Email marketing is constantly evolving, so it can be difficult to know where to invest your time and energy from year to year. It’s extra challenging in turbulent times like these, when consumer behaviors and business goals are shifting rapidly. To help you prioritize your email marketing efforts this year, we surveyed Oracle Marketing Consulting’s more than 500 digital marketing experts, asking them to rate the current adoption of a range of email marketing technologies and tactics, as well as their predicted impact during 2022. We then mapped the results into adoption-impact quadrants.
In this post, we’re looking at the Unproven Opportunities, which are in the low adoption–low impact quadrant. The technologies and tactics here are not fully vetted and may not generate long-term adoption or impact. There are significant risks that could undermine your investment in part or entirely—including rejection by consumers, inadequate inbox provider support, inadequate digital marketing platform support, the passage of legislative impediments, and other issues.
Because of those risks, most brands will find that the best strategy is to wait and let others work out all the details, uncover the best practices, and stress-test the technologies. However, the pioneering companies who embrace these trends at this early stage may seize a sizable advantage over their competitors.
Of the 26 trends we surveyed our digital marketing consultants about, just two of them were rated as being in the low adoption–low impact quadrant for 2022. Let’s talk about each of them in turn.
1. AMP for Email
AMP for Email is a set of open standards created by Google for creating what they call “dynamic emails,” which allow marketers to bring functionality that’s common on the web into their email designs, such as live forms, carousels, accordions, and hamburger menus. AMP for Email also allows for live content that is populated at the time that the email is opened rather than the time the email is sent.
While Google has been talking about AMP for Email for many years now, it only became usable in late 2019, so it’s still a relatively new technology. However, early momentum has been lost and many of the risks that we call out in our deep dive into the pros and cons of AMP for Email are still major issues.
For example, support among inbox providers is still limited. Besides Gmail, only Russian mailbox provider Mail.ru has fully committed. While Yahoo Mail and AOL Mail have been in beta since October of 2020, Microsoft ended a preview of AMP for Email, encouraging marketers to use their Actionable Messages functionality instead.
Support among email service providers is also less than universal. Notably, Oracle has yet to commit to supporting AMP for Email, which certainly influenced our consultants’ rankings of AMP for Email. But more than that, their opinions have been shaped by our clients, very few of whom are clamoring for access to this functionality.
“There used to be lots of excitement about AMP,” says Celestina Fisher, client partner at Oracle Marketing Consulting, “but as ISPs keep changing things—most notably Apple—it becomes more unclear if this is the route mailbox providers are going to go.”
In addition to Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, pandemic-driven staffing shortages, consumer changes, and supply chain problems have diverted marketers’ attention from AMP for Email. With so many challenges to manage, marketers have been focusing more on increasing efficiencies and tried-and-true tactics.
But probably most alarming is the fact that Google seems less enthusiastic about AMP for Email. After hosting a virtual AMP Fest in 2020, they didn’t host an event in 2021. They’ve also been writing about it and promoting it a lot less in blogs and the press.
