No longer is email looked upon as a form of marketing from a past era. In fact, email marketing is more powerful than it's ever been with an ROI of $38 for every $1 spent on email marketing.
This past year, email was given a newfound hip legitimacy with popular Millennial websites and personalities launching their own newsletters. Some of those names and sites are Bill Simmons' The Ringer Newsletter, Lena Dunham's Lenny Letter, and Quartz's Daily Brief. A major reason why email is having a renaissance is due to changing behaviors by readers, and while 2016 was a great year, it's important to stay ahead of the game by knowing this year's trends now before it's too deep in the year to incorporate them into your own email marketing strategy.
Email Design
Email design in 2017 will be a style that incorporates an easy-to-read minimalism ethos that will be pleasant to look at and give readers valuable content to ingest. This is a sharp contrast from yesteryear's emails cluttered with irrelevant information and generally constructed as a visual maze. Using images in an email will still be okay but the use of gifs and other interactive elements, such as countdown clocks, will also become more of a common practice so don't hesitate to use them as well.
Copywriting Tactics
The best copywriting style for email will be one that is personalized for readers and feel authentic instead of generic. When a reader takes the time to read a newsletter or email communication, it's probably during a natural break in their day or at a time when they are on a bus or waiting on a line at their favorite lunch spot. During these breaks, a reader is open and willingly making a choice to take on information. If you want them to keep on reading, don't send your readers stale press releases or information that is of little use to them. Instead, try entertaining them or just offer them something useful.
Mobile-Friendly Email
A big reason why mobile-friendly email is important is that most people are reading email on their phones these days instead of desktops and laptops. Just as websites need to be optimized for mobile, so do emails. In 2017, all email communications and newsletters should be optimized for mobile phones. An email someone gets on their phone that is clunky and visually unappealing will get deleted instantly.
Perhaps a big reason why email has made such a strong comeback is because of how much time people are spending on social media. With people spending less time on websites and mostly accessing information through their social media channels, email is going to become a critical outlet for companies and brands to lean on in order to reach people. A few years ago before social media was so prevalent in people's lives, people spent more time web surfing and visiting their favorite websites. Now that social media consumption has made web surfing less common, email has become a valuable avenue to transmit information to potential customers. If you are still on the fence about the importance of email marketing, you could very well be missing out on a huge opportunity.
