Emails are the oldest digital marketing channel, but they turned out to be incredibly sturdy and able to adapt to new generations of customers. Although the basics of email marketing remain intact, the system is changing constantly and looks for fresh ways to encourage user engagement.
A study shows that the average email click-through rate for all industries is 2.4%, but it gets much higher if you only look at top-performing campaigns. What seems to be their secret?
The answer is easy – successful email marketers create and follow the latest industry trends. They pay attention to every aspect of the process, with email newsletter design being one of the critical success factors. If you want to achieve the same level of productivity, keep reading to see the top eight trends in the design of email newsletters in 2020.
- Infographics replace email copies
You probably know that the average subscriber is not much of a reader, so it’s always a good idea to cut down the word count. But what happens when you have to insert a whole lot of information into the message? In this case, most marketers will replace purely textual copies with infographics.
According to the report, infographics improve reading comprehension by as much as 50%. Clever use of colors and content organization will help subscribers to digest information that they would miss otherwise. Although infographics do not fit every email campaign, they definitely augment this marketing channel and increase user engagement when used strategically.
- Make emails more attractive with GIFs
Are you managing a brand that needs to stand out by placing messages with a tweak? If the answer is positive, then you should try adding GIFs to your emails because it makes the content more attractive and visually-appealing.
Unlike static images, GIFs add a notion of movement and dynamic to email design. Jake Gardner, a graphic designer at the case study writing service and custom essay papers service explains that well-designed GIFs support the primary content of the message: “As such, they perfectly suit businesses with younger audience groups that understand pop culture references or simply appreciate a dose of healthy humor.”
- Think about gamification elements
Gamification is another component that refreshes email newsletter design in 2020, but let’s check out the true meaning of the concept first. By definition, gamification is the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts.
This basically means you can enrich email design with highly interactive features and hence skyrocket user engagement.
For instance, Acid designed an interactive email packed with gamification components such as ticking clocks and questions and answers. Such tricks helped Acid popularize the services and become the most notable example of gamification email newsletter design.
Gamification does take a fair share of work, but it’s definitely worth your effort.
- Minimalistic design
Minimalism is by no means a new thing in design, but it is becoming increasingly important in email marketing as well. Less is more – the ground philosophy of minimalism – fits perfectly into strategic objectives of email marketing. How come?
The purpose of every message is to highlight a key idea and inspire subscribers to take action. Using minimalism as your email design technique, you can remove unnecessary elements and point out features that really matter to your company in a given moment.
Of course, negative space is what you will use the most here as it enables you to clean the surface and leave the focal points for key messages.
- Dark mode
Dark mode has gradually turned into one of the most significant trends of modern design. We are not talking about email newsletters only but also about other systems and platforms. Just think about Facebook or YouTube and you will get the point instantly.
The same principle now applies to email design as you should allow subscribers to choose the preferable background color. Some users find a dark mode to be more exclusive and attractive than traditional solutions, but the main benefit is that people with major light sensitivity can enjoy a more comfortable experience while reading your emails.
This design solution can be optional, so you can let subscribers pick the option that suits their preferences. And you wouldn’t make a mistake here as some reports suggest that more than 90% of users prefer dark mode.
- Alternative content layout
The vast majority of email newsletters look the same. You can hardly see the difference between brands as everyone is using standard templates with headers, footers, product images, and descriptions. If you want to differentiate and impress the audience with fresh ideas, perhaps you could test alternative content layouts.
If you think about it for a moment, you are going to realize that it’s easy to think outside the box and break the grids. You can mix elements, replace them, change their positions, curb the columns, and do many other tricks to create a fresh but fully functional email newsletter layout.
- Take advantage of AMP
The average Internet user wants to get things done as quickly as possible. Email subscribers follow the same logic, which is exactly why marketers are embracing the AMP technology in 2020.
What is that? AMP allows email marketers to embed interactive elements like carousels, accordions, confirmation, purchase buttons, and similar to their emails without needing to open a new tab to visit a website.
To put it simply, AMP reduces the number of clicks to the bare minimum and makes user experiences super-simple. This is what modern users want, so you might as well give it to them.
- Versatile typography
When it comes to typography, almost every brand choose it to play it safe and user traditional fonts that already proved to be readable. However, the truth is that email subscribers are open to new solutions and willing to see versatile fonts in your messages.
If you come up with a good-looking design, don’t be afraid of using multiple fonts. At the same time, you can play with font dimensions and cursive to make the message feel more dynamic and colorful. That is not something that will chase away subscribers, but it will add a slight touch of delicacy and creativity to your email campaigns.
Up to You!
Email newsletter design is very interesting because it allows you to experiment and capitalize on professional creativity. In this post, we showed you eight design trends that dominate 2020. You can hardly add each one to your email design strategy, but you can certainly choose the one that matches the branding strategy and use it to impress subscribers with fresh email newsletter templates
