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The beginning of the year might be the start of Hollywood’s awards season, but good cinema can provide marketing fodder all year.
Blockbuster references, sports lingo, and Taylor Swift filled customers’ inboxes as some of the top email marketing trends last year, according to e-commerce marketing company Omnisend. In its Year in Email report, Omnisend analyzed 1.25 million email campaigns sent by businesses last year to identify patterns that paint an image of digital correspondence trends that feel eerily similar to a scroll through Pop Base’s X feed.
Movie and music mania: In a year that started with Oppenheimer taking home most major awards, movie references were similarly winners in the email marketing world. But awards-season favorites weren’t what led the pack—instead, Omnisend found that of the emails mentioning movies, 21.9% referenced Spider-Man, 21.1% brought up Batman, and 16.1% introduced Inside Out 2. Other top-mentioned franchises included Dune, Avengers, Mad Max, and Avatar.
Though there seems to be a steady case of reboot fatigue among consumers, marketers seem largely undeterred. For slightly fresher references, TV series were the way to go—The Bear, House of the Dragon, and Bridgerton chief among them.
In the second and final year of the Eras Tour, Taylor Swift added “most mentioned artist in email campaigns” to her long list of accolades. Of the emails analyzed that referenced musical artists, Omnisend found that 43% mentioned Swift. Drake came in No. 2 with 17% of email marketing mentions, and Swift’s oft-compared pop peer Beyoncé came in at No. 6, with 5% of email mentions.
Going for gold: During an Olympic year, the world was blessed with new sports stars to get behind, no matter what country fans were rooting for. Ilona Maher and Stephen Nedoroscik won the hearts of Team USA supporters, while Australia’s Raygun brought breaking to the world (and internet) stage—and hey, whether she was successful is in the eye of the beholder.
The Olympics was prevalent in email marketing, too, with 31.6% of email campaigns mentioning sports touching on the event, Omnisend found. The NBA and Super Bowl weren’t too far behind, at 29.9% and 18.2%, respectively.
Looking ahead, Omnisend’s expert predicts that all of these pop culture in-groups will lead the way to email marketing ultra-personalization.
“By using data from past customer interactions, as well as leveraging AI, brands will increasingly create emails that feel uniquely tailored, targeting everything from niche fandoms like indie games to local sports teams,” Greg Zakowicz, senior e-commerce expert at Omnisend, said in a release detailing the report’s findings.
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