At the Email Evolution Conference in Miami we talked to Dylan Boyd from eROI about the Emailmarketing trends in 2010 and 2011.
His top 3:
1) Design email campaign for cross devices
2) Use/integrate Social Media in a contextual way in which the audience directly benefit from
3) Learning by sharing

Loren McDonalds, VP of Silverpop explains in this interview how Send Time Optimization actually works. No matter how dynamic email consumers are, there is always an average on what time of the day or day of the week your clients opens and clicks your emails. So this is all about finding the optimum of being on top of their inbox at the right time. And it works…

Mobiel and social increases the relevance of email
In the discussion about where email marketing stands within the upcoming years, Loren said that social and mobile increases the relevance of email. Email marketeers will have to change with the rise of social media and mobile usage. As well as their marketing messages will have to change from being promotional to incorporating much more personality, humanism and education. Email marketing should become more social to help people to make a decision and use trust that a brand has build.

The power of Data
An other key area is that data-driven email marketing will become even more important. Data will have to be pulled in from social media and from everything that is behavioural. In other words marketeers should ‘listen’ to everything that happens around them. From real-life transactions to online visits. The tools of today makes it possible to track any individual during their tour on your website. Communication programmes will have to make use of this available behavioural data.

Marketing automation the key to more ROI
Finally Loren believes that automation will also become the most important enabler of marketing departments to deliver the volume they need. Because messages will become more personal and dynamic, you will always lack in resources to 1-on-1 react on individuals. Investing in automated trigger-based campaigns will give you the possibility to react and optimize!

Lisa Harmon, director of Creative Services at Smith-Harmon, a Responsys company. She says that emailmarketing design has reached a certain point of maturity. And that companies might want to move a away a bit from these best practices. For example for companies that live from creating emotion and nicely designed images are necessary.  Or think about freestyling for mobile usage.

3 Tips for rethinking you current email design and messages:

1. What is this about?
2. Why should I care?
3. What do I do about it?

How does your email design match these three questions? Want to have free feedback from the experts? Just send us your mailing (newsletter, promotion mailings, or all types of triggered messasges) and Borgers&Straathof does the scan for you. Not only on the above mentioned items though… Don’t be afraid, we don’t bite

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