The B2B Marketers Guide to Email Design Trends: 2021 Edition

As we inch closer to the second quarter of 2021, B2B email marketing is rapidly evolving to meet the criteria of post-pandemic economies. This will also make it necessary for email marketers to evolve email designs to accommodate the new requirements. Some of the biggest changes we experienced were the cost optimization drives and the budget cuts. However, changes in conversion rates also made marketer scratch their heads as they dropped below the 15% mark, a historic low for the blue-eyed boy of digital marketing:

If you are looking forward to hitchhiking your way to the top despite the odds, you are at the right place. I am putting down the top B2B email design trends that every email marketer needs to implement right away. Have a closer look at the email marketers’ guide to savvy and conversion-oriented design trends below:

#1 Joining The Dark Mode Elite Club

Dark mode has been around since many decades. Remember the black screens and green fonts in the old computers? But the recent adoption by all leading operating systems, email clients, social media, and productivity tools has made it necessary for email marketers to join the trend. Dark mode friendly emails can be a big game-changer since the corporate professionals are working from the comfort of their homes for quite a long time. This will make it easy for readers to consume your messages while giving a consistent aesthetic feel with other dark mode friendly apps, as shown in the below example:

#2 Making Use Of AMP Friendly Email Templates

Almost every email marketer complained about the lack of support for any innovation in emails, but recently Google announced AMP for emails. If you are a Mailchimp user, your email developers can now use the Mailchimp email templates with JavaScript functionalities along with HTML. AMP-friendly email Mailchimp templates give you an opportunity to send website-like experiences in your subscriber’s inboxes. As a B2B marketer, you can benefit from its dynamic content to add fresh data using APIs. Sending real-time data and allowing users to interact can open doors to new possibilities. 

#3 Transitioning From Mobile Friendly To Mobile First Designs

B2B marketers have been a bit slower than their B2C contemporaries when it comes to adopting different design trends, and it is the same with mobile optimization. One of the biggest shifts in email design for B2B marketers this year will be moving towards mobile-first design. Again, the most popular ESP Mailchimp comes with a lot of mobile-friendly Mailchimp templates that you can use, but if you are using a different tool, you can also go for single-column templates available out there, like in the example given below:

#4 Harnessing Interactivity Before Anyone Else

Interactive email design can do wonders for B2B email marketers in 2021 as it powers progressive lead nurturing through engagement. I recommend including interactivity in your design strategy this year since it isn’t mainstream in the B2B campaigns yet. Generally, B2B email campaigns stretch over long periods, and it becomes tough to maintain engagement. Adding interactive features in the emails will help you in this area while giving your messages a fresh look as your competitors won’t be adding interactivity in their messages unless they are also reading this article.

#5 Replacing Images With CSS Animations, GIFs and Animated Illustrations

When was the last time you used any rich media apart from images? As a B2B marketer, you should explore other options as it will give you a chance to express your copy better. This year, we can expect APNGs, CSS animations, and GIFs to enter the B2B email templates. They give you a chance to express your message in a more intuitive way and leave little to the reader’s imagination. For instance, you can use the GIFs to demonstrate a product functionality that would have otherwise required you to write a couple of steps. This is illustrated in the below emailer:

#6 Using Infographics To Add Value

How about including infographics in your B2B emails? Infographics combine the benefits of visuals and wrapping words within them to display information, and they have been extremely popular in the office roundtables since the early 2010s. You can include infographics to give an overview of the vital statistics, user data, benefits of using your products/services, and other subjects that have a considerable amount of data, but you don’t share them to avoid making your messages boring. In the below example, you can see how infographics in email can be a perfect way to summarize a lot of data in an engaging way for your customers:

Summing Up

There is no doubt that emails will still play an important role in bringing revenue in 2021. Also, they are the best performing digital marketing channel in terms of ROI, so it makes complete sense to invest your time and efforts in improving email template design. I hope you find this guide on B2B email trends useful for your campaigns in 2021 and beyond.

Author Bio: Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest growing full service Email Marketing Agency that specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and free HTML email templates in addition to providing email automation, campaign management, and data integration & migration services. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.