3 Ways To Stay On Top Of Email Marketing Trends In 2020

In this day and age, it’s important to stay “marketing savvy”, and emails are no exception. With trends always evolving, as innovators find new ways to meet customers' needs, gone are the days of boring wordy emails. Don’t fear - we’ve compiled an easy list full of actionable insights for your email marketing strategies. 

See what we’ve picked as our top 3 trends to adopt in 2020 to stay on top of the changing times. 

#1: Keep your design simple

Less is more these days.

We’re bombarded by thousands of images, offers, headlines, and posts every time we open up our device.

Attention spans are at an all time low at an average of 8.25 seconds, according to a study done in 2015. We’re consuming information faster than ever before, skim reading and scanning for the relevant stuff. 

So what can you do with your design to ensure your emails get read?

1. Use creative typography
   

An eye-catching title, word or headline is a great thing to have “above the fold” in your email. Words themselves become the images that relate directly to your brand and message. 

2. Keep the color palette simple

Choosing one or two main colors for your campaign is a stylish way to keep things readable. Try using “dark mode” when designing your emails to make then stand out. 

3. Keep it short and sweet

You want to stay within one subject in each email, and maintain your reader’s interest by making sure your writing is engaging, witty and relevant.

When designing your emails, always test the mobile version as well as desktop. Around 55 percent of emails are opened on mobile phones, meaning that you’re more likely to reach your customers on their phone first. 

A creative, visually intriguing email viewed on mobile should be congruent with all the rest of your visual content on your website, social media and ads. A visually stimulating design is more memorable and effective for your readers. 

Play with how much you can sum up using, clear simple images. It can pay to think outside the box - just keep it relevant and readable.

#2: Personalize, Personalize, Personalize

Your recipient wants to feel that the email they’re reading is for them, and there are many ways to accomplish that. 

According to a study, message personalization is the number one tactic used by email marketers in 2020. The best and easiest thing is to make sure you use their name. This is easy to do, just ensure that you gather that information when they sign up to your mailing list in the first place. 

Take into account why your subscribers are on your list. What value are you offering them? What are they hoping to get out of being subscribed to you? Make sure you’re identifying their needs and catering to them. 

Once you write your emails with this in mind, your message is much more likely to come across as personalized. 

Another trick is to use milestones - you can use customers’ birthdays, or if you don’t have this info, congratulate them on being signed up to receive your content for a year, a month - whatever fits your customer relationship. 

#3 Consider AI and Automation

AI may still seem like a scary and intimidating thing, but it’s being made easier and more accessible by companies like Zeta global. 

With Artificial Intelligence, a lot of information can be gathered, processed and implemented for you. This includes which pages of your sites customers are browsing, and what products or services they’re looking at. 

AI can then take this info and create a personalized “abandon cart” or “abandon browse” sequence that includes the specific searches or products your customer made. When customers are offered a chance to complete their checkout process via a friendly email, they’re far more likely to buy from you. 

In fact, triggered emails - such as abandon cart emails, as well as “thank you for subscribing” emails have  71 percent higher average open rate than generic newsletter emails. 

You can still set up automation without AI though. You can organize your big list of subscribers into smaller lists with more specified info, based on what they’ve bought, what kind of customer they are, and so on. From there, use your email marketing software to write emails to those specific subscribers.

This goes hand in hand with personalization. A study from Ascend2 shows that the ability to segment email lists and individualize email campaign messaging are the most effective personalization tactics for 51% and 50% of marketing influencers respectively. 

So there you go, those are our top three observations of trends in the current times. Of course, there’s so much more out there, but you don’t have to overload yourself with too much info. The main thing to remember is that no matter what trends you’re following, the emails still need to be relevant to your customers’ experience, and their relationship to you as a business. Even the big dogs in the game do a great job of making their audience feel cared about, and are consistently working to improve their customer’s experience. 

Hopefully you’ve gained some email marketing strategies and ideas to implement in your next campaign. 

However, if you’re already working hard on your product or service as it is, why not hire us to do it for you?