What does the next century have in store for email marketing? Here, five email marketing experts share their epic insights on how our favorite form of communication look will like in 100 years.
Insight #1: Email marketing will be the workhorse and driving force behind content.
“Email marketing was ignored, under-resourced, and declared uncool (and even dead) during the rise of social media,” according to Chad White, Research Director at Litmus. He believed that as more and more mobile users view and interact with their emails via smartphones and handheld digital devices, conversion rates will hinge on the growing adoption of responsive email design.
It will be a second coming of age for email marketing, according to White.” Email marketing isn’t just the number 1 digital marketing channel; it’s also companies’ top source of data for analytics. These advancements have elevated email marketing’s stature and gotten it very close to achieving the 1-to-1 marketing paradigm, as brands are increasingly empowered to facilitate customer journeys and maximize lifetime value.”
Insight #2: The future of email includes fully automated 100% personalized messages.
Adam Holden-Bache, director of email marketing at Eventys, said, “Personalization will reign supreme.” If you want to resonate with audiences who are craving for more meaningful, more inclusive, and more purpose-driven engagement, the key is adding personal touches to communication methods, he continued to explain.
“As we continue to come to terms with the widespread global transition towards a life of remote work and more social isolation, there will be a revolutionary move towards hyper-personalized experiences online. “Email will have to become fully automated with 100% personalized messages which will yield amazing results.”
Deana Thornton of Mailchimp said, “Email marketing continues to be a consistent, driving force in conversion due to the low barrier to entry and high return on investment,” Thornton says. “With an average ROI of $52 for every dollar spent, email marketing allows any retail business to drive visibility of their brand and build customer loyalty with a one-to-one conversation.”
Insight #3: Hyper-targeted emails will become the norm.
Relevant, timely, and engaging emails will never go out of style. At least, that’s what Silicon Valley based tech marketer Daniel Codella thinks. It’s not about bombarding people with more emails but it’s about focusing on crafting behavior-based messages to your customers.
“Expect to see more integration with apps and products, allowing marketers to send emails based on not only in-app behavior, but other interactions – content that is completely customized to the individual user. The goal is to send them the right message at the right time, the most valuable content right when they need and want it.”
Insight #4: Email marketing will be largely intertwined with cloud, AI, and ML technology.
Advances in these forms of technology will not just automate and improve many aspects of email planning and management; this will ensure small businesses can create cost-effective and scalable email campaigns without the need for large budgets.
Kent Lewis, the president and founder of Anvil Media, said AI-focused and ML-powered platforms “ensures campaigns comply with privacy regulations like GDPR, takes the guesswork out of marketing, and enhances the customer experience throughout their journey and life cycle”.
“Cloud, AI marketing, and machine learning change the game,” said digital analyst and futurist Brian Solis. These tech advancements convert data into customer insight without cognitive bias for those ready to learn and unlearn. They usher us in a new mindset that focuses on growth, engagement, and experiential metrics that go beyond vanity and tie into mutually beneficial outcomes.”
Insight #5: Agile email methodology is critical to survival, innovation, and success.
The agile email methodology is a project management process that harness the power of data to become more flexible, adaptable, and effective in content creation and delivery. This will result to staying on top of their users’ needs and beating their competition to market.
As Chad S. White, Head of Research at Oracle Marketing Consulting, observes: “The global pandemic highlighted a need for brands to be nimbler and more responsive with their email marketing. Moving forward, email programs will seek to simplify and speed up their email builds, leading to a surge in adoption of modular email architecture.”
For Gavin Laugenie, Head of Strategy & Insight at dotdigital, email marketing “should reflect the same agility you and your team display. Email remains king, but as consumer behavior continues to change regularly, complementing email with live chat, SMS, push etc. will help deliver the contextual messages your customers’ demand”.
Insight #6: Email marketing empowers seamless customer mobile shopping.
As consumers increasingly use multiple channels along their path to purchase, customer lifecycle marketing is more necessary than ever. Email marketing in the future is all about focusing on every aspect of the entire customer purchase journey to guarantee engagement, conversions, and brand loyalty.
“The future of email marketing is faster, easier mobile shopping for our customers,” said Timothy Lorang of Power Support International. “It is essential that we make that process painless. Mobile shoppers do not want to go through 6 steps to make a purchase.”
Campaign Monitor also revealed that customers’ interactions with their inboxes highly influence their spur-of-the-moment purchases. “Email content must enable shoppers to perform more extensive research on that particular product, to search for any online deals or store coupons, and to self-checkout through a mobile device.”
Insight #7: AMP will revolutionize the inbox.
AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages, is an open-source framework that makes mobile pages load faster. AMP for email creates a more engaging, dynamic, and frictionless experience where users can interact with what’s in their inboxes as they would a web page without opening an external browser.
“With AMP elements, users can take a survey, respond to an invitation, reply to a comment, or zoom in on products. Clickable interfaces built into messages allow users to browse and explore content, without having to leave an email or visit a landing page,” according to Dyspatch.
“AMP for email provides you with an opportunity to create and send interactive emails that let your customers browse through image resources, reply to Google Docs comments, provide answers to surveys, schedule an appointment, and much more within the email. This functionality improves subscriber engagement by increasing the time spent on your emails,” said MailGun.
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