Five email marketing trends
leading in 2020
Many marketers share a common
predicament; they often understand the strategic value of using technology to
improve customer engagement, but they don’t know how to use the right tools to
achieve this tactically. Email marketing is no different. Although email can
deliver impressive ROI, it often isn’t properly initiated using the right
tools. As such, teams can struggle to take it beyond just simply sending a
newsletter and businesses fail to see the value it can create. This not only
means lost revenue opportunities for brands, but a missed opportunity to grow,
stand out amongst the competition and successfully grow brand loyalty.
Looking
at the year ahead, there are several ways in which brands can transform the
customer relationship through email. Recognizing that it can be difficult for
businesses to know exactly where to focus their investment and what tools to
use to achieve their goals, it’s important to shine a spotlight on the
technology available and the strategies most likely to encourage customer
engagement. In an era where customer experience counts for everything, tools
that will allow marketers to take control of their customer data and then
leverage this insight effectively will prove critical for seeing results.
Trend 1: Inspiring consumer engagement and loyalty
Consumers
have said that key to their decision making when opening a marketing email is
brand recognition. Consequently, brands need to demonstrate relevance, purpose
and provide evidence to suggest that they understand what drives recognition
through research and measurement.
Accenture
Strategy’s global survey of 30,000 consumers across 35 countries found
that more than half of customers in the UK want companies to take a stand and
communicate issues they care about. This could include sustainability,
transparency and fair employment practices among others. Emails that tend to
focus on products and discounts, showing no alignment with the right type of
brand values, are less likely to deliver brand relevance and ongoing
engagement. User-generated content (UGC) can also be an interesting tactic to
engage recipients, showing that other people trust the brand, align with its
values and regularly purchase items from it.
Trend 2: Designing emails well
Once the overall key
messages have been decided, emails need to be designed with all platforms in
mind, including the different versions of Apple Mail, Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo!
Mail. Webmail and desktop experiences need to be considered too since the number
of emails being opened on mobile has stopped increasing month by month.
Trends
that have dominated email design in previous years will still be popular in
2020, including vibrant colors, bold typography, and off-grid designs. But
there are some new innovations to be considered. For example, increasing
sophistication in 3D tools means we are seeing 3D images replacing some
cartoon-style visuals and providing variety from standard photos. There are
also new approaches to animation, which bring more colors, designs, and
sophistication to standard animation. Similarly, a focus on basic content
framed by generous amounts of white space can help make content more digestible
and easier to scan. This helps to give the subscriber a clear understanding of
the action they need to take. These designs can also look better within the
dark mode, in which people are now adopting more with their email readers and
apps.
Trend 3: Making use of AI and Machine Learning
The
positive impact of AI on productivity and efficiency has been felt across many
different industries, but the marketing applications of AI are extremely
exciting. Once a carefully crafted email campaign has been created, Machine
Learning can be applied to existing data sets to generate insights for future
communications via historical data. These insights can then be applied to
future campaigns to improve the relevance and response of communications.
For
example, by analyzing the historic data of responses by different audience
segments to different timings, and different messaging, regression models can
be built showing the propensity or likelihood of responses in similar
situations. These can be used to create rules and personalize emails to
individuals in order to maximize the probability of engagement. For example,
machine learning can be used to analyze the performance of email subject lines
and previous copy to make recommendations for future campaigns. It’s been
identified that in retail, positive emotions such as gratitude encourage the
best results. So, leveraging phrases that evoke positive emotions such as ‘You
deserve this deal’ can be powerful; expressing knowledge and appreciation in a
more personal way.
Predictive targeting
can also be a useful tool for sending messages to an audience defined by
‘propensity to respond’. Target audience insights can include demographic
characteristics like age and gender but also buying behavior related to
recency, frequency, and monetary value.
Trend 4: Intelligent personalization and moving away from
“Hi<first name>”
Personalizing
emails is a renowned practice, but it has quickly matured from just
addressing recipients by the first name. Intelligent personalization begins
with reviewing your database and thinking of recipients more as groups of
people. It’s important to remember that databases are full of different kinds
of people – all with different behaviors, profiles, and interests. As such,
it’s worth splitting the email lists into groups that are alike (or segments).
Subscribers appreciate receiving better targeted and tailored emails; if emails
are more relevant, it makes for far better customer experience.
Product
recommendations, for example, have been the bedrock of successful
personalization techniques. A product recommendation engine will take all the
data it has available from the subscriber and other data sources to make a
prediction on which products and content are most likely to be interesting to
this user. That said, crucial to successful implementation is knowing how not
to overstep the line and become ‘creepy’ to the recipient. This involves being
sensitive to new subscribers and being mindful of making them feel like their
data is being exchanged for better customer experience. In a similar vein, customers
should be clear on how a company is using their data and be given the option to
opt-out or unsubscribe at any time. Likewise, automation and personalization
techniques need reviewing regularly, to test email journeys from the eyes of
the customer and understand where there are areas for improvement.
Trend 5: Becoming more customer-centric in email copywriting
As
much as design and personalization techniques are key to the experience an
email delivers, style and tone of voice of the copy are just as crucial. The
copy should be just as enticing and consistent with brand expectations and
context as possible.
Customers
are demanding more meaningful and relevant experiences from email, which means
brands need to become more customer-focused through their messaging and
customer journey. Testing which copy resonates with an audience is essential to
delivering an experience in line with expectations. A simple way to determine
whether the copy is brand-centric or customer-centric can be to calculate the
number of times ‘our’ ‘us’ ‘we’ is used against the number of times ‘you’ and
‘your’ is included. Understanding the performance of customer-centric versus
brand-centric copy can provide a clear indication as to which copy style is
encouraging engagement. Similarly, when it comes to a ‘call to action’ within
an email, many can be dry with little thought given to how these necessary
fixtures can be creatively written. Rather than asking people to simply ‘read
more’ or ‘shop now’, the call to action is a real opportunity to provide value
for the reader.
Email marketing remains
one of the most effective techniques for digital marketers across all types of
businesses. However, despite being an effective marketing channel, the DMA
consumer email tracker highlights the level of inbox competition, with
consumers saying they receive around 57 emails
each week on average. This makes cutting through the noise exceptionally
difficult. However, by following new trends in email implementation and design,
it’s possible to create a unique brand experience even within the inbox. Email
is one of the most important touchpoints in the customer journey, and with new
technological innovations along with increased knowledge, brands can benefit
from the impressive return on investment
By Kara Black
VP Marketing
