers want to receive texts related to making payments,” –TextRequest

Another part of this will be personalized product recommendations within text conversations and purchases, all occurring via real-time automation.

2023 State of Business Texting Report – Text Request

More businesses will text

“98 percent of people who text with a business would recommend it to others,” – TextRequest

Consumers today expect personalization, and there’s nothing more personal than texting directly with the business. Consider the following stats:

88% of people want to receive appointment scheduling texts from businesses.

• 77% of people want to text for customer service.
• 70% of people say texting is the fastest way to reach them.
• 68% of people read every text they get – even spam.
• 67% of businesses began texting to get faster responses.
• 64% of people read texts within a few minutes.
• 42% of businesses say texting is the most efficient way to reach customers.

AI copywriting

AI copywriting is already redirecting marketing automation. Although AI is still working at perfecting the human feel of long-form content, that’s not the case with copywriting. AI is particularly adept at writing the short kind of marketing messages that are tailor-made for texting. AI can even A/B test your messages. AI can nail the tone, grammar, and exact wording that’s the perfect fit for your audience.

Increased regulations and restrictions on texts globally

“Only 35% of people know when they are a target of smishing,” – EarthWeb

Spam and smishing (a portmanteau of SMS + phishing) texts are on the increase. A slew of regulations have been enacted recently over email to help verify senders, particularly bulk senders. Expect the same soon for SMS on a global scale.

Omnichannel Marketing in 2024

Most top marketers agree that there will be no escaping the need for an omnichannel communication strategy moving forward. In 2024, more brands and companies will have to develop ways to interact with their audience across a variety of touch points.

Email and SMS are the two most likely channels to connect in the first step toward an omnichannel marketing strategy. In a recent survey, roughly 75 percent of customers said they prefer to receive promotional and transactional through email. Around 27% preferred these messages through text. These numbers show that email and text can work synchronously to connect and boost engagement during peak times, as well as to support specific transactional needs.

Trends in omnichannel marketing for 2024

Omnichannel becomes the norm

Many marketing experts believe that consumer demand to seamlessly connect with brands across touchpoints as they shop, (smartphones to computers to in-store) will force companies to adopt omnichannel marketing as a standard. Companies will have to tie and integrate email, SMS, push, and social media together. Through data and testing, companies will learn which messages resonate best on each particular platform.

Hyper-personalization

Personalization is at the core of omni-channel marketing, but advances in technology will send it into hyperdrive. Expect to see retailers using advanced data analytics and AI to develop highly personalized shopping experiences. The key focus will be on delivering product recommendations, offers, and marketing messages at the level of individual customer preferences, rather than buyer segments.

Reaching customer service in real-time

“58% of consumers say the ability to easily reach customer service on the channel of their choice influenced their decision to purchase,” –Shopify

Shoppers want to ask questions through real-time connections.

“41% of consumers say they want to live chat with a brand while buying products online,” –Shopify

Integration of AI chatbots

Chatbots driven by artificial intelligence will continue to become more advanced. These AI bots will be used to provide everything from real-time customer support, to order assistance, to product recommendations across multiple touchpoints and platforms. The most successful systems will enhance customer service and engagement.

Selling through video content

“50% percent of consumers say videos have helped them figure out what product or brand to buy, and 55% of consumers say they watch videos while shopping in-store,” – Think with Google

New technology is allowing sellers to monitor the success of their video sales across multiple channels.

Multichannel attribution and analytics

Cross-channel analytics will allow you to study your omnichannel performance across all channels. This will provide a more holistic view of customer journeys. Sellers will be able to view the transitions customers may make from offline to online and back again.

Deliver an omnichannel marketing solution with Interest Media

Powered by an internally owned and operated network of web properties, leveraging exclusive first-party data, Interest Media puts the biggest brands in front of their ideal consumers with a unique, audience-centric, omnichannel solution.

Advertisers:

Interest Media allows you to create meaningful interactions with actively engaged audiences that have confirmed their intent and fit your precise consumer profile. These authenticated customers have been pre-qualified and are ready to engage with your brand.

Interest Media offers a consumer-centric advertising solution that utilizes first-party data combined with real-time optimization that maintains a positive user experience while driving higher earnings.

Publishers:

Interest Media enables publishers to create powerful and unique ways to introduce their audience to exclusive offers from the brand advertisers who are most likely to induce meaningful action from them, thus creating unparalleled revenue opportunities at an unlimited scale.

Interest Media offers a consumer-centric advertising solution that utilizes first-party data combined with real-time optimization that maintains a positive user experience while driving higher earnings.

Intent-Based Marketing in 2024

Intent-based marketing can be used as part of an omnichannel marketing approach or through a particular channel. This highly personalized marketing strategy focuses on the intent of the specific user. For example, someone who has shown a clear interest in a particular good or service, and/or is actively engaged and demonstrating buyer’s intent.

Trends in intent-based marketing for 2024

Predictive AI

Predictive AI is expected to become more widespread. Automation will allow AI to parse through large quantities of data and make intelligent predictions about which leads will convert. This will help marketers focus more of their budgets on the areas likely to see the best ROI.

Driven by 1st-party data

To achieve the hyper-personalization marketers are striving for, first-party data is a must.

Increased focus on audience marketing

Personalization is only one part of creating a positive customer experience with your marketing efforts. In addition to sending personalized messages focused on the needs, wants, and preferences of your customers, brands will need to consider and respond to customer feedback. All these must work in harmony to create the most important factor of all: Trust.

Deliver intent-based marketing with Interest Media as your “wingman”

Interest Media specializes in intent-based marketing strategies with powerful tools that can foster engaging interactions that resonate with customers. Using its unique, audience-centric approach, Interest Media can reach customers who are ready and eager to engage with the messaging and are in perfect alignment with your brand. Interest Media promises unsurpassed transparency and we help you engage with your ideal consumers.

First-Party Data: Interest Media extracts first-party data from over 25 million active consumers each month, allowing brands to connect with the precise customer segments they’re looking for.

Audience-Centric Focus: Interest Media maintains a sharp focus on user experience, diversification of campaigns, and higher earnings. They have established publisher trust by fostering engaging interactions that resonate with customers. Interest Media offers a consumer-centric advertising solution that utilizes first-party data combined with real-time optimization that maintains a positive user experience while driving higher earnings.

Push Notification Marketing in 2024

One of the biggest problems for push notification marketing is message or ad fatigue. More than half of subscribers complain of being irritated by the messages, despite opting in. The following statistic identifies this problem:

“The average US smartphone user receives 46 app push notifications per day,” – Business of Apps

However, how many messages a user is willing to tolerate is going to vary by vertical. For example, the vertical with the highest opt-in rate on Android is gaming and gambling at 96.4%. Education has a 94% opt-in rate, and also the highest CTR at 4.91%.

Trends in push notification marketing for 2024

Personalization

Personalization is a big factor no matter the marketing channel and will take center stage for push notifications in 2024. In notification marketing, basic personalization has been shown to increase CTR by 9.6%. The use of emojis increases CTR by roughly 5%.

Mapping user activities

A key component of delivering personalization comes through mapping a user’s on-site or in-app activities, as well as other actionables. Activities to watch include products viewed, posts or articles read, session count, and time spent.

Exit intent strategy

Understanding why your user exited a certain product page, article, or other location can help you craft messages to keep them engaged. A perfect exit-intent strategy will identify when a visitor is about to leave and will deliver a re-engagement message. That message might contain a discount, coupon, enticing offer, or an exclusive to new subscribers.

Notification + omnichannel marketing

“Combining in-app and push with email resulted in a 913% higher conversion rate than email alone,” –Customer.io

Omnichannel marketing is where everything is heading in 2024. Reaching your customers with push notifications as well as at other touchpoints will become more important. Text messaging (SMS) will be the obvious extension for mobile, as well as email.

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