The landscape of marketing technology is constantly evolving. We gathered insights from industry experts on key developments in email marketing and marketing automation tools designed to simplify the marketer’s life. We also explored their biggest wishes for the future of MarTech.
Marketing Technology Developments That Will Improve the Life of Marketers
What are the specific developments in email marketing and marketing automation tools poised to have a significant impact and make marketers’ lives easier?
Play with New Tech Through Web Apps
The easy availability of web apps allows marketers to perform specific functions easily and quickly. This agility enables rapid testing of new ideas, such as A/B testing with Optimizely or creating marketing pages swiftly using Unbounce. Such tools empower marketers to be much more agile, experimenting with new technologies and strategies efficiently.
Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics
The integration of machine learning and predictive analytics offers exciting possibilities for suggesting tailored next-best actions. This technology can significantly boost lead generation and customer retention by providing relevant content and optimizing publication timing. Automatically customized content and delivery, such as marketing automation systems selecting the best subject line or send time for individual recipients, free marketers to focus on core strategic tasks, messaging, and campaign development.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) for Email Copy
Automation is set to play a larger role in evaluating and even drafting email copy, making it simpler for marketers to craft effective messages. Natural language processing (NLP) will power this by analyzing email attributes beyond keywords, including tone, subject matter, and writing style, to predict performance. This technology can explain its predictions and suggest improvements, or even generate copy snippets, empowering copywriters to innovate rather than merely iterating.
Playfully Interactive Interfaces: Drag-and-Drop Everything
The past year has shown significant improvements in drag-and-drop email editors, moving beyond basic WYSIWYG functionality to offer greater flexibility and ease for production. This intuitive visual editing style is anticipated to expand to other functionalities, including campaign flow setup, segmentation, and reporting/analytics. The rise of open-source marketing automation software like Mautic also presents an interesting development to watch.
Built-in Automatic Testing Tools and ROI Insights
The increasing reliance on data necessitates more robust testing within marketing operations. Marketers seek vendors offering built-in automatic testing tools and dynamic decision mechanisms. Furthermore, as marketing leadership demands greater insight into campaign ROI, platforms capable of providing end-to-end marketing ROI attribution will become invaluable.
Advanced Pattern-Matching Algorithms
Optimizing elements like email subject lines can be challenging due to the vast array of language variants. Advanced pattern-matching algorithms are crucial for discovering audience trends, which not only saves marketers time but also improves profitability. Tools like Phrasee exemplify how AI can optimize subject lines.
Integration of Channel Attribution Within Platforms
While marketing platforms have long imported external data, a significant development is the integration of attribution engines directly within the platform’s user interface. This allows for seamless measurement and visualization of channel attribution, providing clearer insights into campaign performance.
Content and Personalization Tools for Efficiency
Despite being highly effective, email marketing and marketing automation can be time-consuming, especially with the increased demand for personalized content. To effectively target each communication, marketers need to produce more content than ever. Emerging tools aim to streamline the creation and management of creative assets, helping to mitigate the high total cost of ownership associated with these channels, while leveraging personalization to maximize their strong ROI.
The Big Wish for Marketers
Beyond the anticipated technological advancements, our experts shared their “big wishes” – idealistic or realistic – for what they’d love to see happen for marketers engaging with email and marketing automation.
Learn to Measure True Net Impact
A major wish is for marketers to accurately measure the true net impact of their messages. This understanding could lead to a significant reduction in message volume, preventing ineffective communications from damaging long-term customer relationships. Achieving this requires technology that can identify the most appropriate messages for each individual, coupled with improved measurement techniques and rigorous long-term testing.
Uniform Rendering Across Email Clients
A consistent rendering experience across all major email clients and devices is a highly desired feature. If platforms like Gmail and Outlook were to fully support modern web standards, it would greatly simplify the work of professional email marketers, though widespread adoption remains a long-standing challenge.
Show Respect and Provide Value
Marketers should prioritize showing respect for their audience’s time by providing genuine value and getting straight to the point. In an environment saturated with messages across all channels, highly designed or heavily branded emails can sometimes detract from the core message. Effective marketing, especially email marketing, thrives on precise targeting and clear, valuable content.
Humanized, Personalized Marketing with Respect
Marketers should leverage email addresses and the data they unlock responsibly, stepping back from merely “what’s possible” with technology to focus on humanized communication. Instead of mass blasts, the goal should be to send useful, relevant, timely, and even location-aware messages, always with explicit permission. Offering a “vanilla” experience alongside a personalized one demonstrates the benefits of opting into tailored communications, ensuring personalized marketing is always respectful and permission-based.
Better Cross-Device and Cross-Tracking
There’s a strong desire for new tools that enable better cross-device and cross-channel tracking of prospects and customers. This includes tracking across email on various desktop and mobile devices, as well as on websites and social media platforms. While tech giants like Google and Facebook are exploring this, the role of Email Service Providers (ESPs) in this evolving landscape is crucial.
Embrace Marketing’s Growing Responsibility
Marketers should embrace the expanding responsibilities increasingly entrusted to marketing leaders. Marketing’s role within businesses is becoming pivotal, moving beyond traditional perceptions to drive core business objectives. This era presents an exciting opportunity for marketers to be passionate, align closely with sales, and significantly contribute to business success.
Focus on Strategy: Measure Twice, Cut Once
A dedicated focus on strategy is essential. Marketers should adopt the “measure twice, cut once” principle, recognizing that there are no shortcuts to success. Investing time and resources into understanding how to best engage with the audience and developing goal-oriented programs is paramount. Increasing engagement remains a primary objective for email marketing strategies, requiring thoughtful and deliberate planning.
Challenge the Status Quo with Cognitive Computing
The industry needs to challenge the status quo in a tangible way. While email marketing is operationally efficient, its fundamental evolution has been slow. Even the most advanced sending platform cannot salvage a poorly crafted message. Marketers should pay close attention to nascent technologies in cognitive computing, as these represent the future not only for email and marketing but for broader applications.