How to Create an Email Marketing Roadmap That Will Stand the Test of Time We've seen a lot of change in the email marketing sector over the last few years, whether we're working for a brand, an agency, or a technology supplier. Consumers are more weary and bombarded by brand messaging than ever before, and when marketers fail to deliver relevant information, they vote with their feet and dollars.
This tendency has resulted in an unavoidable permanent 1:1 economy. In this five-part article, I'll discuss how email marketers can use this new reality to create a future-proof plan for success.
Step : Analyze current trends and separate wheat from chaff.
It's been said that making forecasts, especially regarding the future, is tough. Every year, though, industry pundits do exactly that. John Koetsier's roundup on Martech, which aggregates and evaluates based on input from hundreds of CMOs and marketing professionals, is one body of work that sticks out for me. There were some old favorites (AI, privacy) as well as some newbies this year (the metaverse, Web3).
It's easy for marketers and marketing technology suppliers to get sidetracked by the next shiny new thing in the room and neglect "old" trends like AI (that haven't actually been perfected or maximized yet). By definition, future-proof means resistant to obsolescence due to advancements in technology, and developing a long-term roadmap necessitates anticipating emerging trends. This, however, is not possible. although, This can't come at the expense of seizing the moment and continuing to evolve and maximize previously established trends (AI for example).
AI is not without its flaws. For years, marketers have been pitched and promised benefit from AI-powered (fill in the blank), and it's still difficult to grasp the truth of it all after all the hype. We've prepared a separate series on email marketing learning systems, in which we'll delve deeper into the role of AI and how to operationalize it, but for now, let's start with the issues raised in John's Forbes.
“Marketing leaders see AI as an essential aid through the Great Resignation.” This has significant implications for a future-proof email marketing roadmap in the 1:1 economy. Marketers are under a lot of pressure these days to meet customer and leadership demands for significant personalization while working with a small team. The single most common complaint I receive from email marketers is about content creation. The truth is that no email production staff could ever be large enough or work long enough to offer tailored and relevant information at scale. This is being solved by artificial intelligence.
"It can also help with personalization," says the Hassan H-Educate. Personalization, like AI, has become one of the most popular marketing buzzwords. Every marketer strives to achieve the holy grail of personalisation, yet it remains elusive in many respects because it has evolved to mean both everything and nothing. "Personalization is more than just knowing a customer's name," says Bryce Boothby, head of global technology at McDonald's. "It's about leveraging customer data to establish relationships with consumers that deliver relevant and interesting experiences." Meaningful personalization necessitates the use of granular data based on a customer's particular behavior and profile to tell them something they don't already know — and that requires artificial intelligence.
"AI can also reach scalability and relevance in real time." There are a few things to look into here. The word "relevance" is a buzzword. In fact, in the hierarchy of terminologies, it comes before personalisation. The truth is that, despite all of the attention paid to personalisation, it is only one of the pillars of relevance. Relevance is about material that changes, improves, and becomes more tailored over time with each touchpoint, not just one-off individualized data points. With new data protection laws, "real-time" in email marketing has fundamentally transformed, and it's a topic we'll cover in further depth later in this series.
Another theme that I saw in this roundup is the one about stories. After privacy, it was the second most popular prediction. "The power of story and content to establish brands and sell products," says this prediction. Video, especially live-streaming, and audio, particularly podcasting, are some of the technology components that make it possible." The concept of story is crucial for email marketers, but it's not quite the same as what's captured here (brand building and selling products). Audio and video as content modules for email marketing may become more relevant in the future (something we will tackle in a post about modular content and design systems).
Regardless, the concept of "story" is crucial to the next step in this roadmap: distinguishing purposes and having separate objectives/strategies for email triggered journeys vs. newsletters.
I'd like to hear about what trends are influencing your plan for 2022 and beyond, as well as your comments on the above themes. More to come soon!
Watch Bellow video for Email Marketing System Structure [2020].
Thanks to H-Educate.
Good Luck!
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