6 Email Marketing Trends to Drive More Sales in 2020

Back in 1971, when the first email was sent by com­put­er engi­neer Ray Tom­lin­son, no one could have pre­dict­ed it would become an effec­tive dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy to inter­act with exist­ing and poten­tial customers.

With the total num­ber of 2.5 bil­lion email users world­wide, email mar­ket­ing is a great tool to reach out to your tar­get audi­ence, deliv­er a brand mes­sage, keep in touch with your read­ers, acquire cus­tomers, and even pro­vide cus­tomer sup­port, no mat­ter what your busi­ness niche is.

But here’s the deal:

An aver­age busi­ness user sends and receives 126 emails per day in 2019.

With a great num­ber of bulk mails and unso­licit­ed spam, your let­ter may get buried in the inbox or annoy your poten­tial cus­tomers. In oth­er words, it takes knowl­edge and prac­tice to run a suc­cess­ful email mar­ket­ing campaign.

Why bother about email marketing in 2020?

While it seems dif­fi­cult to cut through the noise with email mar­ket­ing, 59% of mar­keters still see the most ROI from email. Why? The num­bers speak for themselves:

• 61% of cus­tomers want brands to pro­vide them with infor­ma­tion via email
• 59% of con­sumers claim that mar­ket­ing emails influ­ence their pur­chase decisions
• 49% of users say that they want to receive pro­mo­tion­al emails from their favorite brands on a week­ly basis

Inter­est­ed in mak­ing the most out of email mar­ket­ing? Read on to learn what six trends can help you dri­ve more sales.

Six email marketing trends that can drive more sales in 2020

1) Minimalist email design

Since users receive a great num­ber of brand emails, it’s cru­cial for any busi­ness to stand out from the crowd. When it comes to cre­at­ing eye-catch­ing emails, most peo­ple believe that bright and col­or­ful images can attract atten­tion. How­ev­er, plain text emails are bet­ter as they are more authen­tic and clear. Thus, it’s no won­der that min­i­mal­ist email design helps to sell more.

In the era of paid posts and over­ly-pol­ished ads, cus­tomers crave authen­tic­i­ty, so send­ing sim­ple emails helps to human­ize your brand and estab­lish an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion with cus­tomers. That also means that com­pa­nies can stay one step ahead of their com­peti­tors who focus on their prod­ucts, not the cus­tomers and their needs. To sum up, the min­i­mal­ist email design helps to:

• Opti­mize email load time
• Deliv­er a pol­ished brand message
• Keep a focus on the offer, not the image

With min­i­mal­ist email design, it doesn’t take much time or effort to get the main idea of the mes­sage. More­over, the com­pa­ny helps both offline and online shop­pers make the most out of the offer: Since 70% of con­sumers report using an emailed dis­count with­in, it also increas­es sales.

When you send min­i­mal­ist design emails, you gain more cus­tomers’ atten­tion to the offer, not the image. As a result, you share a clear brand mes­sage with your audi­ence that helps to sell more.

2) Hyper-personalized automated campaigns

In 2020, email mar­ket­ing will be not about hav­ing a one-size-fits-all approach to reach­ing your audi­ence. With a focus on psy­chol­o­gy, brands can increase an open rate if they put their clients first and think about their indi­vid­ual prob­lems. It’s in our nature to talk much about our­selves and our inter­ests, so it’s no won­der that remem­ber­ing someone’s name is a proven way to con­vince peo­ple to buy from you.

And when it comes to email mar­ket­ing, hyper-per­son­al­ized auto­mat­ed cam­paigns are the future of per­son­al­iza­tion that gives great results: Seg­ment­ed and tar­get­ed emails gen­er­ate 58% of all rev­enue. With hyper-per­son­al­iza­tion, com­pa­nies can con­sid­er brows­ing behav­ior and real-time data to send high­ly-rel­e­vant emails.

With auto­mat­ed cam­paigns, it’s eas­i­er to col­lect the right data and deliv­er the right mes­sage with­out spend­ing much effort and time.

3) Mobile-first optimization

The num­ber of mobile phone users is pre­dict­ed to reach 7.26 bil­lion in 2020. Using mobile phones help mod­ern peo­ple save their time and solve their var­i­ous prob­lems on the go: From read­ing emails to mak­ing pur­chase deci­sions. Not only around 61% of all emails are opened and read on mobile devices, but also 79% of mobile users have made a pur­chase online with their device in the last 6 months which means cus­tomers are ready to learn more about your prod­uct and buy it with the gadget.

But here comes the ugly truth: only 20% of email cam­paigns are opti­mized for mobile devices. This means cus­tomers can’t read your email and it gets buried in the inbox.

A well-opti­mized email is clean and sim­ple to look great on smart­phones. Once you’ve opti­mized your email for mobile, you’re more like­ly to increase the email click-through rate.

Mobile email mar­ket­ing is tak­ing the world by storm, so opti­miz­ing your email cam­paign for mobile devices is a must if you want to deliv­er your brand mes­sage and increase sales.

4) Social media integration

In the mul­ti­tude of social media plat­forms, it seems every user has found a net­work to join. The num­ber of social media users is con­stant­ly grow­ing: Accord­ing to Emarsys, about 42% of the pop­u­la­tion (3.2 bil­lion users) are on social media. For brands, this means an alter­na­tive way to reach their tar­get audi­ences, estab­lish a con­nec­tion with them, and deliv­er the brand mes­sage with­out being too salesy.