2020 is behind us, and email marketing came out of it looking quite different. COVID-19 forced a lot of businesses to lean harder on digital channels, and email was no exception. Here are six trends worth paying attention to this year.
1. Bold and bright colours in your email campaigns
One trend picking up pace in 2021 is bold, bright design. Your subscribers are getting a lot of email every day, and a campaign that pops with colour is more likely to stop the scroll.
Not every campaign needs to go loud, but adding a few bright elements can lift engagement. A good example is this Brampton Wines campaign, which grabs attention and brings the brand's colours to life.
2. Text-only emails
The plain-text email is making a comeback, and it can outperform a fully designed campaign in the right context. That might sound like it contradicts the first trend, but the two serve different purposes.
A plain-text email works well for a message from your CEO, an urgent customer update, or anything that benefits from feeling personal and direct. Below is a solid example from Greentech Machinery, which used a plain-text email to ask customers to complete a survey.
3. Next-level personalisation
Adding a first name to a subject line is a start, but customers increasingly expect more. Think hyper-personalisation: content shaped by behaviour, preferences, and purchase history rather than just a name merge tag.
The practical way to get there is through segments and dynamic content. According to Lucid, roughly 20% of subscribers will unsubscribe from a newsletter if the content or promotions do not match their interests. Adidas is a strong example of this done well, combining dynamic content based on gender and purchase history with influencer marketing to serve each recipient something relevant.
4. Automation
The goal of any marketing effort is to get the right message to the right person at the right time. That becomes harder to do manually as your list grows.
Automation solves that problem. You set up personalised, relevant communication once, and it goes to the right subscriber at the right moment, whether that is a welcome series, a post-purchase follow-up, or a re-engagement sequence. In 2021, more businesses are building these flows out rather than relying on one-off sends.
5. Increased investment in email marketing
More companies are putting more budget into email than they were a year ago. The channel held up well through 2020, and that has given a lot of marketing teams the confidence to invest properly.
More spend means more room to personalise at scale, clean your database with data verification, and learn more about your subscribers through data enrichment. None of that requires a massive budget increase, but it does require treating email as a serious channel rather than an afterthought.
6. POPIA
The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) comes into effect on 1 July 2021. It sets the conditions under which responsible parties may lawfully process the personal information of data subjects, covering both natural persons and juristic persons.
If you have not started preparing, now is the time. Read our POPIA blog for a practical breakdown of what compliance requires.
Those are the six trends worth keeping on your radar this year. If you want to talk through any of them, get in touch and we will help you figure out where to focus.
Frequently asked questions
- When does POPIA come into effect in South Africa?
- POPIA comes into effect on 1 July 2021. It governs how responsible parties may lawfully process the personal information of both natural persons and juristic persons.
- What is hyper-personalisation in email marketing?
- Hyper-personalisation goes beyond adding a subscriber's first name to an email. It uses segments, dynamic content, purchase history, and behavioural data to tailor the content each subscriber receives. According to Lucid, around 20% of subscribers will unsubscribe if content does not match their interests.
- Are plain-text emails still effective in 2021?
- Yes. Plain-text emails can outperform designed campaigns in certain contexts, particularly for direct messages from leadership, urgent updates, or survey requests where a personal, conversational tone works better than a polished template.
- Why should South African businesses invest more in email marketing?
- Email proved to be a resilient channel through 2020. Increased investment gives businesses more capacity to personalise at scale, maintain a clean database, and build automation flows that reach subscribers at the right time without manual effort.