We have collected opinions from some of the leading experts and practitioners on email marketing trends to look out for in 2013, which we hope will provide you with some insight for your 2013 email marketing activities.
Email Marketing Trends 2013
 | Tamsin Fox-Davies, UK Development Director, Constant Contact |
 Email adoption is expected to continue to grow, which means more email addresses in 2013 than in 2012. It will remain the preferred method of communication among consumers, and continue as their preferred marketing channel.While some have suggested that email will be less relevant going forward, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I predict email will become more important for businesses of all sizes, and particularly small businesses, as they discover it is the key element driving social media marketing results. Using both email and social together to support one another can boost a campaign and bring greater collective benefits, as opposed to using just one or the other. 2013 will usher in a greater awareness of where email and social sit within the customer journey, and how to use them both effectively to drive business growth. | |
| Henry Smith, Product Marketing Director, Emailvision |  |
 In 2013, digital marketers will need to make better use of customer data to drive more relevant and engaging communications. Over the course of the next twelve months, there will be a need to invest in new ways to win and retain life-long, loyal customers through more appropriate online campaigns. With click-through-rates for broadcast email campaigns currently resting at around just 3 per cent, marketers need to make the extra effort to communicate what’s useful to the customer rather than what can be considered as annoying and irrelevant noise. With insight about customers and their preferences, marketers in 2013 can begin to drive more meaningful interactions through customer intelligence. This process of gathering and analysing information about customers, their wants, needs and activities can help marketers build deeper and more rewarding relationships with them. The customer needs to be placed first, not the product. After all, the consumer is an individual and should be treated as such. | |
 | Matthew Potter, Head of Product and Proposition, Experian CheetahMail UK |
| According to recent research by digital agency Steel, more than a third of consumers read marketing emails on their mobile, which rises to 55% among 18-34 year olds; a high proportion of many marketers’ target audience. It could be argued that the added functionality that comes with mobile – location based services, the always-on mentality, the more obvious call to action – makes for a better, more targeted email experience than that of the desk top. But then what mobile makes up for in engagement, it can lack in delivering true creativity. Both certainly have their benefits. The challenge for email marketers is to ensure that their campaigns render correctly on whichever device the consumer uses to open their email. Whichever way you look at it, email is not dead. Far from it, email is still coming into its own – and marketers should consider the power that this channel holds when considering marketing strategies for 2013 and beyond. | |
| John Hayes, Marketing Strategist, iContact, email marketing by Vocus |  |
| At iContact (email marketing by Vocus), we are seeing businesses of all sizes re-focusing their efforts in email marketing with 63% of marketers telling us that they intend to increase their email marketing budgets in 2013. By 2014, we estimate that email marketing spend will increase to more than $2-billion. The continued growth in the adoption of mobile devices (both smartphones and tablets) will see email becoming a more flexible marketing solution, allowing marketers to target their audience anytime, anyplace. This will enable marketers to deliver more timely and relevant campaigns (i.e. restaurant vouchers prior to lunch, or shopping deals when consumers are actually on the high street). Also as the economy remains sluggish (at best), email marketing will remain an attractive choice to marketers who hope to retain and build value in their existing customer list as well as see a greater return from expensive acquisition marketing. | |
 | Tom Sather, Senior Director of Email Research, Return Path |
| Social Media – As marketers are getting more in sync with alternative communication channels, they are starting to be more collaborative to create more buzz. Brands will continue to improve upon the social experiences they are creating for their customers and this will affect the social capabilities of email as we see social data and content fed into email campaigns. This will also be reflected in the number of ESPs offering social features as part of their email platforms. Additionally, we will see more emails including polls and questions for subscribers (i.e., Was this useful? Was this relevant for you? Did you like this?), but marketers will use this subscriber feedback to drive the direction of their programme strategy. Big data intelligence – With marketers being encouraged to use data from multiple sources to inform the email programme, it becomes increasingly harder to know which pieces to use to make intelligent programme decisions. However, it’s the brands using big data effectively that are driving more opens, clicks and engagement, so marketers will need to find ways to make the data usable. | |
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