Email marketing is a fast-moving aspect of digital marketing, and if your business often communicates with its customers via email, you need to ensure that you are keeping up with the times. Here we present some surprising email marketing trends in 2020 that you can use to ensure your business is marketing more effectively.
Extreme personalisation
It is no longer acceptable simply to create a single email and send that out as a campaign – what really makes an impression on customers is personalisation. Simply personalising emails alone actually increases open rates by 26% – but you can actually go much further to create emails tailored to the specifics wants and needs of that individual.
Reminding the customer of a product page that they had clicked on in the past can be an extremely effective way to get them thinking about it again. The fact that they showed an interest before makes them far more predisposed to those products than they would be to a simple sale email with generic recommendations.
No more excessively salesy emails
It can be easy for email marketers to forget that it is 2020, and the customers that you are sending emails to are tech-savvy. They’ve been receiving email marketing communications for years – they’ve been duped by all of the tricks, and they are wise to them. And the fact is, that excessively salesy and push emails just don’t cut it anymore.
“One serious mistake email marketers often make is pushing too hard on sales-oriented emails,” says marketing specialists Da Costa Coaching “your goal is to make sales, but you will put people off if you make your emails too sales oriented. Instead of pushing your products, tell your customers personal stories and share case studies. Give them useful tools, tips and approaches, and encourage them to chat and share their challenges with you”.
Keep it minimalist
For a long time, email marketers found that the most important aspect of their job was to create an eye-catching email design that would grab the attention of the customer. But in 2020, customers are not as responsive to bright and colourful design as they once were, and it can actually be more effective to have a simple minimalist email that appears more authentic.
A small amount of text, a neutral colour, and a single image can actually be an extremely effective way to get customers interested in the message of the email. And that can be far more valuable than any spangled sales banner.
The importance of video content
It has become essential that your marketing emails should contain video content. While text and images are still vital, video can be an especially valuable addition – not least because it can keep them interested in the email for longer.
A quarter of consumers say that they use YouTube to search for video relating to the product that they are interested in. It is important to note here that if 25% of those customers who are interested in the product they see in your email instead go to watch someone else’s video of that product, it can hugely negatively influence their chances of buying with you.
It is important that those customers reading your emails have multiple different ways to interact with your business after they have read it. Some may be interested in purchasing and learning more directly from your website – others may be intrigued but have a more passing interest. This is where it is important to integrate your social media accounts.
Those customers who aren’t quite ready to buy may prefer the option of visiting your social media profile. This keeps them on the journey towards a sale and increases recognition of your brand.
Ensure your emails are optimised for all screen sizes
It has been a long-term problem for email marketers that they are most likely to do their work using a desktop application – but actually, the majority of emails are opened on a phone or a smaller screen. Emails that display incorrectly on a mobile device are likely to be deleted within three seconds.
This means that in 2020 you need to be thinking mobile-first. Design your email so that it is suitable for mobile phone screens and think about desktop as a secondary priority.
