Trends in E-mail Marketing to Look Forward to in 2021

If things happen as per our plan, then the feeling is amazing, but if they don’t then what do you plan on doing? Many a time, the latter is the case and it is best to be prepared beforehand, but how does that happen?  What happens if your future planning is in place, and that can happen if you are in the know of the latest upcoming trends.

E-mail-based marketing has always been the first and foremost step of any personalized marketing initiative, it forms the cornerstone and that won’t be wrong to say. As many people focus less on this aspect of marketing and believe that there’s no future in it, but a study by Hubspot has highlighted the importance of it, especially post-COVID, ‘Email marketers are sending 27% more emails than they then did pre-coronavirus.’

Let’s go through some trends which should be taken into consideration for email marketing in the year 2021:

1. Personalization is the key to forging great relations- Nowadays, when everyone is too busy in their own lives and the personal touch has been lost, impersonal and run-of-the-mill emails or data sharing doesn’t carry any value and mostly goes to the junk mail of the target audience. Hence, to forge long-lasting relationships and making the customer feel valued, it is important to connect on a deeper human level, and your sent e-mails can play a pivotal role, in this process. You should draft deeper, personal mails, yet focused on dynamic content, which encourages healthier future engagement; the main focus should be on having contextual and personal communication.
2. Active use of AI in E-mail marketing- With the use and application of AI pervading across all sectors, even in our personal space, goes on to show that it is indeed the future. The more people are accustomed to it and are able to use it better, the more convenient things shall become. Though it has taken to a larger widespread area, but still many are skeptical towards using this in their business applications, due to confusion or lack of clarity, et al. Many are unclear as to how to use AI for e-mail based marketing, but the truth be told, it’s hard escaping it because the plethora of information which is available online can be made the best use of and customized to suit the marketing needs of any organization with the help of AI-based tools and technology. AI-based tools can help you categorize your audience, help in better outreach, customizing your content, and many other ways to improve your digital marketing strategy.
3. Privacy Issues- For a consumer to be trusting of you, you should take their privacy concerns and issues into due consideration. Personal data privacy should be of your utmost priority and this still remains a top point of focus, though with the launch of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in 2018, the world of email marketing underwent a transformation, but yet a few crease-folds have to be ironed out. As per data by NTT, only 8%of consumers trust brands to keep their personal information safe. This shows the massive lack of trust people have over their data protection.

There is always an option of providing your consumers with the option of unsubscribing from your mailing list, therefore not spamming or over-crowding their inboxes, yet at the same time devoting your time and resources to understand to creatively engage with those customers who are interested to know what you wish to offer and want to forge a future relationship.

4. In-mail Videos- Anything with creative visualization always elicits viewers’ interests and there are higher chances of catching viewers opening such emails. Videos in emails have been a catching trend in digital marketing these days; due to the pandemic, modes of online interaction like video conferencing, podcasts, webinars are on the rise, therefore videos to be used on an interactive basis are on the rise, too. It’s a good idea to embed the video link in the mail, this way the user can open the video on your website, Youtube, or any landing page since many big e-mail platforms don’t allow videos to be played in email.
5. Use of 3-D images- 3-D images are a good way of adding a dash of creativity to your mails and capturing the attention of your audience. 3-D images can breathe life into your mails and plain text. Understandably, creating 3-D images every time can be a costly affair as well as time-consuming, therefore you can use stock images or shadow-based images to create visual depth imagery. Other trends too, which you can use these days are monochrome effects, animations, doodles, neumorphism, etc.
6. Enhanced mobile-based experience- With people having easier and convenient access to phones, than desktops and PCs, naturally the mobile-based browsing shall be higher. Therefore optimizing your mails as per mobile server shall be a good idea, as that will deliver better results; and this can happen if you use an effective mail editor. You can incorporate beautiful texts, dark themes, and modes, GIFs, etc. into the mail. The end goal should be to have limited yet effective content, which is contextual, accessible yet mobile-friendly.

 With 2020 being a roller-coaster ride, many planned marketing strategies either failed, didn’t take off, or didn’t yield desirous results, having said that unpredictability shall remain high even for this year, but it’s always a good idea to be prepared before-hand. Therefore, these trends in e-mail marketing can give a push to your marketing campaigns… act, because the floor is yours.