Keeping on top of these trends will engage your audience, get you new subscribers and give your customers exactly what they want.
There’s a prevailing – and massively incorrect – idea that email marketing is dead. But it absolutely isn’t. It’s getting bigger all the time, and 2020 will be its biggest year yet.
But it’s only effective if you follow the latest trends. As reported by Inc.com, here are the trends that are coming in 2020:
Interactive emails
You should provide more interactivity in the emails you send out to your customers. This will surprise and excite your customers, and help them to interact with you. It will also set you apart from your competition.
Here are some ideas for interactive elements you can include:
- Surveys, polls and questionnaires
- Add-to-calendar options
- Animated widgets, buttons and calls to action
- Game-like features
User-generated content
If potential customers see content which has been generated by current customers, they’ll trust you more. They’ll see that your consumers are happy, and they’ll want to become your consumers themselves.
You should share this user-generated content in your email marketing messages. But you should also use these messages to generate more user-generated content.
Videos, gifs and animations
Everyone receives plenty of emails every day. So you should make your emails stand out. If they stand out, people will be much more likely to interact with them and enjoy them – and therefore much more likely to keep interacting with you.
Videos are becoming more and more popular. So too will videos inside of emails.
But there’s an important consideration here: platforms like Gmail and Outlook can’t play videos inside emails. So don’t include videos as such in your emails. Instead, add a still image with a play button overlaid on it. Users can then click on the image and be taken to a video-hosting site to view the animated content.
Artificial intelligence
In 2020, artificial intelligence will help you deliver personalised emails to your customers. This tech can help you to choose the best copy and the best email subject lines.
It can also help you to pick the best times to send your emails and match subscribers with relevant content.
And the best part is that this AI is becoming more affordable, so small businesses will soon be able to use it more readily.
Subscriber control
According to a poll, 69% of US users wanted to have more control over the frequency with which they received emails. But the same poll revealed that only 10% of marketers matched that expectation.
In 2020, you should be working harder towards giving your subscribers what they want.
When a user subscribes to your email list, send them a welcome email. Use this welcome email to let your customers set how often they receive your further emails – and what type of emails they want to receive. If you keep them happy, they’ll stick around for longer… and it’l be a while before they hit that ‘unsubscribe’ button.
Keeping on top of these trends will engage your audience, get you new subscribers and give your customers exactly what they want.