“Your next business idea, delivered every week.” This is our job Trends.

And when we say “business ideas,” we’re not just talking about businesses you can start. We also talk about the next idea that will help businesses, including insights into emerging consumer trends that they can use in their marketing strategies.

While you probably learned about some of the latest consumer trends in the State of Consumer Trends report, we wanted to dig even deeper into the future business trends we plan to track in the coming months.

Check out the following nine trends we think will emerge in the next six months, including NFT subscription services, virtual pop-up stores, direct mail marketing and more.

9 trends to watch in the coming months

1. Gift giving

Forget loyalty points – gifting is the new customer retention strategy. As everything grows remotely, staying connected with clients and loved ones will be critical.

Source: &Open

Gifting powerhouse 1-800-FLOWERS had record year 2020and venture capital is flowing into startups as it is &Open (7.2 million dollars last May) and Gracia (~$14 million since launch in 2017).

Another new player, Goodsent 10,000 gifts in his the first two months and he picked up 32 million dollars from launching in 2020. Co-founder Edward Lando said TechCrunch that the app serves as an additional acquisition channel for early D2C brands and a “giant mall” for Gen Z consumers.

Companies will also target employees with gifting, as employee retention is at an all-time low, and the average cost of replacing an employee is approximately seven months’ salary.

Wellbox, for example, is a platform for companies to send gifts to their workers who have made $4 million + revenues in the first year.

2. Direct mail marketing

Seth Greene, author of seven bestselling marketing books, told Trends.co that “with all the changes in online media platforms like Google and Facebook, direct mail is delivering better results than ever before, with fewer restrictions.”

Our research confirms this, particularly when it comes to “digital interactive” – physical mail used to drive readers online – where response rates ~9%-10%which is about twice as much as five years ago.

Source: 25 Direct Mail Trends for 2021

Some of the niches we expect to emerge in this space include:

• Voice activated calls to action: Integrating smart speaker apps into direct mail campaigns so readers can take action with an Alexa command
• VR Integrations: Physical mail that combines with VR headsets to provide immersive, interactive experiences
• Old school postcards: Direct mail marketing companies that focus on postcards, e.g PostcardManiawho supposedly did ~$84 million of revenue last year

3. The return of Retro

The resurgence of direct mail is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the larger trend of all things retro.

Subscribers to r/Retro subreddit has doubled to 10k+ in 2020 r/80sDesign has reached 86k+ subscribers.

Retro search terms are also all the rage on Amazon. According to Jungle Scout, for example, weekly searches for “retro home decor” in the US have increased by 290% in the past year.

Here’s how we expect the trend to manifest over the next 6 months:

• Shutter-Lovin’: Film, vintage cameras and darkrooms
• Experience: Ice rinks and arcades
• Playing games: Old school games and accessories
• Advertising: Brands that capitalize on the aesthetics of the 80s in their ads

Can you tell which ones are from the 1980s versus the 2020s? Only the top right is the original from the 80s (Source: Eye on Design)

4. Audio SEO

The podcast world is growing faster like the entire internet in the early 2000s. Now it only hosts Spotify 3m+ shows (that’s ~43x the number of titles on Netflix, Disney+ and Apple TV+ combined).

Source: Live internet statistics and Podcast host

But tools that help listeners discover new content haven’t kept up.

Sixty-five % of people who have never listened to a podcast say it’s because they don’t know where to start. Meanwhile, great new shows struggle to gain recognition, and audiences tire of watching the same old propositions.

Audio search is due for a revamp. Some solutions that may emerge in the coming months include:

• Audio search engineslike it Fathomwhich recently raised 15 million dollars for their AI-powered podcast player and audio search engine
• Tools that empower podcasters turn audio into snackable visual content for platforms like TikTok, similarly Audiogram
• Audio SEO toolslike Ahrefs or Keywords Everywhere equivalent for sound
• Interactive/immersive podcast applicationslike it Entales and Adorawhich allow podcasters to include relevant links, images, surveys and offer codes so that they appear on the listener’s screen at the right moment.

5. NFT Powered Subscription Services

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is one of the most popular digital art collections in the world. BAYC NFT owners have exclusive licensing and commercial rights to their monkeys, leveraging many token holders to create their own startups.

One such startup is Bored Breakfast Club. It is a coffee subscription service and NFT collection that uses NFT to build an exclusive online community of coffee enthusiasts.

In their subscription model, anyone who owns one of the 5k Bored Breakfast Club NFTs is eligible for free shipments of exclusive coffee blends.

NFTs also unlock access to the online community, live events, content and discounts on extra bags of coffee.

Source: The Bored Breakfast Club website

Many big brands like it Cameo, Wranglerand Time magazine are already experimenting with NFTs for exclusive community access, but Bored Breakfast Club is one of the first to feature a subscription component.

It’s still early days, but if the model proves successful, it will open up a whole new world of potential NFT subscription products, far beyond coffee.

6. B2B influencers

The B2B influencer space is in right now undeveloped and largely unmonetized. While the general industry of influencer marketing has been tied to ~$9.7 billion in 2020, most of this was focused on B2C campaigns.

But that will change, as ~80% of B2B brands surveyed in 2020 say they plan to maintain or increase their influencer spending.

Not surprisingly, research from Demand Gen shows that B2B customers find third-party sponsored or co-branded content more trustworthy than content directly from the vendor.

Source: Octopus

We expect many tools and services to emerge to help brands identify and manage influencers and document their influencer strategy.

This could happen in B2B industries where consumption of subscriptions is the highestsuch as engineering, sales, human resources and customer service.

Influencer marketing in general can get stronger with each new generation. While 26% of social media users aged 25-34 have purchased a product marketed by an influencer in the past three months, 33% of social media users aged 18-24 have done the same.

7. Virtual pop-up shops

Pop-up stores in the metaverse are now a thing.

The Italian fashion brand Hogan recently participated in the Decentraland Fashion Week for virtual pop-up storeand jewelry label Pandora teamed up with Animal Planet to launch a virtual in-game pop-up called “Pandora’s Island.”

The new metaverse shopping industry could continue to grow with consumer interest. In a HubSpot survey of over 1,000 consumers, 30% of participants said more brands should consider virtual stores in the metaverse.

While we’re sure to see more of these, brands won’t necessarily have to dive headfirst into the metaverse to participate in the trend.

A virtual pop-up store is basically anything that creates a unique online shopping experience for your customers, separate from your existing website. This could be an event or even a landing page dedicated to a new product line.

They first became popular as an alternative to the real deal among the nation’s prisons, and despite falling in 2021, interest is growing again.

Some of the big bands that have already experimented with this format include Lancôme, Hooverand Dunkin’.

Source: Dunkin’ Shop

8. Luxury environmentally friendly products and packaging

Conscious enjoyment is in fashion. Especially younger generations are increasing the demand for such products 0.56 or container from recycled plastic ($14) and that a chair made from old fishing nets ($375).

They also demand more from brands and are willing to pay to save the planet.

While eco-friendly shampoos tend to be more more cost-effective than traditional shampoos, consumers are happy to choose superior options: a single Viori bar costs 16 dollars~3x the price of a comparable quantity (20 oz.) Dove shampoo.

Source: Subreddit Statistics

We expect that eco-friendly packaging will also take off, as the rapid growth of e-commerce continues to drive demand for sustainable packaging.

Solutions could include compostable packaging made from bamboo waste and sugarcane pulp, like the one he makes Ecoinnowhich recently raised 6 million dollars in financing.

9. Gamified NFT Marketing

NFT platform Neon started first in the world NFT vending machine back in February.

The device accepts fiat currency, allowing people to invest in NFTs with their credit card — without having to convert them to crypto first.

We expect similar initiatives to market NFTs, such as arcade machines or mobile games that allow players to collect NFTs while playing.

Louis Vuitton has already released a mobile app “Louis the Game” that includes 30 embedded NFTs that could be collected just by playing the game.

GAP is another well-known brand that has incorporated a gaming component into its NFT collection to encourage further customer engagement.

Source: Twitter

How to stay up to date

Staying current with today’s trends and data can be critical to creating marketing or business strategies that meet your audience where they are. But given that trends are always moving quickly, the idea of ​​keeping up with them can be overwhelming. Here are some handy resources that can help your brand in its quest to stay fresh, relevant and up-to-date.

• HubSpot’s State of Consumer Trends series: This month, HubSpot will publish a series of blog posts like this one and a brand new data-driven PDF on the latest consumer behaviors, preferences, shopping habits and trends that marketers and brands need to know about going forward. month. Click here to view our State of the Consumer Trends reportwhere you’ll find links to content in our series and a handy free PDF.
• Subscribe to Trends.co: Want to learn more about the trends affecting all areas of business and step up your game even more? Check it out and subscribe Trends.co today to learn all about business ideas, innovations and — well — trends that are changing the game in your industry.