Our President Dave Hendricks recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Clark Buckner for the podcast TechnologyAdvice. In it, they discuss the biggest challenges brands face with email marketing, the biggest developments for the email ecosystem and what to expect next, and how data and technology are changing the industry and will lead to a people-based marketing world.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
TechnologyAdvice (TA): What changes and developments to email trends have you seen over the years?
Dave Hendricks: Interestingly enough, email has stayed largely the same overall since the late ‘90s when it was commercialized by marketers as an improvement to direct mail. Since then, emails have obviously gotten better, especially as HTML was incorporated, along with subject line testing, dynamic content, video and other components were added to make it a richer medium.
Mostly, brands and publishers themselves got smarter on how to use email. They started collecting email addresses from everybody. The big revelation in email was realizing that it was really one of the best ways to drive traffic and drive sales for most brands. So rather than make dramatic improvements, the email marketing ecosystem has been learning more and more about their customer base and making iterations to their strategies as they go, making them more effective all the time.
TA: What is the biggest challenge brands face with email marketing today?
Dave: The most ubiquitous challenge that brands likely experience also offers the biggest opportunity to innovate in the email marketing field — and that is adapting to mobile. When smartphones started to become very popular, people took their email from their desktop to their pockets. This was a really big shift, and increased the amount of time people spent on email — which has directly benefited digital marketers. The challenge comes in cutting through the noise and sending your customers relevant and timely emails that they would want to open and read.
Want to check out the rest of the interview? Listen to the full audio version below.
