Plans can easily change as the coronavirus pandemic proved. You might not be able to predict tomorrow what you predicted today. To stay ahead of the curve, you must keep up to date with all the latest trends and projections.

The volume of email sent increased 7% by 2020, almost three times the amount in 2019. Businesses must adapt their strategies to reach their customers in the face of uncertainty caused by the epidemic. Emails became the main channel for information about new hours of work, virtual events, and other opportunities online.

What is the best approach to your company’s email marketing for the coming year? Check out our article to learn seven email marketing trends.

Email is considered to be one of the most powerful marketing mediums.

• Statista estimates that there were 3.9 Billion people using email worldwide in 2019. This number is expected to rise to 4.3 billion in 2023.

• 31% B2B marketers believe that email newsletters can be the best way to drive leads.

• Research from DMA and Litmus both concluded that email marketing can yield an average return of $42 per dollar.

COVID-19 has had a profound impact on businesses and forced many to close their doors. Many of the businesses that survived saw a reduction in revenue and staff. You may have to make drastic cuts in certain areas of your business but you shouldn’t compromise your email marketing strategy.

Why email marketing is important for your business

Surveys and feedback are available

If you want your customers to continue interacting with, engaging and buying from your brand, it is important to track the customer experience.

Email marketing is a great way to do this. You can use email marketing to send customer satisfaction surveys and get feedback from consumers.

This is the best way to calculate your Net Promoter Score. This score allows you to determine which consumers are brand ambassadors and which are disgruntled. This information can be used to develop strategies that will improve your customer experience.

Cost-effective marketing campaigns

Email marketing campaigns, unlike traditional print or direct campaigns, are more affordable.

You won’t have to pay for location fees, photoshoots or mailing costs. All you need are a copywriter, graphic artist, and a photographer.

It doesn’t take long to create email campaigns. You can also create emails in a matter of hours, which is more economical than printing a campaign.

Email marketing strategies are more effective than others and can drive revenue and prospects.

Communication with customers

It’s essential to communicate with your customers as a marketer. Your customers will be more likely to trust your brand if they feel they can communicate with you.

People love good emails. Take a step back and think about the last time you received a marketing email from a favorite brand. Was it disruptive or was it something you enjoyed reading? It’s likely that you will enjoy it if it’s a brand that you like.

Email marketing allows you to reach more customers and interact with brand ambassadors. These emails can also be used to engage your audience throughout the year, regardless of whether it is in season or not.

Traffic to your site

How do you share amazing content with your customers? Let’s get in touch with them. Email marketing campaigns will bring you traffic to your site and increase your SEO.

Email is a great way to provide value to customers. Remember to include a call-to-action in every email you send. This will allow recipients to click through to your website.

Reaching the right audience at right time

You must reach the right people at the right time to build an effective marketing campaign. Because customers check their email every day, email marketing makes it easier for them to reach you. It can be accessed from any device, which can help increase the success of any marketing campaign.

This means that you want to stay in front of your customer’s mind and keep them interested in you.

7 Email Marketing Trends to Help Grow Your Business

1. Emails in plain text

For many years, plain text emails have outperformed HTML emails in certain areas. Marketo believed that your click-through rates could be 17% higher if you send plain text emails than those with HTML elements in 2017.

Plain text emails, even though they are less visually appealing, are still outstanding. Emails from people these days are expected to contain HTML elements. This could be pictures, GIFs or even emojis.

Plain text does not include photos, GIFs or CTA buttons that could obstruct your message. Plain text allows your recipients to get straight to the point of what you are trying to convey. These texts are great to include in SaaS email templates, or product emails, so the receiver understands their next steps.

No one is forcing you to give up HTML email. Your email marketing campaign has room for both HTML and plain-text emails.

2. Automation of email marketing

Email Marketing Automation is also known as drip campaigns. This strategy involves sending sequences of trigger-based emails instead of one-off shots. This allows for consistent and coherent communication between the subscriber and company. Customers feel more in control of their inboxes. In today’s world of content overload the last thing customers want to see in their inboxes is unneeded and pointless email. It doesn’t matter how attractive the content, it can feel intrusive or spammy once it is there.

Email campaigns are more likely to be effective than regular emails campaigns because of this. The release of the sequence will be triggered by certain actions that users take. Drip campaigns have a more friendly interaction and are responsive. They don’t overwhelm; all the important information is in “drips”, which saves time and allows for easier reading. Customers get the information they need.

There is a conflict of interests. We have customers on one side. No one wants their inbox to get clogged. People get tired of sending irrelevant and repetitive emails to their trash folders in large numbers. Stats show that retailers who send multiple welcome emails earn 13% more than those who stop after one. This means that you are missing out on a valuable opportunity if you stop sending one email.

If you make sure that the recipient is interested in receiving them, it’s possible to send emails. Because it effectively solves conflicts of interest, behavioral-based email automation can help create amazing email marketing results.

3. Emails about the human-centric lifecycle

It is crucial to place more emphasis on empathy and building human connections. This disease has had a profound impact on our communication and interaction with one another.

This huge shift in relationships requires brands to adapt their messaging, channels and timeliness. Marketing emails are no longer a series or sales pitches with overly promotional copy.

Email marketing is a key component in creating a seamless user experience and smooth customer journey. To build strong relationships with customers, you must understand their needs and expectations and send them messages that are valuable and relevant.

Brands must consider empathy in order to understand and connect with customers. Only genuine empathy can work. It’s impossible to fake empathy. It is essential to understand and care deeply about the feelings of your customers and to translate those feelings into vital elements in all marketing communications. This will help you build a strong relationship with your customers.

4. Artificial intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is spreading beyond the realm of computer science. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are also used by smaller companies. Another trend in email marketing is to use artificial intelligence for the distribution and generation of newsletters.

Even if a marketer uses modern technology and software, there’s a lot more information online than they could possibly obtain or process. This task can be handled by AI with very little effort.

Machine learning and AI can also use predictive analytics to provide a personalized experience for customers. AI can assist you in creating subject lines that convert better, by determining the best copy and content, and the most appropriate frequency and send times.

5. Email Redesign

Email design is one the most dynamic and flexible aspects of email marketing. It is subjective and creative, and can be affected by many external factors.

Fashion weeks around the world give us an annual insight into the hottest colors, fabrics and silhouettes for the coming seasons. Web design trends change from season to season. This helps us decide what a great email copy should look like.

These email design trends are expected to be in fashion:

• Dark mode: Since Apple introduced its dark mode, it has been the norm for people to look at the screen and not squint how bright it is.

• Minimalism: Many marketers believe that minimalism will be reflected in their email strategies. This year, minimalistic and well-organized emails that have a single purpose and contain minimal unrelated information will be in fashion.

• Bold and bright colors: Although you don’t want too many images in an email, it is better to grab the attention of a subscriber with bold color blocks.

6. Hyper-personalization

Brands are now extremely cautious about using the old email marketing methods because of COVID-19. Creative marketers are using COVID-proof message concepts to increase their marketing outreach. Hyper-personalization is a great way to build direct marketing contact, carrying the potential to leave a considerable impact on customer experience.

Plus, hyper-personalization concentrates on imparting related products/services/ content to the user. It is designed to increase the likelihood of users converting on offers.

Hyper-personalized emails can:

• Minimum effort – A seamless experience can make the customer journey easy and well-coordinated.

• Provide relevant information – Using AI and Machine Learning, hyper-personalization provides the most related suggestions according to personal preferences and purchasing history.

• Save time – Hyper-personalization can save us a lot of time with tailored targets and messages.

7. Interactive Emails

User-generated content is another big trend expected to be a major player in email marketing campaigns. Any type of content (texts, images, videos or audio) that is generated by end-users for products or services is called user-generated content (UGC). This content includes testimonials and reviews.

It is proven that user-generated content increases conversion rates. A large percentage of customers ( 82%), believe that user-generated reviews can be valuable and important. 70% of customers base their buying decisions on ratings and reviews from other consumers. These reviews and ratings can help increase trust in products or services you promote.

Wrapping up!

Email marketing should focus on creating a customer-centric experience and not excessive data.

Brands will eventually discover that AI, new design modes and modern technologies can be used to personalize emails. You must also remember that email content must be engaging, interactive, relevant and secure the confidentiality of customers’ data.