Explore our forecast for B2B marketers in 2024
For marketers, a new year means new trends, new tech and new strategies. Feeling a bit overwhelmed? Not to worry. We’re diving into four key areas of B2B marketing we think will take centre stage in 2024 – and offering you practical tips on how to successfully navigate them.
Say goodbye to spam email
Although it seems to have flown slightly under the radar so far, Google and Yahoo! have both announced a clampdown on spam as of February 2024. Under new regulations primarily aimed at people sending over 5,000 emails per day, if more than 0.3% are flagged as spam the sender risks having their account (and even domain) blacklisted.
This is a significant change for B2B marketers who manage e-mail campaigns for themselves and their clients, as many guidelines that were previously considered best practice – such as authentication methods – are now compulsory.
To ensure emails continue to be received as intended, keeping a keen eye on overall email activity is essential. If you aren’t already, you should be using a content calendar to prepare and plan email release times. Not only is it good practice, it will also help you to follow these new guidelines successfully.
The future is… cookie-less
We’re sure you’ve noticed that the detailed web data you use to keep an eye on campaigns is now only accounting for roughly 15-20% of actual traffic, making analysing interactions and engagement a little trickier.
That’s thanks to the end of cookies and Google’s shift in focus to tracking interactions and activity on page and while change can be daunting, there are lots of opportunities for marketers to learn a lot about site visitors and campaign activity with the new metrics.
Our blog on GA4 and cookieless tracking breaks down what a cookieless future looks like for B2B marketers and helps you take the right steps to get on top of the data.
Data protection and privacy
Changes to data regulations are set to continue in 2024 as the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – the UK’s independent body for upholding information rights – cracks down on data protection and privacy. Just this month, the ICO fined meal subscription brand HelloFresh £140,000 for misusing public data.
HellloFresh had sent a staggering 79 million (yes, million) emails and texts over a six-month period, so not exactly a small amount of communications, but the ICO is stepping up enforcement for everyone. When it comes to data, there’s no harm in triple checking you’re on the right side of privacy laws – with potentially devastating risks if you end up breaching the latest regulations.
AI and machine learning
Everyone’s talking about AI (even we are in our recent blog on AI and authenticity), but as AI becomes ubiquitous in every industry, there are a few key points for marketers in particular to consider when utilising the latest in artificial intelligence:
- AI is as flawed as the data it is fed, so it is essential to double-check the content it creates or information it provides (just as you would with a human!)
- Any information input into an AI chatbot in turn enters the public domain for other users to access, so don’t use it for confidential results, projects or data.
- As creative strategist and Born to B2B podcast guest Daniel Da Costa always say, marketers need to “beware of vanilla”. When using AI tools to generate copy and imagery, the lack of human touch is often pretty obvious. Blend AI with human brainpower – don’t try and replace it.
The takeaway
As we’re connected to comms, tech, software, digital and data, there’s always lots of changes and innovations to keep up with in B2B marketing.
