Email marketing is a popular, up-to-date, and influential tool for businesses to engage and reach out to customers effectively. While many may think that social media supersedes email marketing ideas, that is not the case. Email marketing services are still on par with social media and are expected to grow in 2020.

As smartphones and tablets have gained popularity, people are constantly checking their emails on the go, regardless of their profession or field. A survey by Marketo shows that 94% of internet users in the US have active emails, which is a total of 254.7 million users.

There are six things you should be aware of in 2020 regarding email marketing. Let’s go over each.

Email automation

Email automation has been around for a decade and it has drastically changed in these years, only to get better. With the advent of Marketing Cloud services, data has become much more accessible for marketers. It will continue to become more effective as artificial intelligence will get integrated with email marketing, thereby imparting a smooth customer experience and better email campaign performance.

Increase in the usage of artificial intelligence and machine learning will also enable email marketers to set performance benchmarks more easily. It will also lead to automation of the customer lifecycle stages and increase of these workflows. Automated emails will not only become more relevant for the end user but also have a human touch rather than a mechanically drafted email.

Dynamic segmentation

This year, marketers will have to be prepared for dynamic customer segmentation to update the segments with real-time data. In the past, you had to manually export the respective segment of the list. Dynamic segmentation will make it possible to instantly update the lists according to the customer’s previous interaction with the website and that too without any human intervention.

Accessible emails

Email marketers and designers will focus on building more accessible emails that will work for every user including the specially-abled ones. In 2020, email coding will get more powerful to ensure completely accessible emails. Alt-text will be used for every image to help visually impaired subscribers to read emails through screen-readers and understand what the email is all about.

2020 will see considerable improvements in the creation of accessible emails which will ultimately enhance the reach of your email marketing strategy.

User generated content

User-generated content works well for every marketing channel, including emails. It increases the subscriber engagement and builds their confidence to purchase from you. How many times have you purchased a product just because they had some awesome customer reviews to share? Well, to be honest, I have done it quite often. This strategy works great eve in ecommerce industry.

Also, email subscribers are three times more likely to share content on social media than leads acquired through any other channel. This means that social media integrated into email marketing gives the maximum user-generated content for future usage.

You can even ask for customer feedback through emails and strive for finer products or services according to what they have got to say.

Interactivity and responsiveness

With more and more people are accessing their emails on mobile devices rather than desktops or laptops, you ought to design emails optimized for mobile devices. The safest bet is to combine interactivity with responsiveness. While interactivity was merely used as a medium of entertaining the subscribers and drawing their attention, it will be used as a functional element in the coming years.

Just adding a GIF or embedding a video in the email would not suffice. It should add some value to the recipient. Around 66% of mobile users delete emails that are not mobile optimized. Subscribers will get to see animated calls-to-action, interactive hotspots, carousels, menus, accordions, and embedded surveys more often in their emails, giving immense popularity to mailable microsites.

Stricter anti-spam laws

You already know that GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) was launched in May 2018 to make sure that businesses protect the privacy of EU citizens and their personal data. It is expected that the guidelines will get stricter even for the other nations like the USA. They might revise their CAN-SPAM law and bring in amendments to prevent data breaches in the world of email.

Now that you know the importance of email marketing and how your business can use it to grow, it’s time to start making a plan for implementation. If you want to have successful email marketing campaigns set up by 2020, you’ll need to start considering how you will grow your email list, what types of content you will offer your subscribers, and how you can influence more conversions over time.

If you don’t have an email marketing expert on your team, it may be time to partner with an email marketing agency like Vervocity. We offer email marketing services and know what it takes to help you grow your email list and help you provide quality content that engages and converts your target audience. Feel free to call us today! (217) 222-1451