8 digital marketing and CRM trends on our 2023 radars
2023 looks set to be an…interesting year for marketers.
You don’t need a crystal ball to know things are going to be tough. The cost of living crisis, as bad as it already seems, hasn’t really bitten yet. Fuel subsides end in March. Millions of fixed rate mortgage deals will come to an end. Prices in the shops will continue to climb. People’s real incomes aren’t just being squeezed they’re having the living daylights booted out of them.
Dwindling customer spend means less profit for businesses and tightened purse strings. Bye bye marketing budget! As bleak as all this seems, fear not! Like a sliver of sunlight breaking through a leaden January sky Flourish is here to shine a light on the opportunities for marketers in the year ahead.
So, arm yourself with our look at the trends we see in digital marketing and CRM for 2023. Read. Ingest. Get ahead of the curve. You’re welcome.
1. Increase in Social CRM
With Meta’s Conversions API marketers will be able to connect their data to optimise targeting, decrease costs and measure results across Meta technologies. Meta have made it super easy to set up the Conversions API, and many ways don’t even require a developer.
Automatically serving communications to people that have already visited your site or bought from you within the Metaverse is a huge leap forward and you can expect to see whole customer journeys happening within social.
2. Email continues to prove its worth
As marketing budgets get cut, brands will look for ways to maximise the ROI of their marketing spend. Few other channels can match email’s ability to deliver relevant and personalised messages that build brand and loyalty.
According to a report by mailjet Email in an evolving economy 41.80% of respondents said they believed email would provide the best ROI during a recession.
Email has long been one of the most cost effective channels out there. And that won’t change. What will change is that email will become more central to more marketers approaches.
With emails landing in ever more crowded inboxes, you’d better make sure you’re ‘doing email properly’. Frome strategy to build and deployment email is an art. We’ve been at the forefront of email marketing for over a decade, so if you need a little help, Flourish will be happy to oblige.
3. There’s a need for new web targeting solutions
Google looks set to chop a limb off marketers by phasing out third party cookies by the end of the year. Cookies track a user’s actions across the web enabling more customised and targeted experiences.
This will have a huge impact on retargeting campaigns and marketers will have to look to other methods of targeting across the web, whilst redoubling their efforts to capture first party data. Social CRM (as outlined in point number 1) will be one valuable targeting tool, and others will follow.
4. Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) will be paramount
Ok, so CRO is already a thing. But it’s going to be even more of a thing in 2023. Research shows that only around 22% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates.
In a year where marketers will inevitably be wrangling with CPA and potentially losing cookie data, converting more of the leads you have is going to be one of the biggest games in town. Optimising web sign up forms to capture data and converting at the point of promotion are both areas that marketers will be looking at to maximise conversion.
5. Omni channel strategies will be vital throughout the customer lifecycle
Moving into 2023 the idea of single channel marketing is already alien to most marketers but using multiple channels might not cut it either. And just because you’re using multiple channels it doesn’t mean you’re automatically providing a consistent experience. Too many brands are playing Jekyll and Hyde across their channels, being one thing in email, something else on Twitter and another on TikTok.
Omnichannel is where it’s at. In 2023 you need to view every channel to your customers as parts of a whole customer journey. Each touchpoint being an opportunity to engage, educate, influence. Being able to provide a two-way conversation through channels email, SMS, voice and online chat will build stronger connections, trust and ultimately customer loyalty.
6. Expect to see more socially responsible campaigns
With prices rising everywhere, and wages stagnating we’re all feeling poorer. These are tough times, but there’s always someone worse off than you. Customers feel this, they want to help others, but have less money themselves.
In 2023 customers will choose to spend on products and services that have the potential to help others. As a result we’ll see more brands launching socially responsible campaigns and offers. We saw it with the big Christmas campaigns, and we can expect more of the same.
The watch out here is authenticity. Brands have to be genuine and show support for relevant causes or people will see through them.
7. The rise and rise of AI
Don’t worry. The machines aren’t taking over. Yet. But whether it’s Voice, chatbots, image creation, copywriting or real time language translation, Machine Learning is getting smarter and smarter. And in 2023 it will have an effect in many areas of marketing.
SEO is a prime example. Voice search will continue to gain in popularity and marketers will have to adjust their SEO tactics. The answers to short questions will need to be developed alongside the traditional keywords. How do you make sure customers find you when they’re asking questions like: “What restaurants are near me?”.
8. Emojis use will continue to skyrocket
Seriously! Emoji use has increased year on year since 2012, particularly on platforms like Twitter with over 1.5 billion uses between 2020-2022. Which is all a bit 📲🤔🙌🔥🔥🔥. Love them or loathe them, people use emojis. All the time. They add nuance, humour and are part of the way people communicate. The question for marketers is not should you be using them, but where? Social channels? Email subject lines? Body copy?
So, that’s our look ahead for 2023. The tough economic outlook presents a bunch of opportunities in digital marketing and CRM. Customers will still spend but they’ll have less disposable income. Marketers need to think about how they can improve ROI across their channels, how they can build better relationships with their customers, be more relevant and more empathetic.
