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Email marketing 2021 and how 2020 impacted the Industry’s most valuable channels. Validity’s VP of Customer Engagement shares email marketing predictions.
In 2020, we saw a vast increase in the usage of email marketing as the volume of senders skyrocketed. Will this trend continue into 2021? Or should we expect a different kind of disruption in the coming year? I checked in with several of our in-house experts at Validity, and here are our top five email marketing predictions for 2021.
30-second summary:
- In 2020, we saw a vast increase in the usage of email marketing as the volume of senders skyrocketed. Will this trend continue into 2021? Or should we expect a different kind of disruption in the coming year?
- Based on insight from several of our in-house experts at Validity, below are our top five predictions for email marketing in 2021.
- These trends include: Inbox overload, alternatives to open rate tracking, increasing email fraud, more intent-based marketing, and greater use of AMP.
- The top five email marketing predictions for 2021 and how these trends will impact marketers.
1. Inbox overload
With email maintaining its role as the most trusted digital marketing channel, especially during a pandemic, list sizes have grown significantly. According to our data, year-over-year global email volumes are already up by 25%. And those numbers continue trending upward. This ongoing expansion of email volume will make it harder to get into people’s inboxes, and harder to get people to engage with the messages they do receive in 2021.
2. Alternatives to open rate tracking
The open-rate key performance indicators (KPI) are becoming increasingly unreliable. At Validity’s recent Summit, Marcel Becker, director of product management at Verizon Media (which powers Yahoo! Mail and AOL), told us that actual open rates maybe three times lower than what’s being reported. Causes include increased image caching, especially on mobile devices, and bot-driven signups, which lead to artificially inflated open rates. Legal considerations may also prompt a shift away from open rate tracking: In Europe, an open tracking pixel is deemed as a cookie, making it subject to specific consent requirements. In 2021, we think senders will focus on more useful KPIs than open rates, such as the amount of time people actually spend reading and engaging with emails.
