Top 3 eCommerce and Digital Marketing Trends for 2024

Nobody asked, but I’ll say it anyways:

A digital marketer’s Roman Empire is the next “big” thing (not Metaverse) that will become the next Google (not Meta).

Before anyone tells me the Roman Empire thing is already in the past, I am very much aware, but honestly? I couldn’t come up with a better introduction for this article.

Anyway…here are this year’s top 3 ecommerce and digital marketing trends to watch out for!

1. New Email Deliverability Rules by Yahoo and Gmail 

Google and Yahoo have partnered up to build a safer, more enjoyable experience for Gmail and Yahoo email users. And if you’re an email marketer who sends over 5,000 emails daily, you need to listen up.

“No matter who their email provider is, all users deserve the safest, most secure experience possible,” says Marcel Becker, Sr. Dir. Product at Yahoo.

This strategic partnership between Google and Yahoo aims to:

• Make organisations less vulnerable to spam attacks,
• Establish trust and credibility with their email subscribers, and
• Ensure emails’ contents are relevant and valuable to each recipient.

What are these new email deliverability rules by Yahoo and Gmail, then?

If your organisation sends more than 5,000 emails daily to Yahoo and Gmail users, you need to:

• Authenticate your email domain using DKIM, SPF, and DMARC security protocols.
• Enable one-click unsubscribe with a 2-day processing time.
• Keep your spam complaint rate under 0.3%—max 3 spam complaints per 1,000 emails.

The new email deliverability rules by Yahoo and Gmail will be put in motion starting February 2024. Start taking the necessary steps to ensure compliance with these new requirements as a part of your 2024 email marketing strategy!

2. Hyper-Personalisation with Big Data and Real-Time Analytics

As digital marketers, we’ve been discussing the various aspects of personalisation for a couple of years now. Personalisation has been both the source and the reaction of consumers’ expectations about tailor-made interactions and experiences.

Jennifer Gaier, Director of Marketing at Elwyn, tells Forbes why she sees hyper-personalisation as one of the biggest digital marketing trends for 2024:

“With the vast amount of data available from various touch points—be it social media, websites or even physical stores—brands can harness this information using sophisticated analytics. This results in hyper-personalised marketing strategies where content, product recommendations and even advertisements are customised for individual consumers.”

Ken Condon, Global Channel Director at Segmentify, ventures a bit deeper into the rabbit hole of personalisation and draws attention to a challenge created by these various touch points:

“Insights gathered from an SEO campaign are very rarely shared in ‘real-time’ with the email marketing or social selling channels and instead form part of the siloed data for SEO…Insights or trends created offline in your bricks-and-mortar very rarely re-merchandise a PDP page or a trigger email.”

As the amount of data collected through various touch points rises, personalisation becomes trickier due to the need for more unified data.

So yes, hyper-personalisation will continue to be all the rage, but true personalisation can only be achieved through breaking down data silos. Then, you can really really personalise your content.

3. Video Marketing and Short-Form Content

It’s not that static content is going extinct; it’s just that video marketing and short-form content continue their momentum.

“Video on landing pages can increase conversion rates by over 80%, and mentioning the word ‘video’  in your email subject line increases open rates by 19%,” says Helen Aboagye, CMO of Divido and former CMO of Imagen, an intuitive video management platform.

The main reason for the continued rise of video marketing is that video production is less time-consuming and expensive than in the past. 

In-house content creation is booming, with marketers building studios to meet the insatiable demand for fresh content. But looking at brands like Duolingo or Ryanair on TikTok, you don’t even need an “in-house corporate studio”. A Gen Z with an iPhone and an unhinged sense of humour can work wonders.

Social media, mainly TikTok and Instagram, is becoming increasingly a form of entertainment rather than a social platform. And this transformation goes beyond ad creation.

This level of scalability goes beyond ad creation and gives the brands the freedom to tell their stories at their own pace. That is obviously not to say that you’ll never ever need to produce videos with a proper production.

But for marketers with limited budgets, such low-budget, short-form video content will continue to be an excellent way for community building, if they deem video marketing a worthy endeavour to pursue.

Wrapping Up

Without a doubt, there are more things one can add to a list titled “Top eCommerce and Digital Marketing Trends for 2024”. However, we’ve wished to keep our list concise and focus on the digital marketing trends and updates that we deem the most important and require the most attention.

Once more, let’s go over the top 3 eCommerce and digital marketing trends to look out for in 2024:

• Ensure you’re abiding by the new email deliverability requirements by Yahoo and Gmail.

• Embrace unified data  and real-time analytics to fully take advantage of hyper-personalisation.

• Consider where and how you can incorporate video marketing and short-form videos to your marketing strategy. That is only if you believe video marketing makes sense for your business, of course.

And remember, digital marketing is hella dynamic. Even one month after this article is published, we’ll have new updates and marketing trends to talk about. So follow Segmentify on LinkedIn to stay on top of new digital marketing and eCommerce trends!