Email marketing in 2014? Itâs so like 2013 only more so

I’m not sure the fundamentals will change all that much next year but I expect some of the themes from 2013 to continue into 2014. Two that come to mind that I think are relevant to email marketers are big data and innovation.

Big data
One of the most memorable sound bites this year came from Dan Ariely: “Big data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it.”

One of the best conference speeches that I heard in 2013 came from new media expert Mitch Joel, who verbalises the big data challenge in one chapter of his book (Ctrl Alt Delete) as ‘Sex with Data’. Provocative framing aside, Joel makes an argument that the data comes at marketers in two forms; linear and circular. Linear being email addresses or a response and circular data from digital actions such as likes, ratings and reviews and similar social interactions. He writes [that marketers should] “Expect these two varied data flows to collide…and this is where the good stuff (the sex) starts to happen.”

The challenges with data will not be new; integration, privacy and permission from customers as well investing time and resources in order to test, implement and learn will be all too familiar. Crucially, for many marketers the challenge will be to do something meaningful with the data that drives the email programme to exceed their goals. Those that invest time and effort in deriving actionable insights from the data will have a distinct commercial advantage and likely be in a dominant position compared to those that chose the ‘do nothing’ option.

Innovation
2013 was the year of impactful innovations within the email ecosystem such as game-changing developments in consumer mailbox interfaces –with the Gmail Tabbed Inbox as the current cause célèbre. For marketers, there are an increasing number of applications that can be used to enhance the experience for their subscribers (PowerInbox, Fancentric and others).

The challenge next year will be twofold; measure the impact and changes in subscriber interactions against the email programme objectives and test and assess the effectiveness of introducing new innovation within either the email itself or along the subscriber journey. This is where the term big data begins to feel like a hamster wheel to those marketers less well equipped to deal with the pace of change.

Marketers will have to grapple with competing priorities, possibly with less resource at their disposal. I suspect that those that view their email programme through a subscriber centric lens and are able to adapt to an ever-changing Mailbox Provider landscape will be at a distinct advantage over their less innovative peers.

By DMA guest blogger Richard Gibson, Director of Client Services, Return Path and DMA Email Marketing Council member