Time and again, email marketing has proved its effectiveness, proving the speculations of its death wrong. According to Litmus, emails bring an ROI of $42 for every $1 spent. This is the biggest testimony that email is very much alive and outshining all the other marketing channels.

What started off as a simple medium for internal communication has grown to be one of the most successful platforms to reach out to prospects or customers and promote your products or services.

To understand more about how email marketing will change in 2021 (and beyond), we approached 29 industry stalwarts and asked them about the trends to look forward to.

Let me tell you about some of the most interesting insights that they shared with us:

1. Avoiding Tone-Deaf Emails During Times of Turbulence

Magan Le (Content Marketing Manager, Litmus)

Empathetic and emotional messaging is the need of the hour and this trend will continue to gain pace even in the days to come. According to Magan Le, many individuals and businesses are still going through tough times. Therefore, email marketers should make sure that the tones of their email reflect sensitivity and consideration for the readers. It is of utmost importance to pivot your messaging according to the situation and keep optimizing your email marketing strategy.

Here is an email by Really Good Emails that expresses grief and urges people to stop the hate. It is a brilliant way of letting the readers know that they care for the people around and their employees. They have taken a different approach from the usually hilarious emails, to show the users that they are in this together.

2. AMP and the Interactive Experience

Sergey Syerkin (Email deliverability/Anti-abuse at Harlem Next, Founder at Email Consul)

Sergey Syerkin endorsed advanced tech trends like AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) in emails. With AMP in emails, you will be able to skyrocket the subscriber engagement and take the user experience to the next level.

AMP in email helps you create interactive emails through which the user can take action from the email itself without switching to the landing page or website. For example: The email recipient can book a ticket, RSVP to an event, browse through the deals, and fill a form right in the email.

Take a look at this email example by Pinterest. Through AMP technology, they have created an app-like experience in the email. The user can save the images and check out the feed without being redirected to the website or app.

This technology can even revolutionize the world of speed dating if apps like Tinder or OkCupid incorporate it in their emails. Imagine being able to swipe right or left and sending messages from the email. It will set a new benchmark in the world of speed dating.

3. Utilizing BIMI for Improved Email Deliverability

Andy Thorpe (Product Owner, Pure360)

Andy enlightened us about an interesting trend, BIMI, that is likely to gain immense momentum in the times to come. BIMI stands for Brand Indicators for Message Identification. As the name suggests, BIMI is a technology with the help of which you can display your logo beside the company name and message in the email inbox.

The objective of BIMI is to ensure email deliverability and prevent any phishing or spoofing attempt through emails. It also helps you draw the subscriber’s attention and instantly let them know the sender of the email. By showing your logo in the inbox, you can build brand credibility and instil a sense of trust in the readers. As a result, it increases the likelihood of your email getting opened and read.

Although a few email clients, like Gmail, support this advancement at the moment, it is very much possible that all the major email clients will soon extend support to it.

Here’s a screenshot to demonstrate how BIMI works.

Source: https://www.litmus.com/resources/state-of-email/

4. Utilizing Agile Email Marketing for More Personalization

Kath Pay (CEO, Founder, and Author, Holistic Email Marketing)

More and more marketing professionals will adopt agile email marketing for their business. Agile email marketing is a process standard that primarily allows you to cut down on the time taken to produce a single email template. Just like while scaling a mountain, you have to take small steps and acclimatize at the beginning, agile email marketing follows the same principle of taking smaller steps to achieve bigger milestones.

By employing an agile email marketing approach, you can reach out to the subscribers with more relevant messages that bring conversions. For instance: A real estate company can send out more personalized emails with dynamic content blocks with the help of agile methodology principles.

5. Having an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

Angelina Hagan (Manager, Deliverability and Industry Relations, Cordial)

According to Angelina, brands will go for an omnichannel marketing strategy and pay attention to push notifications, text messages, social media marketing, and chatbots in addition to email marketing. Your subscribers must get a consistent user experience across the different platforms with the same communication. Also, it is a great idea to ask for the customer’s preferences and reach out to them on the platform that they like the most. For instance: Some users may prefer emails over in-app notifications while some others like to receive text messages.

6. Harnessing the Power of Email Automation

Gregory Zakowicz (Marketing Strategist and Director of Content, Omnisend)

Gregory shared some interesting facts with us. He revealed that the conversion rate of standard promotional emails in the year 2020 was 6.5 percent while it was 29.5 percent for automated emails and 2.7 percent for SMS. Together, they marked a 95 percent or greater year-over-year (YoY) lift. He believes that email automation will be a major growth engine for eCommerce businesses. They must harness the power of welcome emails, cart abandonment emails, and browse abandonment emails.

In addition, he also endorsed the incorporation of text messaging into email automation.

Wrapping Up

Email marketing has evolved and advanced by leaps and bounds in the past decade. It is still undergoing metamorphosis with email geeks constantly trying to incorporate exciting features for the subscribers.

To learn more about the email marketing trends 2021 from all the 29 experts, just head to the infographic by Email Uplers. It will surely help you create more effective emails in the future.

Oh, and you can also download the ebook if you want to access the infographic offline.


Source: 29 Email Experts on Email Marketing Trends to watch for in 2021

 

Author Bio

Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest growing custom email design and coding companies, and specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and free responsive HTML email templates in addition to providing email automation, campaign management, and data integration & migration services. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.