Email Marketing Trends in 2021: The Experts Speak Out
As we do every year, Digital Response would like to reflect on the key aspects that will dominate email marketing in the year ahead.
This time, we are also doing so with the participation of very prominent professionals who have wanted to share their points of view with all of you.
In 2020 we have seen how the Covid-19 crisis has accelerated the digitalisation of many aspects of society, adding to the digital wave mainly analogue activities (in the USA in the first three months of the crisis 250 million students went from attending classes in person to receiving them remotely), or increasing the mass of online users of many businesses (Disney+ reached in 5 months what it took Netflix 7 years in terms of users)¹.
In a context such as this, I believe that email marketing teams should
will have to optimise campaign production processes if they want to be efficient. With short timeframes and a high level of demand (qualitative and quantitative) from marketing management, email marketing teams will be forced to implement agile management models and leverage the full potential of current project management, team collaboration and digital asset management tools. On the other hand, the need to justify the ROI of marketing technologies will push email marketing teams to delve deeper into content personalisation, segmentation and automation.
¹ Fabius, Victor; Sajal, Kohli; Timelin, Björn; Moulvad, Sofia (2020). Meet the next-normal consumer. McKinsey & Company. Retrieved from: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/meet-the-next-normal-consumer
CEO - Digital Response
In the last 9 months of 2020, Covid-19 accelerated the pace of online shopping by up to 5 times. However, we must differentiate between shopping online (Ecommerce) vs. shopping with mobile devices (Mcommerce).
Ecommerce companies, typically the larger ones, have capitalised on Mcommerce by improving the user experience via the app, taking advantage of notifications. push as the primary channel to attract consumer attention and drive higher levels of engagement. However, as ecommerce takes a big leap forward, many companies will rely on email marketing (as the lowest cost and highest ROI channel) to improve customer experience and engagement. Customer Lifetime Value. As the MarTech becomes easier to use, its capacities increase and its prices fall, the excuse of not setting up a Customer Journey that uses both email marketing and any other channel that customers use to interact with the brand.
The real challenge for marketers - who will face a whirlwind of chaos in 2021 - will be to deliver those activities that have the most consistent growth.
Managing Director - MKTGmanago
If in 2020 we had to learn to telework in order to continue to be effective, in 2021 we will have to do things even better, with a very high level of quality, in order to compete and stand out. This, applied to email marketing, means that small mistakes that perhaps until now were allowed to pass, will now be penalised. Email marketing will have to be even more relevant to consumers, and to achieve this we will have to be experts in segmentation, personalisation and automation. We will have to send to each one only what they are really interested in, and make the inbox a help instead of a waste of time for the consumer.
Salesforce Marketing Champion - Cloud Coachers
My prediction for email in 2021 is the adoption of AI-driven predictive technologies. 2020 has taught brands that communicating in a personal way with consumers through digital channels is not just something that is "OK to do," but must be done. The biggest challenge here is that prediction and personalisation go hand in hand. However, AI-powered predictive technologies alleviate this problem, helping marketers to quickly create personalised email experiences that use more data (CRM and real-time web interactions, for example) and deliver better results than they can achieve on their own. By 2021, these technologies are already mature. Adoption of the prescriptive "Black Box" AI technology of the past has slowed and has been replaced by easy-to-use, quick-to-deploy solutions. There are challenges that arise with the adoption of new technologies, however, when we consider the potential benefits and time savings they offer, we see that we must get to work.
Sales Manager - Kickdynamic
For years we heard: "Email is dead.... long live email". However, 2020 accelerated the process of digital transformation of companies and email marketing was one of the most relevant channels for many.
More email campaigns were sent than ever before (25% more than before Covid-19), but at the same time, trying to be as relevant as possible.
Email marketing has evolved a lot over the last few years, adding different technologies and trends that we will see in 2021:
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) will continue to evolve, optimising delivery times, analysing segments, content, etc.
- Hyperpersonalisation will have to be greater and more precise, as the overall volume of email is increasing. Understanding, standing out, inspiring the customer... will be the big challenge for everyone.
- Interactive Design will be a trend that will allow the implementation of content such as videos, surveys or interactive CTAs directly in emails, bringing more creativity to companies and capturing more attention from their customers.
After so many years, email marketing is still a very relevant channel and has had an amazing 2020. This 2021 will also be very interesting.
Marketing Cloud Sales Lead - Oracle
When I started working with email marketing campaigns I never imagined its potential. I thought that its effectiveness was ephemeral and that over the years it would cease to be used. This has not been the case. In fact, we have been surprised by a digital revolution in which emails have been involved more than ever and their participation in the great game board has been decisive.
This 2020 has taught us to be cautious.
We have to maintain a close and constant relationship with our customers through an organised and forward-looking email marketing plan. Segmenting and creating attractive content that will help us to build customer loyalty in the face of incipient competition and, above all, knowing and taking care of our database to create communications in line with their interests.
In short, absolute focus on customer centricity.
Head of CRM & Customer Care - Merkal
2021 is going to be a big year for email marketing. Data consumption emerges as the long-term solution for companies in their loyalty strategy or to accompany the data in their lead journey. For this to happen, it will be essential that data, the oil of the 21st century, is actionable. That is to say, to enable users to draw conclusions from the information received in order to make useful decisions in an intuitive way. The new maxim will be not only to have a good amount of data, but to have the people prepared and the necessary tools to make the most of it.
CEO - CoRegisters.com
It is no surprise that many companies have accelerated their digital transformation process in the wake of the pandemic. For many sectors, facing a 2021 in which demand behaviour is uncertain, it has prompted an injection of resources to support the two departments responsible for business growth: marketing and sales.
As a result, marketing automation tools such as Hubspot are becoming increasingly common in organisations.
Having this type of software in place will immediately force marketing teams to re-examine their email marketing knowledge:
- They will be forced to explore new formulas for email copy, as campaigns will often go from being one-off actions that respond to a specific objective in time, to campaigns that can be launched permanently and automatically based on scorings, and that we are going to optimise.
- Due to this increased possibility of optimisation, concepts such as the redability (making emails easier to read) are going to become popular in our jargon, as this is the key to improving the results of our campaigns.
- As companies implement automated email chains (or any other type of communication), they will need to understand the KPIs that govern the success of this type of marketing technique and learn how to design new data dashboards to facilitate analysis.
CEO and Co-Founder - InboundCycle
This is the experts' opinion and predictions about the future of email marketing in 2021. What do you think, do you agree, what other trends do you think we will see?
