A new Ascend2 report, “Email Marketing Effectiveness,” shows how today’s marketers want to elevate their email initiatives as the new decade begins. Whether their desired goals are to drive more revenue or increase email engagement, I found the survey responses to be both interesting and on point – they echo what I’m hearing across our client base and in the market. Below is more insight into what’s on marketers’ wish lists this year along with my top recommendations for email marketing success in 2020:

1. 66% want better content: It’s been proven time and time again that sending emails that tout your great products or company is almost always NOT the best way to generate engagement with your audience. Instead, lead with concepts that your prospects can relate to – their challenges, struggles and bottlenecks. Campaigns should be strongly aligned to buyer need. The best content usually addresses pain points and provides multiple possible solutions or approaches. This can often best be communicated through offering a whitepaper, report, video, webinar, article or other piece that shows how your company is the top thought leader in the market on a particular issue, and an innovator in solving it.

2. 65% want more personalization:  Personalized emails have higher open rates, higher unique click rates and up to six times higher transaction rates compared to non-personalized emails. While there are many ways to send personalized emails, you can start by using the recipient’s name, collecting more relevant data, investing in creating personas, using triggered emails, determining the best time and place to send to your audience, and getting real by sending your messages from an actual person – not merely from your company itself.

Sophisticated marketers can use AI and automation to personalize email content at scale. But remember, as marketing tactics advance, user preferences remain important. Most users can tell when an email is automated, so keep the conversation real. And no matter how digital your business becomes, be sure to have human contacts available by phone, in person and online to ensure the customer experience is flawless.

3. 37% want better email design: While your email should offer high-value content, it must also be designed efficiently. That means not only using eye-catching visuals and graphics, but having a clear focus, using large enough text, including HTML and ALT text, using color carefully, and making the call-to-action (CTA) easily identifiable. And remember to keep it simple: one CTA is often enough. Also, you’ll want to make sure your emails work on myriad mobile devices – always test them internally to make sure they work properly with a variety of mobile platforms and environments.

4. 27% want more list segmentation: It’s a simple truth that segmented email lists drive better results. A few years ago MailChimp reported that segmenting can lead to about 14% better opens and 60% more clicks compared to non-segmented emails. For the best results, start with clean data, capture the right data from your subscribers, leverage firmagraphics to segment within your target organizations, and discover new segmentation categories that work well for your industry or offering. Here too, measuring and leveraging A/B testing will further improve your outcomes.

5. 24% want more triggered emails: Triggered emails are automatically sent out in response to behaviors or actions taken by customers or prospects in order to continue a conversation with them. Research estimates that triggered email campaigns produce double the open rates and quadruple the unique clicks of standard email messages. In my experience, they can be very valuable for both lead nurturing and post-sale engagement. Some of the best and easiest triggered emails you can create include welcome messages, abandoned carts or purchases, timed milestones, renewal reminders or inactive or dormant contacts.

No matter what your email goals are this year, just know that there are always plenty of options for achieving them. And don’t forget, our team at OMI is here for you. We specialize in email acquisition campaigns that fuel lead gen growth and turn prospects into paying customers. How can we support you in improving your email marketing results in 2020 and beyond? Get in touch with me to set up a time to talk.

Outward Media’s proven data cleansing services and targeted, accurate email data can enable you to achieve better email marketing ROI and, ultimately, convert more prospects into customers. Take a look at our video tutorials to find out how you can optimize your acquisition email marketing initiatives.