Everything changes with time – everything! And with the coming of yet another year, trends are changing here and there. Digital marketing is evolving and email marketing isn’t about to get left behind.
We’ve seen technology and communication evolve so fast these past few decades. Email has seen so many changes. More and more email service providers are popping out and they have been adding so many features.
So as another decade opens, expect for more radical changes in the face of email marketing. Here are some of the few trends you should watch out for in 2021.
A more interactive interface
Smartphones are currently man’s inanimate best friend. We do everything with and through a smartphone. Gone are the days when phones are just for calling and texting. These smart devices even substitute for point-and-shoot cameras these days!
So it’s no surprise that more people view their emails now through mobile devices rather than the desktop. Being able to view emails through a hand-held device allows for a more convenient way to engage. People can reply to an email immediately as if they were only texting instead of having to wait for hours until they can get access to a laptop or desktop.
This also means an interactive design can encourage reader engagement in email newsletters. For example, having an animated button so they can immediately act on your call-to-action. You can also embed surveys and polls and your recipients can answer them even when on the go. For ecommerce owners, product carousels included in emails are seen to become a popular trend.
Minimalism in terms of design and copy
Less is more should be an email marketers motto for 2021. Since readers can now read emails while on the go, chances are they would just end up skimming through your email while in between tasks. The people’s attention span isn’t going to be long enough to try and go through superfluous copy and complicated designs.
You need to write more concise copies – short, sweet, straight to the point – and still be interesting to your audience! Putting more filler words will get your reader clicking the back or home button and get on with day without finishing your email.
Ditch the complicated designs, too! Smaller screens don’t exactly do detailed designs a favor. Plus, with more people using smart wearables, less and less people are going to pay attention to visuals.
Reader-controlled frequency
One of the best practices in today’s email marketing strategies is letting your subscribers know what to expect from you once they opt in. Your welcome message would ideally give them an idea of what kind of messages you’re going to send and how often you will be sending.
Frequency depends on the marketer’s preference and he usually uses his own judgment to determine how much emails his target market would want to receive. A trend we’re likely to see in the coming year is readers having more control on how many emails he gets from a sender.
Some recipients get overwhelmed with more frequent emails but would still want to be able to receive updates from the sender. Having more control on frequency will avoid readers clicking on the ‘unsubscribe’ button due to overwhelm.
More personalized emails
Thanks to email list segmentation, you can segregate your subscriber list into different categories and send emails to select groups. This feature is seen to be even more useful in the coming years. Even with a vast range of subscribers, you can send more targeted email to certain groups in your list.
Email marketers will be able to curate their emails to fit a certain profile and send it only to a specific category. This will allow more subscribers to engage since the message is basically tailored for them, in contrast to general emails which can make readers unattached to the sender.
Content coming from buyers
User-generated content is going to be a big deal in email marketing for ecommerce. In this decade where word of mouth has reached a different level, consumers rely on the testimonials from previous customers whenever they decide to buy a product or service.
In the next years, we are likely to see more product reviews and customer testimonials making it into people’s email inboxes. How many times have you bought an item you probably didn’t think you needed but got enticed because of raving reviews? With amazing reviews of a good product suddenly appearing in a subscriber’s email, ecommerce business owners can easily move their products out of the shelves.
Having emails read by virtual assistants
Voice technology has gone to different heights ever since it was introduced just a few years ago. It’s going to get even bigger in the years to come! It is predicted that about 55% of households in the United States will have a smart virtual assistant in the next three years.
This is another reason to ditch excessive design and wordings in creating your email campaigns. A lot of people are probably won’t be able to see the design anyway since they will have their emails read by their voice technology-enabled devices. Having too much fillers will also bore the listeners and end up deleting your email before they even finish it.
The rise of the smart wearables will also contribute to voice technology being used to consume emails. Instead of having to read each email, people can simply listen to them while they exercise or while they are on the run and can’t stop to glance at their phones.
New trends will rule the email marketing world in the next few years. It’s important to keep up with the times to make sure you’re not losing out on prospects and opportunities.
The coming years will allow for more creative ways to curate emails. There will be more freedom to create targeted messages despite a vast range of subscribers. You can be more organized with profiling your subscribers depending on their personal information or consumer behavior.
But before you test out the new trends, make sure to clean your subscriber list so that no email gets wasted. You can use a verification tool such as Email List Verify in order to get rid of invalid or abandoned emails in your list.
