Happy New Year! And happy new trends for email marketing. Hopefully you’ve already started re-evaluating your marketing strategies.

Even with changing times and the flood of digital marketing trends, email remains steady and true. It’s still the fastest way to reach your long list of subscribers, lead to landing pages, and convey proper info, images, and videos. In fact, trust for social media marketing is dropping: people worry about influencers, paying for followers, and “fake news”. Email doesn’t have that reputation.

But that doesn’t mean you have to have the same email marketing strategies. For 2019, here’s how you should be running your email marketing:

Be real, for real.

Consumers preferred social media marketing for years because emails were associated with spam. Social media platforms also utilized videos, bright colors, and short-form content to capture attention. But now that people are suspicious of social media, emails seem a lot more honest.

So make sure you’re being honest.

Be authentic: create a personal connection; show who you are. Your email shouldn’t be an info dump, but it should be a snapshot of who you are, as a company.

Animated Previews

Be sure to include animated thumbnails or previews in the email. As every good marketer knows, video is essential to converting visitors to leads. And a thumbnail is the first impression – especially if it’s at the beginning of the email (aka “above the fold”).

So brand recognition makes consumers pay attention to the email; the subject line helps them decide if they should open it; the thumbnail tells them if this is worth their time. It also shows how engaging the video will be if they open it: it’s like watching a trailer before deciding to watch the full show.

Predictive Email

After buying something on their website, Amazon will say something like, “Based on your past purchasing history, here are some suggestions for you”. It’s predicting what you might want to buy based on what you’ve bought before.

Email marketing in 2019 can – and should – do the same thing.

It’s not creepy and it’s not invasive if it’s done well. Suggest what they need based on what they’ve already bought or looked at – maybe a new attachment or piece for their product? Maybe an update? And the predictive emailing should be automated, the same way the Amazon algorithm is automated.

Make sure to segment contacts, as well: target the people who already value your product. In fact, emails that are targeted and segmented for contacts accounted for 58% of earnings for companies in 2018.

Be interactive

Games, quizzes, surveys, GIFs, memes, contests – think about how your viewer could interact as soon as they open the email. Don’t try to entice with lots of text: give them something to play with! And of course, don’t forget to include calls-to-action: even games should have a purpose.

Respect Privacy

That should go without saying, but be straightforward with people about what you’re doing with their information even in the emails. If they click on your calls-to-action, tell them exactly what will happen. This increases trust and credibility. If people need an advanced law degree to understand your data use policy, they are not going to want to interact with you; especially since so many companies switched to clear data use language after the EU’s GDPR.

Of course, there are more trends to watch out for, and it will be a sign of your dedication if you stay on trend. But if you incorporate these strategies, they’ll be a great start to increase the strength of your email marketing in 2019.