Trends 2021: Stay positive! The year is looking bright for email marketing

Before we get knee-deep on all the email marketing nitty-gritty, let’s just rewind to January 2020. As distant as that may seem, for many reasons. 

Back then, rumor had it that 42-year old email marketing was flat-lining. Until Covid-19 surfaced and changed everything. Εnormous increases in send volumes, high engagement, with Covid19-related content dominating it all. Despite the increase in emails, email open rates recorded a 20% increase since March, while at the same time, social media engagement was decreasing. After all, email offers a direct and much more personalized way of staying in touch with an audience, contrary to targeting their flooded and sometimes ‘impersonal’ social media feel.

In one of our previous blog posts, we touched on the general trends shaping Email, SMS, and push notification marketing. Now is the time to dig deeper into the trends that can get you at the top of your email game. 

Invest in your storytelling through automation

Today’s email scene is overcrowded. Cutting through it is definitely hard. It is not enough to just produce and sell. There are more viable ways to become visible, memorable, and wanted.

Using the power of storytelling combined with email marketing automation can greatly boost the effectiveness of your campaigns. As research suggests, automated emails enjoy 119% higher click rates than broadcast emails.

Stories have a great impact on customers’ perceptions, as they are more memorable and impactful than facts, and help create genuine connections. This is what your customers want in 2021. Storytelling combined with email marketing automation that uses sequences of trigger-based emails instead of ‘one-hit wonders’ emails.

Kickstart this year by investing in your storytelling through marketing automation and create a consistent and much friendlier communication flow between you and your customers. 

Next-generation marketing automation tools, like WayMore, can substantially help you in improving your email marketing results and eventually boost your sales. 

Leverage your users

Better known for its use by social media professionals, UGC has emerged as a strong email marketing trend in 2020, and it is looking like it will grow even bigger in 2021. 

There is strong evidence to suggest that user-generated content promotes conversions, with stats showing that 93% of customers read online reviews before buying a product. Therefore, by including these online reviews in your emails, you offer legitimacy to your brand and encourage positive buying recommendations.

Here are some ideas on how you use UGC content in your emails:

• Share videos, pictures, or simple messages, from past customers. 
• Use your emails to collect reviews and testimonials from your customers. Offering them an incentive could entice them even more.
• Create polls on your email and have readers react or respond to the emails. With their replies, you can collect insightful information to gain a comprehensive understanding of consumer attitudes.

So why not? This year get your customers involved in email content creation. 

Keep the design simple

We stand for simplicity as it makes your campaigns feel more real and authentic to your audience. Let us elaborate a bit further and investigate what is needed to make your emails a bit more minimal and your content stand out through your email design:

• Send uncluttered and well-structured emails. 
• Be bold when you want your design more than your content to drive action and evoke emotion. Color is great for that, driving both engagement and conversions while increasing brand awareness.
• Don’t overdo it with imagery, using unique color blocks will attract the customer’s attention and get the job done. 
• Invest in a content-driven strategy. Emails and subject lines should capture your target audience’s attention and tempt them to read them. 

With templates for almost every occasion and a super-easy drag and drop builder, through Routee’s email platform you can experiment with some of the above suggestions when you start building your 2021 email campaigns. 

Think mobile-first

Building on the above-mentioned point, research suggests that if you want to be relevant and provide value to your customers, you need to make adjustments in your copy and your design to fit your smartphone screens. Why is that? 81% of customers across each demographic, check their emails using a mobile device. You surely don’t want to make a bad impression. 

Another reason, why this trend should not be overlooked is that the growth in purchases made from a mobile device has reported an increase of 33.3%, in just four years. And if that doesn’t do it for you, mCommerce is predicted to dominate 54% of sales by 2021. The future is looking rather bright for mCommerce, it would be a pity for brands to miss this opportunity. 

If your business is small, skip social media, go with email

Establishing an email marketing strategy for your small business may seem like a daunting task. That is why many small businesses focus entirely on social media channels, to connect with their audience. However, what many do not realize is that no matter who your ideal customers are, or where they live, work, etc, it is most likely that they have an email account where you can reach them, rather than a social media account. 

When done right, email marketing can help you create more awareness for your business, expand your customer base, build customer trust and loyalty, and ultimately grow your revenue. According to Score, for every dollar you invest, email marketing can deliver $42. Before you embark on email marketing, make sure to use it as a relationship-building two-way communication channel, rather than a selling tool.

If you are ready to kickstart your small business email strategy, then go ahead and contact Routee and one of our email experts will guide you through the creation of your email campaign.

Email for the win!

40-year-old email marketing is definitely not looking its age. It stands strong and ready to take on the challenges as they come. 

Although 2020 has shown to every one of us that not everything in life can be predicted, we are sure that these email trends for 2021, will help you optimize your email marketing strategy and grow your brand.