8 Email Marketing Trends to Follow in 2020

Email marketing is dead. 

That’s what some people think. Most consider social media to be more profitable in 2020. However, that’s not the truth. Email marketing is not only still alive, but it can give SMM a run for its money. 

We’ve compiled a list of email marketing trends you as an email marketer should keep an eye on in the coming year.

Trend 1: Video

The first and the most popular email marketing trend is videos embedded within emails. With them, you will stand out from your competitors by giving your email a professional appearance rather than the regular text email. 

Remember that text emails give room for misinterpretations and misconceptions but with videos in emails, you can really say what you mean using different facial expressions and body languages thereby removing any confusion.

Videos in emails also enable you to become familiar with your customers. People are usually comfortable purchasing from someone they can see or trust. You can solidify this level of comfort when they see you in the video which will indicate your level of credibility thereby winning their trust.

Trend 2: Take advantage of storytelling

Storytelling is an email marketing trend that becomes more popular day after day. However, it goes beyond just telling a story; it focuses on the use of powerful words to trigger the emotions in your audience. 

The story acts as a means of not only informing the audience about the attributes of the products and services you are offering but also its benefits and improved results. It is also important to know how to implement storytelling as a strategy to get the best possible outcomes.

• Define your target audience and create a buyer persona. This will enable you to know the standard of the story that is expected from you and determine the best approach to influence those who will be reading it.
• Send storytelling emails to only warm leads. If you send this type of email to cold leads, you may be considered a spammer. 
• The highest response rate is shown by emails of 200-250 characters (19%). Keep this number in mind when composing your story. 
• Your story should contain four main elements: a hero, a backstory, the hero’s journey, and a lesson for the reader.

Trend 3: Segment, segment, segment

Segmentation is an email marketing strategy that means splitting the whole list of subscribers into smaller groups according to their distinguishing features and similarities. Segmentation has proven to boost email marketing campaigns significantly: according to research, segmented email marketing campaigns have increased revenue by 760%. 

You need to know that even though you offer only one product or service, your customers differ. For instance, if you operate an email marketing automation tool, your target audience doesn’t consist of only email marketers. These could be customer success agents and sales managers in both small and medium-sized businesses in various spheres, living in different countries, having different pain points, etc. 

All this means that your approach needs to vary and every group of customers and leads need to be approached in an individual way.

Trend 4: Stick to a personal email sending time

When is the best time to send emails? In the morning? On Fridays? How often should you be reaching your audience? 

Every professional, especially new ones to email marketing, ask themselves these questions and many others. 

Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. The benchmark by GetResponse proves that email sending times and frequency differ from industry to industry and from business to business. 

To discover the most appropriate time to send your campaigns, study when your competitors send their emails. This will allow you to have the idea of which frequency and timing you need. Then, proceed to study when your target audience is most glad to receive emails. Test and discover the most appropriate time and schedule and when they interact with emails most. 

Once the information is discovered, schedule your campaigns. Scheduling your emails will make it easier for you to stay on top of your subscribers’ inboxes. You can get additional opportunities and metrics beneficial for your email strategy by tracking and testing different subject lines and email schedules.

Trend 5: Design accessible content

The main purpose of sending your emails is to be read, attract attention, and to convert. This makes it important to always send easily accessible messages. It is crucial to not only write well-organized, persuasive, and engaging emails but to consider how well they are displayed. 

This is a tiny dig into HTML emails. If you are a great fan of them, you need to be extremely careful and test everything out. 

First of all, check that your emails will be displayed correctly in all the email clients. You also need to ensure your messages are viewable on mobile phones and tablets. To avoid this, you need to design a fallback text in case the emails are not displayed. 

And finally, you need to think twice about whether to send HTML emails as they are considered as spam by many spam filtering services.

However, there’s no such a problem with plain-text emails: they are displayed correctly on all the devices and email clients, they are less suspicious and look more professional. 

Trend 6: Automate to the fullest

Automation has been in for quite a while and still, we cannot ignore this email marketing trend. Thanks to automation tools, you will save time and energy. Here, we need to mention two large categories of automation tools: CRMs and email drip campaign tools.

• CRM systems. Customer relationship management technologies are used to automate, organize, and synchronize business interactions with potential clients. What’s great about them? You can integrate your CRM with the tools you already use and automate the sales process to the fullest.
• Email sending automation tools. Such tools like drip campaigns are amazing as they allow you to schedule your email campaigns sending and be sure all the messages are sent automatically. Besides schedules, you can set triggers. This will make sure your emails not simply bombard the recipients with emails but only in case they perform a definite action. The best part is that without even lifting a finger your emails are sent under the control of the tool, not you. Just think about how time-saving that is!

Trend 7: Outbound is still working

Although inbound marketing and sales campaigns are very effective and profitable, at least 32% are sure that outbound marketing is more beneficial in lead generation. Outbound marketing, as an email marketing trend, requires you to define your target audience, find leads on your own, and directly reach out to them. 

Effective outbound email marketing is implemented thanks to different strategies and methods. However, here’s a short checklist for you to not miss the steps you need to take:

• Step 1. Create a buyer persona image. Analyze your clients and target audience and create a few buyer persona images to learn how to reach each of them.
• Step 2. Outbound lead generation. Use lead generation tools to find email addresses of your potential clients and customers (use social media for this, web directories, prospecting tools, etc).
• Step 3. Create and send your first outreach campaign. Compose short personalized emails with a clear and bright call-to-action and schedule your campaign.
• Step 4. Qualify leads. Initiate a conversation and define how you can help leads, present a demo with your best solution.
• Step 5. Close the deal. Provide all the opportunities for making a purchase, upgrading, or switching to a paid account (if you offer a free trial).

Trend 8: AI matters

AI becomes more and more popular every day and it is used for many purposes.

Here are some of AI tools used for email marketing:

• Grammarly is an AI-based tool that helps you compose any text. It checks your grammar and spelling mistakes, offers correct options, and provides words definitions. Must-have for anyone dealing with texts.
• Phrasee is an instrument that helps email marketers compose email subject lines. Use it, train it, and it will follow your company’s voice.
• Seventh Sense is used to automatically analyze the recipients’ engagement with your emails and define the best frequency and time to send emails. 

Summing up

Numerous researches show that all of the above-mentioned email marketing trends are truly beneficial and will remain the same in 2020.

Will all of them work for your business? Hope so. 

Combine them, grow your lead and client base, improve conversions, boost revenue and share in comments which one works best!