5 Email Marketing Trends To Watch In 2021

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Some marketers believe that email marketing has become outdated and ineffective, and the truth is that they’re simply not applying it well enough. Email marketing is alive and thriving - for those brands where it’s properly (and creatively) managed. Emails are particularly crucial in today’s business environment as they help with managing communication, drip campaign sending, and personalization of messages, to mention a few uses.

Email marketing has changed a lot over the years, as has the world of marketing overall. The way brands communicate with their audience and potential customers has completely changed. This isn’t to say that email marketing isn’t an incredibly hard part of the job, with often low engagement percentages for no apparent reason. The brands that stick it out and continue to innovate are the ones who still get consistent, valuable engagement through their email campaigns. 

Here’s a look at how they’re managing to make this time-proven method still work for them. 

1. Deep Customer Research

The only true driver behind any successful email (and any other) marketing campaign is research. Knowing the customer’s wants, needs, and challenges is half the battle won, but it shouldn’t stop there. Humans are unpredictable, and analyzing their behavioral patterns is a full-time job on its own. 

Plus, the days of sweeping generalizations about market segments are gone. The marketing landscape has moved on to deeper individualization of audience data to form better insights into every customer. 

2. The Personal Touch

 Most marketers are probably sick of hearing about personalization by now, but it’s imperative to the success of email, nonetheless. According to Instapage, personalized email marketing generates an average ROI of 122% - this could be a lifeline for many businesses. Right now, individual personalization is still fairly limited, given the amount of time it takes to manually personalize every email sequence. Also, automatic personalization is still way off - but many believe it is the future of email. 

With the help of AI and big data, automated hyper-personalized messages will be the next trend down the line. Everyone’s just waiting for the technology to become more accessible. Still, some things are possible now, like:

  • Dynamic content

  • Optimized send times and frequency based on the subscriber’s history, and

  • Limited customization based on user behavior (such as shopping cart abandonment). 

3. A Focus On Mobile 

The mobile experience has become a crucial part of every segment of digital marketing, from email to PPC ads. Mobile devices form 46% of all email opens, and 73% of millennials prefer to receive communication from companies via email, according to Hubspot. 

By all accounts, mobile is just getting more important with every generation, so optimizing for mobile screens is essential. Somehow, many brands still fail in this area, leaving subscribers with poorly framed messages that look terrible on a smaller screen. Always make sure you check what the design looks like on a mobile screen before sending an email.

4. Let The Message Be A Natural Continuation Of The Buyer’s Journey

This is an extension of personalization but warrants its mention because of how important it is. Email sequences should start at a natural conversation point based on where the buyer is in their journey up until that point. This largely depends on how well other marketing efforts are designed to catch email sign-ups at different stages and provide information about the customer.

Many email campaigns also fork into different paths depending on: 

  • Where the customer signs on, 

  • Which emails they open, 

  • What they interact with, and 

  • What information the company has about them.

5. Utilize the Right Tools

There are so many tools ready to help marketers gain insight and optimize their marketing efforts, from analytics and automation to design and sequencing planners. There’s a new innovation in this field every day, as well, with tools that become increasingly integrated and automated for complete package offerings. Plus, with the amount of competition out there, even small startups can afford good email software without breaking the bank.

Not every tool has an obvious direct benefit, though. For example, a VPN can provide an unfettered look into local market segments by simulating a local IP address. Also, it works well no matter which market you’re trying to focus on. 

The pandemic has certainly changed the marketing landscape, perhaps forever but email is sticking around. Emails should form a central part of any business strategy to keep up engagement and sales or improve them.