Email Marketing Trends 2020 to Supercharge Your Business

Email marketing is very much alive and kicking. Although marketing channels have got quite advanced, the power of email is here to stay. It has become an effective way to drive conversions and bring sales. The reason for its popularity is that it can constantly adapt itself to the technological advancements. Whether you are looking forward to acquiring new customers or retaining the existing ones, email can do it all for you, while bringing in a steady ROI.

Of course, there has been a staggering increase in the usage of social media channels and audio or video marketing, email continues to be one of the most preferred media to reach out to prospects and customers alike.

I assume you are convinced about the awesomeness of email marketing.

So, let’s proceed to the top email marketing trends 2020 that would supercharge your business.

User-generated Content

As the name suggests, user-generated content (UGC) refers to content created by the end-user of the product. It could be text, images, audio or video. Such kind of content generates real-time engagement with your loyal customers as well as potential clients. When you incentivize your customers to provide content through email marketing, it not only builds authenticity but also enhances conversions.

82% customers find user-generated reviews to be extremely valuable and 70% customers will check out reviews or ratings before they make a purchase decision. Also, email subscribers are three times more likely to share content on social media when compared to leads that came through any other channel. Email and social media work in perfect sync, thereby helping you to get better user-generated content.

An effective way to garner user-generated content is to send feedback emails and get them to share their experience. Just make sure that you ask for the feedback at the right time. It is a good idea to add some interactivity or gamify the email experience to tempt the recipients to offer their feedback.

Humanized Email Automation

Email automation has got pretty advanced in the recent times. With marketing cloud services getting more and more robust, marketers can now execute cross-channel optimization with better stat models that reinvents new possibilities in machine learning and automation.

You will be able to set the right performance benchmarks, which will ultimately lead to automation of the customer lifecycle stages and workflows. It will facilitate smarter segmentation that will enhance the campaign performance. Automated reporting facility will help to reduce costs and keep email marketers at ease, thereby increasing the ROI of the channel.

Automated emails no longer look like a robotically drafted wall of text. They are more humanized, taking into consideration the client’s demographics, geographic location, interests and purchase history.

In addition, there’s a new kid on the block – Personalized video. Whether it is a sales email or a promotional newsletter, adding a personalized video takes the email experience to a whole new level. You can implement the same idea in your holiday email marketing too.  

Accessibility

With 1.3 billion people living with visual impairment and 36 million blind people, it becomes imperative to create emails that can reach out to all the subscribers despite their physical inability. That’s why you should make accessibility a priority while drafting emails.

Your email copy should be concise and to-the-point. According to Litmus, you should avoid using technical language and difficult words. Practice email localization for global reach. The average attention span in an email is 13.4 seconds. As an adult reader can read 250 to 300 words per minute, keep your email copy 50 words long.

When it comes to designing emails, follow the principles of visual hierarchy and use real text HTML. Refrain from having center-justified copy and have proper line spacing. Make your text easily readable by using high contrasting colors and suitable font sizes.

While coding accessible emails, you should use semantic HTML tags with tables accessible to screen readers. Do not forget to add alternative text for all the visual elements used in the emails.

As there will be a rise in the usage of voice assistants to read emails, accessibility will become all the more important for email marketers.

Interactive Emails

Interactivity has been around in emails since a couple of years but in 2020 and the coming years, it will not be limited to entertainment purposes. It will be more about functional interactivity that will promote better engagement and keep the subscribers hooked to the email.

Marketers will use animated buttons and calls-to-action to grab the subscriber’s attention and prompt them to take the next action. SaaS companies or ecommerce marketers will be able to use rollover effects to showcase what they have to offer. They can even try interactive image and product carousels that will be controlled by the user. Accordions can also be used to make emails more compact and convey more despite the restricted space. It is a good idea to use interactive surveys and polls to get user-generated content.

Artificial Intelligence

According to Gartner, 30% companies worldwide will be using AI in at least one of their sales processes by 2020. AI will not only aid predictive personalization but also help to optimize subject lines and email content. It can find the most suitable words that the recipients will resonate the most to. With AI, marketers will also be able to identify trends and make predictions that will help to optimize the campaigns. Furthermore, you can incorporate the data generated from email marketing campaigns into broader analytics and get information about customer engagement and possible churn.

BIMI

More and more marketers will incorporate BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) as a security standard which will allow brands with DMARC protection to show their logos in their email subject lines. This will not only work to mitigate email security issues but also build brand credibility. According to preliminary data from Yahoo!, showing the logo enhances the open rates by around 10%. In 2020, it is expected that big brands will adopt BIMI.

Wrapping Up

It is quite obvious that email will continue to reign the world of marketing in the time to come. Optimize your email marketing strategy according to these trends and you will surely see a boost in your metrics while allowing you to have an edge over the competitors.