Our Top 6 Predictions for Email Marketing in 2020

As we ring in the new year in the very near future, we think ahead to new changes about to come. As a business, thinking ahead will have you ready for those emerging trends that come to light when it comes to email marketing.

1. Design for mobile

As of Q4 of 2019, 42% of emails are viewed on mobile devices, which is an increase of over 20% since last year. We expect this acceleration of mobile usage to continue into and beyond 2020. With that in mind, all digital marketing needs to design with mobile in mind.

Some of the mobile-focused changes to help your presence are:

• Mobile-first web and email design
• Accelerated mobile pages (AMPs)
• SMS popularity continues increasing
• Rich communication services (RCS) messaging

With mobile viewing, not only does new technology come into play, but also different design thinking. Your quick wins are designing for mobile viewing by way of your layout of copy and images. For example, mobile viewers have minimal space to view your message, so emails must be clear and concise with a CTA no later than the second frame. Otherwise, you risk the chance of abandonment.

ALWAYS review your copy in the mobile format along with desktop and web format. Some copy that looks fantastic in desktop mode is a hot mess in mobile format.

2. Embrace minimalism

Remember that our ultimate goal for email is compelling your reader to click-through. Once upon a time, we basically wrote blogs (before blogging was a thing) in our emails, full of multiple images and hyperlinks to articles and facts.

In today’s mobile email, combined with the fact that the average office worker receives 124 emails each day, our new goal is simple. While we dream of our audience desperately hanging on to every sentence we craft, we must design with reader behaviors in mind. We need a simple email design that is easy to scan and digest. Think white space, simple images to fit small screens, and blocks of color, drawing the eyes where you want them.

Next, we must ask ourselves what our email can do without. For instance, the most common email goal is to get the recipient to a landing page or blog to encourage website activity. With that in mind, much of your content can reside at the destination instead of the leading email. Provide a short and enticing teaser with a call-to-action to click for the rest.

Also, analyze your text. You’re not trying to pad an email with an SEO dictated number of words like you might a landing page. Identify opportunities to trim your verbiage, like: “Forever and ever.” Read more editor frustrations regarding redundant phrases from Reader’s Digest.

Now for the overachieving minimalist – we can also consider wearable mobile devices, such as smart watches, as an example of our canvases becoming even MORE limited. Can you imagine trying to design for the face of a watch?

3. More effort to connect with your audience

If your inbox was ever graced with spam advertisements for lawsuits, weight loss, and mail-order bride clubs, you understand the value in a well-targeted audience.  You probably don’t identify with any of those topics and wonder how they ever got your email (as you click the DELETE or SPAM buttons).

Looking forward to 2020, we want to create campaigns that connect with our recipients’ interests. We can do this first by segmenting lists. Perhaps you’ve dabbled with segmenting already. Now brainstorm other segments you could build. It could be by gender, location, age, interests, purchase history, and email activity. You get the picture. With this information, you can target entire campaigns dedicated to these groups.

What’s most valuable to your company? Your answers may lead to additional information to collect from signup forms, but remember there’s a delicate balance there as well. If you demand too much information, you risk the possibility of abandonment before they finish.

Build an inclusive community

With the growth of social media, another marketing strategy is bringing your email contacts into an exclusive community. This community gets them better engaged as participants with your company as well as each other. You can continue to provide valuable content on this platform, but also throw in the occasional comic or photo of your pet to personalize the experience. You can use your email to alert them of new topics or entries along the way.

Interactive Emails

Emails are traditionally used as gateways to other locations, such as landing pages, blogs, and order pages. We expect 2020 to bring more interactive features to engage with our audience. Some of the developing tools that will get us there are rollover images, embedded video, and email carousels.

4. Less is more

When people sign up for emails, they look forward to updates and the occasional newsletter because they have a genuine interest in your brand and what you offer. They want to stay connected. What we must resist is the temptation to bombard them with emails at every turn. Emails should be limited to weekly touches, maybe two if you have something really compelling to share. Send too many, and you increase your chances of them saying enough is enough by hitting the Unsubscribe button. Worse yet, the mark your email as Spam, causing a blemish on your email reputation.

5. Bring on the “Emailinator”

Yes, that was a play on The Terminator, but we are talking about Artificial Intelligence or AI. This term isn’t as scary as it used to be. It’s quite useful in marketing already, and we expect continued evolution through 2020.

In email marketing, AI can help around the automation of processes. The intelligence part comes from AI systems shaping actions based on past behaviors. We see this already with automatic responses to new signups being a perfect example.

6. Tighter Rules

Expect some enhancements of the CAN-SPAM regulations for the US as we make our way into the next decade. We expect new privacy laws to be introduced or at least suggested since the latest waves of data breaches that are becoming uncomfortably common. We expect these regulations to continue to grow into consumers having expanded rights over their data, and inbox providers will be their gatekeepers.

Streamline with email templates

As these innovations and regulations continue to evolve, keeping yourself in best practices becomes a tedious quest. A good email template not only keeps you out of trouble with the regulatory details but also creates a consistent branding that makes your messages easy to recognize. MailBakery has all the ingredients to whip you up the perfect email pastry for your clients. We will code your perfectly crafted design or create a new recipe for you with our design services. If you have a design you’d like to try, your first email coding is free with MailBakery.  If you’ve not yet tried our delicious MailBakery creations, check out some samples.

Bon Appetit!