29 EMAIL
Experts

Automation

Smart marketers are creating a stable of automated email messages which are triggered by individual subscriber actions. This is passive income - and the future of email marketing.

Customization/Personalization

This is the year that marketers finally embrace smart, sophisticated customization and personalization. This boosts relevance - which is key to getting opens, clicks, and conversions.

Campaign Focus

One-off email messages are so 2020 - in 2021 successful marketers are thinking in terms of multi-effort email campaigns. They know that these increase your open and click reach and deliver incremental income with little additional effort.

• Leading with empathy was huge last year and will continue to trend in 2021. Many people and businesses are still facing especially difficult challenges. So it's important to be considerate and adjust your tone and email marketing strategy accordingly-especially for any automated emails you haven't updated in a while.
• People are looking to brands now not just for their products or services but also their mission or beliefs. Brands will have to take a stand on topics important to their subscribers in 2021. Think about how you can weave this into your welcome or onboarding emails. And continue to build upon this message to create brand advocates for life, even after their need for your product or service has gone.
• Agile email marketing will be big this year after the one we just had. Email teams must be able to adapt and pivot at a moment's notice. This means streamlining your email marketing process and adopting a test-and-learn mentality so you can easily change as your data and subscribers do.

The K-shaped recovery will mean vastly different email marketing priorities for companies that have done well during the pandemic such as ecommerce and digital entertainment companies and those that have suffered like travel and hospitality companies. However, there are some trends that will be popular across both groups.

• For example, both are striving to reduce email production times so they can be nimbler with their messaging in response to rapidly changing customer behaviors. That is set to give modular email architecture a boost in adoption as companies replace their cumbersome and inflexible traditional email templates.
• Both groups will also make better use of machine learning and AI. For instance, brands are implementing AI-powered content recommendations as a way to decrease production times, in addition to providing more relevant content. Send time optimization (STO) will also be popular this year. Allowing brands to send emails to individual subscribers based on their past open history, STO is particularly valuable right now because the pandemic has dramatically changed when consumers engage with their inboxes. As we establish a new normal on the other side of the pandemic, those behaviors will change again-and STO will automatically adjust. These are all smart, future-proof trends.

• Compassionate content strategies- 2021 should see the fruits of the trimmed and refined survival email marketing strategies becoming a strong foundation for what is hopefully light on the horizon, where email content & language choices will continue to empathise & be mindful into happier times.
• Humanistic automation - Much of the forced refinement of the bloated confusing result of the email automation bubble should this year result in calmer, softer and longer tail email journeys in the triggers, frequency and CTA pressure.
• Increasing design complication - Whilst the start of the year will continue to build on the accessible, less nonsense email design with sensitive content, that foundation will look to evolve without sacrificing its strengths; basic CSS interactivity is likely to be popular; AMP interest is likely to slow for a bit but BIMI is likely to gain popularity being seen as an email branding easy win.

Opt-in marketing channels have never been more impactful-and are only improving.

In 2020, the conversion rate of standard promotional emails was 6.5%, automated emails 29.5%, and 2.7% for SMS - all marking a 95% or greater year-over-year (YoY) lift.

Automated emails will be a major growth engine for ecommerce businesses.

2020, automated emails were responsible for 29% of all email orders while accounting for less than 2% of email sends. Ecommerce brands should automate these essential messages:

• 01.

  Welcome messages.

  With a 52% conversion rate in 2020 (+80% YoY), these emails drove nearly 12% of all email orders.

• 02.

  Cart abandonment.

  These messages saw a 34% conversion rate for the year (+125% YoY) and were responsible for 11% of all email orders.

• 03.

  Product and browse abandonment.

  Each of these messages maintained a 17% conversion rate (+110% YoY) and were responsible for 2% of all email orders.

Incorporate SMS into email automation.

In 2020, there were 378% more SMS sent than in 2019, the conversion rate improved more than 100% YoY, and they drove 2.5% of all orders on Black Friday. SMS is now a must-have opt-in channel. Including SMS into the same automated email workflows will provide consumers with relevant messaging via their preferred channel.

Increasing Relevancy

Relevancy is still a (email) marketer's #1 priority. We see it happen through the increasing demand for e.g. interactivity in email, Machine Learning and product recommendation engines, and AMP for Email.

Agile Growth

There's evidence pointing to 'Agile' being loved more and more. Businesses used to implement all-in-one platforms to go 'omni-channel', but in all honesty those platforms never fulfilled their own prophecy. Over the years, the all-in-one platforms started having Marketplaces, where users can add the specialized tools they need and drop the ones they don't.

Transformational Leadership

Another trend is the growing role of market leaders in the way people perceive several aspects of email marketing - both good and bad. This has led to a call for responsibility: market leaders have to transform the market in a positive way, focus on long-term, valuable relationships instead of quick profits.

Image Building through Authentication & Legislation

Though authentication tools have been around for years, people haven't really felt the need to be super-compliant. But now we're entering a time where authentication becomes part of a brand's image (thanks to i.a. BIMI) and where GDPR compliance is no longer 'occasional', but industry standard.

The Summum of Trends: The rise of the CDPs

All these trends lead up to the biggest change in the email marketing game in years: the rise of the CDP which stores all the necessary data and lets marketers enhance automation from one centralized hub - storing preferences (opt-ins, email rate, etc.), deciding what offer the receiver gets, and experimenting with various marketing systems.

AI

AI systems should learn from past behaviors to shape future actions and create the solution to a large number of email marketer's daily processes.

AMP

Having AMP for emails shall be a hot trend cause it can increase engagement like no other. Since you can do a lot without leaving your Inbox, like: add events to the Calendar, buy tickets, etc.

BIMI

Engagement rates are important for maximum deliverability, which is why the Mailbox provider's support of BIMI is a great development for email senders. Because they're able to see a sender's brand logo in their inbox.

Personal touch

Having more data on your customers would help you to create the most performing segments which will result in the most customized and relevant campaigns for your customers.

Social media follow-ups

In order to grow your audience, it is also important to use different platforms which will increase the possibility of building your audience as well as their engagement. Put social media buttons in your email, with a possibility to share your email with others, via Facebook for example.

• The first trend is a continuation of something that we first started seeing in 2019. There is a much broader range of ESPs that are in brands' consideration sets today than there were previously. Going back several years, the RFPs we managed tended to focus on looking at the same 6-8 vendors in the enterprise and mid-market. Accelerating innovation and investment in the vendor landscape has greatly increased that number as new "next gen" ESPs attract more interest, while at the same time legacy ESPs add dynamic personalization offerings, data tools and assets, and predictive analytics capabilities to their platforms. So instead of 6-8 options, there are now up to twice as many.

The upside to this trend is that brands have a much wider range of options from which to choose. The downside is that brands are more likely to make the wrong choice.

• The second trend we expect to see in 2021 is a surge in the number of RFPs in the market. Many of the brands that originally had intended on reviewing their ESP options in 2020 elected to put those plans on hold until 2021. In 2021, those brands will be joining those that all along planned on doing an RFP this year in going through the vendor selection process.

New business teams at the vendors are going to have a very busy year!

• I believe the biggest trend for 2021 is wide adoption of dark mode. Studies will be done showing the subscriber rate of use for dark mode is larger than expected. Because of this, brands will start designing for dark mode, developers will start using the dark mode media query to control what they can. Hopefully, this wide adoption will spur the adoption of the dark mode media query in email clients that do not currently support it rather than full or partial inversion that developers have no control of.
• I saw a lot more emphasis from my clients on accessibility through 2020; I expect that this trend will continue. Education about all aspects of accessibility (copy, design, code, etc) will continue into 2021 and adoption of accessibility best practices will continue to slowly increase. I expect more brands will make the switch from text baked into images to live text in order to reach more of their audience.

Strategy first, shiny tools later

2020 was all about eking every last drop of success out of what was working with email. And 2021 is more of the same. Except for a few industries who thrived in 2020, marketers don't have time to focus on new technologies such as AI and email automation scenarios that are complicated to set up, increasing their email production time or adding complexity to their workflows. It's all about streamlining and leaning in to what works.

Marketing teams will keep their belts tightened and their hatches battened down while they continue building out their re-invented marketing playbooks. I expect marketers to make gains in the areas of:

1. Better understanding the trends within the performance metrics they already track
2. Testing and tweaking their workflows to reduce friction and increase lead quality
3. Empathy-focused email copy and offer selection

New technologies and perhaps even a move to a new email service provider (ESP) will be considered since they were simply not an option in 2020. Ultimately, though, most of the evolution we see throughout the year will come from marketers spending time assessing what went well in 2020, and only hiring team members (or adopting new tools) to address challenges that cannot be solved without additional resources.

• Clear, relevant messaging that doesn't waste your readers' time (maybe even with a focus on uplifting, kind, and hopeful messaging after a difficult year in 2020). Taking a more educational approach: how can we inform or educate our customers?
• Simple, clean designs (with much more focus on how your emails render in dark mode and ensuring they render properly in your most popular email clients)
• A focus on database and lifecycle email marketing that helps customers or users along your brand journey, with a more cohesive experience for your subscribers, and relevant, timely messaging
• Listening to your subscribers more, and adjusting your email marketing to meet their needs instead of the company's wants
• Consent-first email marketing. Do what's best for the subscriber, not just barely meeting legal standards. Just because it's legal doesn't make it right

• I hate to admit it, but I think 2021 will be the year of omnichannel marketing - where email will move out from the spotlight and share the stage with SMS and Messenger and chatbots and the like.
• A bit depressing for an email marketer (attribution is going to be a nightmare), but being able to follow the subscriber and keep them within a brand's ecosystem will be hugely beneficial.
• Whatsmore? We'll be able to weave a web of robust, big picture data from site tags... quiz responses... PPC clicks... in-app rules... even real life behavior (where COVID restrictions will allow it) that will enable us to design drastically better customer experiences - and see drastically higher conversion rates.

• AMP in email is an area to keep an eye on. Recently Yahoo announced it would be supporting AMP in addition to Gmail. As a result, it is likely we'll see an uplift in adoption rates. There are still the security concerns, but it is interesting when we look at the history of major tech developments such as when banks first went digital, and online banking was first seen as a risky activity to do over the internet. Purchasing online in the early days also had a similar perception until the tech got more sophisticated; the customer experience became less clunky and more seamless. This is similar to AMP. The benefits it could give to further enhancing the subscriber's experience in the inbox and remove the existing multiple steps needed when making a purchase are huge, so this could become a real game-changer for ecommerce brands.
• A trend that isn't limited to 2021, but is vital as most of us continue to spend a high proportion of our time at home, is in enhancing the email experience. Ensuring that it is optimised for all devices that our subscribers use, when a customer clicks a link in an email, it takes them to the correct page optimised for use on that same device. It's astonishing how many poor online experiences still exist. In a world where there is a huge focus on ordering and consuming content online, patience on bad digital experiences will now more than ever be wafer-thin. If this isn't prioritised to fix, organisations risk losing customers. It's now expected.

• If 2020 taught marketers nothing more, it should be that the world can change overnight and complacency is a thing of the past. Strategy is a living, breathing entity in email marketing programs, especially those that wish to increase personalization and reach deeper engagement with their audience.
• "Setting and Forgetting" is something many of us deny ever doing, but we all have and more often than we care to admit! We can no longer avoid the hard work of feeding our strategies through continually revising and strengthening with testing and optimizations. Living things need to be fed, feed your strategy and allow it to grow.
• And most importantly, stay relevant with the world and what is important to your audience. Without relevancy, you won't be feeding your strategy, you'll be putting it on a cleanse diet without even juice to fuel it! Take note of the challenges your audience is facing and give them what they need for changing times. And most importantly, the Covid Pandemic will end someday, but being human is a constant.

• Only brands that truly understand customers and what they want to see in their inbox will win with email in 2021.
• We're going to see stricter opt-in and consent policies across the globe (GDPR was just the start) and even more technical traps such as email providers automatically filtering emails for recipients.
• This will be a call for marketers to invest in better data, and in tech that can fully leverage real-time personalization, constructing emails on the fly for the utmost relevance.

• 2021 will mark an important shift in how we see email marketing. Online has become busier than ever and the need to stand out from the crowd is no longer a want, it's a survival necessity.
• Marketing strategies will include targeted, personalised and tailored email marketing experience. Going hand in hand with this is more focus on data. What data do we need to make our campaigns stand out? What data do we need to make our emails more personal?
• Of course, where would we be without specialists to execute these campaigns and data analysis? I see 2021 the year when email marketing and marketing automation specialists are a must within any marketing team.

• 2021 will be a great year for email marketing. One of the learnings of Covid19 is that brands need to make their emails about the customer. That means that customer centric copy, as well as segmentation and personalization, are going to become the standard to stay competitive in the inbox. The brands that fail to do this will suffer.
• New technologies in email like Amp will be seen in inboxes more and more often, but the best emails will be copy driven, as subscription-based ad-driven newsletters will continue to grow and niche down much in the way podcasts have.
• More and more businesses will realize the opportunity provided by email is too big to ignore. So inboxes will get more and more crowded and we'll rely more on filters and tabs to navigate our inboxes. Overall, it's an exciting time to be an email marketer.

I think 2021 will show a big rise in AMP for Email. Recently we've been seeing an increase in new ways to send and receive AMP emails as well as new tools for building AMP emails, so in 2021 will be seeing the results of that and a lot more AMP emails being sent.

AMP for Email has so much potential, there are a huge amount of potential use cases and with new features being added to the spec, this is increasing. I'm also expecting to see more people using AMP for Email alongside Interactive HTML email for a wider interactive strategy, leading to much wider reach, better user experience for the email recipients and better results for the senders.

Customer Segmentation Becoming Table Stakes

Sending mass messages that aren't tailored to contacts' specific interests and behaviors is so passe. Customer segmentation is something that all businesses across industries should be doing regardless of size. To create segments, you need to truly understand your audience, and you need to know what goals you're looking to accomplish.

Each segment contains contacts that share similar characteristics or behaviors. When you segment contacts, you can send more accurately targeted messages and increase personalization. In other words, the purpose of segmentation is to ensure you send people relevant messages that - based on the data you've collected - genuinely interest them. Taking that a step further, by leveraging integrated data from your marketing automation platform, you can uncover behaviors to inform new criteria for more advanced customer segments.

Segmenting just for the sake of doing it will not net you any better results than mass messaging. If you do it right, segmentation can help you work smarter, not harder.

• Emotionally intelligent messaging. If 2020 taught us anything, it's that as marketers, we should always be prepared to pivot our messaging in order to be sensitive to what's going on in the world. We should be ready to pause automations or any previously scheduled messages in the case of regional emergency or unrest. (and don't forget your other messaging channels such as push notifications or SMS!) It's crucial to remember that although our subscribers may be previous purchasers or followers of our brand, they are human first and foremost who warrant emotionally intelligent messaging, especially amid crisis.
• Personalization is no longer an option but the norm in email marketing. And this goes far beyond just using a {$contact['first name']} tag. Collecting and leveraging recipient data enables marketers to build a more personalized email experience, making for a happier audience. If you don't have enough data, provide your recipients the opportunity to tell you about themselves via a preference center! You could potentially be missing out on valuable information that would allow you to send more personalized messages to your recipients, leading to increased purchases and conversions.

• 2021 will be the year of breakout technologies in Email. The goal for 2021 is to Engage, Excite, and Inspire and create more humanistic (or personalized?) experiences in the Inbox.
• Increase in completing survey responses inside the email rather than linking to the external survey website
• Marketing will add a line item in their budget for video-in email experiences. Email Newsletters will include more video content to engage viewers.
• Will see more empathic moments captured in email communication content. The future of Customer Experience will be more inbox focused.
• Will see advancements in email technology to further support people with hearing disabilities and the visually-impaired.

• This year I think we'll see two distinct directions with email templates. For some brands email templates will become a little simpler so they become quicker and easier for email teams to create and amend. Due to Covid, email campaign content often needs to change right up till the last second, and simplified templates can help with that.
• On the other side I see retail, travel & hospitality brands using a higher percentage of images vs text in their emails going forward. They'll want to make use of Kinetic email code which allows them to use features like image carousels, interactive content and animation to act somewhat as a storefront replacement, travel agent brochures and ways to entice people to book hotel and restaurant venues.
• Email has saved the day for a lot of businesses in the last year or so I think this year we may see investment in email technology and tools. If investment is on offer, go for things which enable better personalisation such as real time content to help increase conversion.

In 2021, we'll see far more interactive and dynamic emails thanks to AMP for Email. While emails are typically static, AMP for Email allows marketers to easily create dynamic and interactive emails. That means email content can change, even after an email lands in the inbox. And you can add interactive elements - like carousels or forms - right inside your email.

These interactive and dynamic emails can increase email click-through rates and interaction. They can also reduce friction by cutting down on the number of steps that consumers need to take. For example, if you send a survey to your email subscribers, you can include the survey form inside your email. Instead of visiting a website to complete the survey, the subscribers can complete it right inside the email.

In 2021, the focus on automating processes - not exclusively drip campaigns - will gain importance and garner a lot of attention. I am not saying that customer-facing communication and deliverability are unimportant - the contrary. Although by concentrating on automation funnels that deal with segmentation and reporting, email marketers will gain the upper hand at the digital marketing table.

For example, when an email marketer builds out segmentation funnels without a single email send, it might seem foolish. It might make one ponder where the "email" in email marketing has gone. However, by diversifying the funnels - and creating microsegments in particular - one will be able to tag and mark potential segments more efficiently.

This strategy will assist the "smart email marketer" to better understand where to invest and improve results.

• Many brands are experiencing inventory pressure due to not being able to liquidate their old products via traditional physical end of season Sale. This may force them into overemailing discounted products. Brands that would like to position themselves premium, should not go into full Sale mode for too long. This can devalue the brand. Try segmenting your target group to "deal-searchers" or "deal-buyers" and only increase Sale email cadence to them. Monitor their engagement and see if you need to change your segmentation. Also look beyond Emails and use a targeted multichannel approach.
• Some organisations are already in the direction towards omnichannel. And with many countries in lockdown where stores can only do Click & Collect, brands need to accelerate their implementation efforts. These include creating their single view of their consumers in their CRM, the single view of inventory across offline and online, and connected reporting. These efforts are not easy. But when implemented, Email will finally build consumer relationships throughout seamless physical and digital journeys.
• Please not another "jog pants you should wear at home" email. Pure product offers can work to a certain extent, but brands have to provide more value to consumers to build the relationship in the long-term. You may ask yourself: what would you like to help your consumers to achieve? To be better at? To inspire about? Can you create meaningful content around these? Email fatigue and overflooded inboxes are real, and standing out may not just be emojis in the subject line.

Email in 2021 will be:

• Nimble - 2020 showed the value of the pivot. Now that major brands have become used to getting messages out at a moment's notice, there will be more quick wins rather than 6-week email strategy-to-design tactics.
• Automated - With marketing messages needing to be delivered quickly, the value of the automated message increases. Creating automations based on user engagement with your brand and a connected IOT experience allows companies to plan strategic programs that drive significant incremental revenue - even with smaller audiences.
• Empathetic - From the visuals we see to the cadence of the message, customers are more in-tune to what brands send out than ever before. Companies that can authentically show empathy in their marketing campaigns will be the winners of 2021.
• Personalized - Personalization is a buzzword that has been around for a while, but few brands have cracked the code. We're betting on modular template designs to be the keystone that allows for simpler execution of personalized content and test-and-learn messages while leaving bandwidth for kinetic and web-based designs.

Email in 2021 will be:

• Nimble - 2020 showed the value of the pivot. Now that major brands have become used to getting messages out at a moment's notice, there will be more quick wins rather than 6-week email strategy-to-design tactics.
• Automated - With marketing messages needing to be delivered quickly, the value of the automated message increases. Creating automations based on user engagement with your brand and a connected IOT experience allows companies to plan strategic programs that drive significant incremental revenue - even with smaller audiences.
• Empathetic - From the visuals we see to the cadence of the message, customers are more in-tune to what brands send out than ever before. Companies that can authentically show empathy in their marketing campaigns will be the winners of 2021.
• Personalized - Personalization is a buzzword that has been around for a while, but few brands have cracked the code. We're betting on modular template designs to be the keystone that allows for simpler execution of personalized content and test-and-learn messages while leaving bandwidth for kinetic and web-based designs.

• Email Marketers will find more ways to innovate in 2021. We'll see better use of technology to personalize emails based on customer interactions and behaviors on a website or app.
• Increased adoption of AMP will bring dynamic content to emails that are updated as customers view them and also so they can transact without leaving the inbox.
• Brands are starting to use augmented reality technology so shoppers can try on and view products in a virtual showroom. Smart email programs will follow-up with an email showing the options that were considered. Customers want convenience with online engagements and are most likely to engage with the best experiences.

• Agile Marketing will be needed. This means to be ever-alert to respond to changes in how people live their lives and shop. Be ready to change your messaging - both on your campaign promos as well as your automated programs. Keep your segments fluid - people are changing their shopping patterns as the world changes and their personal budgets change.
• Helpful, customer-centric and empathetic marketing will/should be on the rise. Making your emails more customer-centric and relevant to your audience is key to success & with more brands online than ever before - don't be left behind with a brand-centric TOV and messaging.
• A/B Split testing is needed more than ever. Think you know your audience and what they like & don't like? Think again as it may not be the case. What was known isn't necessarily true because of all the changes in shopping behaviour over the past year. Perform scientific tests to find the answers to your questions and discover more about your audience. This will enable you to accomplish #1 and #2 more easily.