According to a recent study, almost half of the marketing professionals believe that their email marketing strategy is either insufficient or ineffective. However, the economic crisis linked to Covid-19 has shown its importance. Email marketing remains essential in brand communication in 2021.
Email marketing : which return on investment ?
If marketers judge very positively the return on investment of an email, it is often difficult to evaluate with precision its impact. Advertisers claim it’s effective, but few have a real methodology to measure and understand its true ROI. Without accurate data, however, it’s difficult to turn email marketing into a competitive advantage.
For its place to remain central to brand communication, email marketing needs to be better evaluated. The multiplication of dedicated trainings and the creation of more advanced measurement tools should be two major trends in the coming months.
A widely used tool in times of crisis
Despite the decrease in marketing budgets in 2020, email marketing remains an important lever. Since the beginning of the health crisis, more than half of the marketers of major American and British brands have increased their spending related to this channel. Only chat and mobile application features have experienced higher growth.
So, in a period when marketing budgets are under pressure, industry professionals will certainly have to optimize their spending and assess the ROI of each channel in 2021. In this context, email marketing is expected to become an increasingly important part of marketing strategies. Once its real impact is known, this communication tool should confirm its place within brand communication, and even strengthen it.
Future trends
Already overwhelmed by the arrival of email on devices (phones, Apple Watch, etc.), email marketing is bound to undergo further profound changes in the coming years. There is a good chance that email marketing campaigns as we know them today will be completely redefined by automation. On the other hand, the evolution of privacy protection rules may perhaps allow users to no longer communicate the data that used to support marketers. This will then be a new challenge leading users to be more transparent.Thus, if the e-mail marketing channel is well anchored in our daily lives and continues to generate outsized returns for brands, it will still be subject to profound changes. E-marketers will have to remain flexible and open to experimentation.
