The future is now! As we sprint through the first few months of 2020, never have truer words been spoken.

This new decade brings with it concepts and ideas that we wouldn’t have dreamed of using as communication tools 10 years ago.

Concepts such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning were what Hollywood Sci-Fi movies were made of and smartphones being able to read your email to you, sounded too creepy to even fathom.

But, the future really is now, and  digital marketers have never before had such exciting tools at their disposal.

I’ve listed a few trends  below that I really LOVE and am looking forward to exploring further in 2020, and these are just the tip of the iceberg.

Most are not new trends, but 2020 is the year you should consider using these to do better and be more efficient with your digital marketing efforts:

Newsletters are old fashioned, and while once-off marketing campaigns will always have their place, automation is the future. It’s what all the cool kids are doing. Why?

Because automated emails are hyper-personalized, relevant and timely. In a world of screens, the personal touch will always reign supreme and while the idea of automation sounds impersonal it is, in fact, the very opposite.

Automation allows marketers more opportunities to surprise and delight customers than ever before – don’t underestimate the power of a birthday wish, or the opportunity to convert a potential customer into an actual buyer through a cleverly created welcome series.

It’s still all about enhancing customer experience at the end of the day. This remains a huge focus for many organizations this year and indeed a key driver of marketing and ultimately, business success.

So, if customer experience is the new marketing battlefront, then email is one of your most powerful weapons.

According to The KPMG Customer Experience Excellence Report of 2019, there are six pillars of customer experience:

Email, and the use of carefully and well-considered content, can help achieve all of these customer experience goals for an organization. By its very nature, email is customer-focused, personalized and helpful.

Today’s consumers crave personalization and relevancy to stay engaged with a brand and its messaging. AI helps  analyze your customer’s behaviors and interests, and generate insights. This in turn allows you to tailor emails for each individual subscriber.

AI allows you to take email personalization to the next level. It means that segmenting your marketing efforts to an ‘audience of one’ is no longer just a dream. By understanding your customers better and having insight into their interests, you can start matching your products and services to their likes and dislikes. Using algorithms, you can start personalizing content so that it resonates with your customers and ensures better results for you.

Today, social media and chatbots are commonplace in marketing communication strategies. These tools have changed the way that consumers expect to interact with a brand, and therefore have changed the way brands communicate with consumers.

Conversational marketing is more prevalent than ever before and email content will imitate this trend by becoming more authentic and more humanized. Storytelling and user-generated content (UGC) will become widely accepted by brands.

Machine learning and AI will also allow for better content selection, by helping you decipher what content should be sent over which digital medium.   Copy optimization will enable you to generate dynamic content on the fly, ensuring that the content is relevant and personalized.

Unsurprisingly, email accessibility had a massive focus in 2019 and with the World Health Organisation releasing stats that suggest that more than one billion people worldwide are living with a disability, 2020’s focus will be much the same.

Email marketers are always looking for new and improved ways to deliver a perfect email experience to our readers. Inclusive design in email will become as prominent as responsive design was before – testing for accessibility will  become a must this year with a lot more emphasis being placed on colors, copy, text and imagery.

Gone are the days when testing an email in different email clients was sufficient. In 2020, you need to consider concepts such as Dark Mode settings and voice-activated apps (VoiceOver).

The way we communicate is always changing, and as I said before, the future is now.  By embracing these trends, you can continue to produce great emails and digital strategies that will strengthen your relationship with your readers and ensure not only loyal subscribers, but also loyal customers.