In 2014, email will continue to play
a critical role in the multichannel
marketing landscape. Other
free email tools will likely follow Gmail’s lead,
changing the way users manage their inboxes.
These kinds of changes will continue to make
marketers change the way they do things,
needing to deliver more targeted and relevant
messages than ever before.
In mid-2013 Gmail started its rollout of the
new tabbed inbox, separating personal and
promotional emails automatically in consumers’
inboxes. While this led to a short moment of
panic for many email marketers, it was just a
confirmation of what many of us already knew
– in order to get noticed in the inbox, messages
need to be personalized and relevant to each
individual’s needs. Some time in the next year, I
expect other email tools like Yahoo! Mail and AOL
to follow Google’s lead and create some kind of
tabbed inbox. I also think Google will expand its
marketing offerings, perhaps opening its own ad
platform for Google + and working to increase the
use of Google+, eating into the big social players’
market share.
Social media as a whole will continue to be
important. Buyers today are in more control than
ever before, doing a large part of research (often
on social networks) before ever interacting with a
brand to make a purchase. As this trend matures,
the connection between these channels and
email will increase in importance. Social activity
will need to play a role in the personalization of
emails and, as a result, will help marketers better
understand their customer bases.
Whether it’s capturing a tweet mentioning your
brand, or using social sign-in to capture a user’s
information, this multichannel way of life will
need to tie in the email component seamlessly.
Marketing silos (or what’s left of them) will
continue to dissolve, making predictive marketing
a critical part of 2014.