As it is said that we should learn from our past, let’s dive into valuable stats and insights from last year’s marketing trends. Although we’re in the middle of 2021, we can still access the insights drawn from 2020’s email and content strategies so that we can gear ourselves to keep up with the best performance through the rest of 2021.
 
The shift in consumers’ attitude towards shopping
 
The global pandemic hit in the last year has made consumers more resilient and adaptable. This changed attitude is seen in people’s shopping behaviour as well. As highlighted by the global payments clan, Mastercard, consumers with growing consciousness are becoming aware of how they shop. They are focusing more on women-owned, minority-owned, and Black-owned businesses.
 
Moreover, shoppers are inclined towards attaching sentimental value to shopping and seeing shopping as a means of a morale boost. Statistics have shown that 43% of consumers went shopping to cheer up their family and friends. And 40% shopped to get into the feeling of holiday.
 
As a result of this changed attitude and shopping preferences, brands will be of high priority to entail transparency and perpetuate the same communication and language across all channels.
 
As content and email marketing were the strongest shareholders for brand success through 2020, these will continue to contribute to brand successes in 2021.  
 
Email Marketing: Performance overview of 2020 and insights for 2021’s strategy
 
Email marketing is among the channels with higher ROIs. SMB digital marketing, Sendinblue, has released its 2020 email marketing report. It has revealed: 
 
· Email marketing’s open rate peaked in the first quarter of 2020 with 28.05%, while CTR was low. However, CTR peaked in the second quarter at 6.45%. 
 
· While Quarter 3 offered the best time to let businesses update their contact list, it was in the fourth quarter that email volumes saw the peak.
 
· Mondays and Tuesdays (early mornings) were the best days for B2B mails, whereas; afternoons during the week and weekends were the best times for B2C emails.
· Industries like Media/Publishing, Insurance, Electronics/Hardware, Healthcare/Food and Fashion/Beauty were among the industries with the highest CTR.
 
· The top industries in terms of open rate were Marketing/Advertising, Association (Club/Religions), Gambling/Lottery, Electronics/Hardware, Agency/Consulting and Event/Entertainment.  
 
In the future, the following will be the top priorities for email marketing through 2021:
 
· Transparency
· GDPR compliant registration form
· Personalization of subject lines
· Direct speech and use of strong verbs
· Automating the exclusion list
· Providing the link of complete information for further reading
  
Content marketing: Performance overview of 2020 and insights for 2021’s strategy
 
Recently, SEMrush published ‘State of Content Marketing 2020 Global Report. This report has highlighted the following key findings:
 
· About 84% of surveyed respondents have a dedicated content strategy in place.
· Top priorities of implementing a content strategy include lead generation, website traffic, and boosting brand reputation.
· SEO tools and website analytics tools were among the leading technologies used for content marketing.
· Most popularly used hashtag was #DigitalMarketing (71%), while the second most popular hashtag was #SEO (62%).
· Strategy development was considered a top skill for a content marketer.
· Plain text with lists (one list per 500 words) has fetched more traffic than texts without lists.

Besides that, the following were the most effective ways of using content marketing in 2020:
 
· SEO
· How to guide
· Updating and repurposing existing content
· Video content
· Optimizing customer journey
 
The top three topics of Content Marketing 
 
Strategy (34%), SEO (18%), and social media (10%) were top three topics of content marketing. However, AI, tools, trends, and content ideas were among the less talked about topics.
 
What kind of Tweets got more attention?
 
The tweets with the usage of visual content won the sweet spot on Twitter user’s timelines. Moreover, the usage of links in the tweets gained more significance.
 
Top three searches related to Content Marketing
 
SEMrush recorded the following top three searches related to content marketing:
 
· Content marketing strategy
· Content marketing agency
· Content marketing examples
 
Kinds of content that performed best in the last year
 
Articles ranged between 1501 to 2000 words and 5001 to 7000+ words had seen the highest shareability.
 
However, headlines like lists, how-to, questions and guides performed well. 
 
Wrap Up
 
The year 2020 was challenging, and marketers desperately needed valuable insights to boost their email and content marketing strategies. This blog has provided critical insights drawn from 2020’s email and content strategies to boost strategies for 2021. These stats will help businesses frame the best marketing strategies and boost their performances.