5 email marketing things that will be the same in 2016

It’s Christmas week! Traditionally the time for mince pies, mulled wine and predictions for the next year. In 2016 there will be lots of things that will progress and develop for email marketers, but what about the things that are likely to stay the same? Buckle up children, we’re set for an ‘exciting’ year. Another one.

  1. People will continue to claim that email is dead. Others will argue that it isn’t, and continue to believe that it is the same that it was 10 years ago. Both will be wrong. Email isn’t dead, but it is changing – like it or not, lots of business communication is moving to things like Slack, and social has absorbed a lot of personal correspondence. That means users are approaching email in a different way, and smart marketers will adapt to that fact.
  1. The best campaigns will still be the ones with a clear message. Jazz it up with as many fancy features as you like, the campaigns with the clear effective messaging will still be the ones with the highest conversion rates. We’ll see some great uses of interactive and real-time email, but they’ll be most effective when they support a good message, not in place of one.
  1. Speed will still be highly important. Speed loading the email, speed getting to the landing page and the speed of the website loading. Prevent laggy emails by using clean HTML and keeping image sizes low. Help your users do whatever action you want them to do, by keeping the whole conversion journey simple and intuitive.
  1. Mobile email will still be a thing. We will likely see more hybrid coded emails, as it becomes more important to achieve a better experience for Gmail app users. Gmail won’t fix their woeful HTML support, no matter how many promises they make. Video in email would be nice, but unless Apple fix the iOS 8/9 bug, it will still be a non starter. Just like 2011-15, 2016 will be the year of mobile.
  1. The email community will continue to be awesome. Litmus will do their thing, as will Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp and EoA, and a bunch of talented, smart individuals will have lots to say and share.

It’s customary with these kind of things that there should now be a blatant plug for some kind of product or service. We don’t really have much of a way to crow-bar this in, so here is what we will be doing in 2016:

ActionRocket will be working with great clients to help their email strategy, creativity, design and development. EmailWeekly will be trying to push boundaries in email design, making the odd typo along the way. And Taxi for Email will be helping marketers improve their workflow, by helping the email production team work more effectively.

Merry Christmas & have a great break!

Team ActionRocket



  • Beyond the Envelope™

    I agree that the best campaigns will be those with a clear message, and a clear call to action, relevant to the subscriber. Everything else is about enhancing the subscriber experience, which we should always be striving to do.

  • Samantha

    Interesting post! Also it’s important to keep testing with A/B tests and use segmented lists. I see you didn’t mention GetResponse. Haven’t you heard about it? 🙂

  • http://www.brightlivingstone.com/email-marketing-services.php BrightLivingstone

    Hello Elliot Ross,

    I should agree where you mentioned that people will clam that emails are dead. I am hearing those news since i’m in email marking field. BTW you should also write article about the points that should change in email marketing in 2016

    Thanks
    Brightlivingstone