One month remaining of 2018, so how did we do?

We are just days and weeks away from the influx of 2019 digital and email trends to bemuse and panic marketers into questioning if their current email programme is enough.

Brands struggle balancing ways to do better. On one hand they want to have better conversations with their customers, give customers what they need when they need it and wow wherever possible. But the worry is how will that will effect the bottom line.

Yearly trends are just another item to add to the to do list for already maxed out marketers. In looking back on this year it’s interesting to see how many digital trends actually came to fruition?

2018 – what did we predict?

Everyone jumps on the trends bandwagon each year creating an influx of very similar articles all reworking the same content in a slightly different way. Out of this mass it’s hard to pick the right specialists to trust, to help guide you. Below I’ve listed three articles/experts that summarise how 2018 played out:

• Litmus: You can’t go wrong with Litmus and I think you can say this year was the year of the inbox spruce up. If your email doesn’t move even just a tiny bit then you’re behind the curve. Especially this Christmas already I’ve seen sparkle, snowballs and Santa’s dancing a plenty. Interactive Experiences and progressive enhancements are firm trends that don’t look like are fading anytime soon.

• Taxi: I love how Taxi pulled together a coalition of experts across all disciplines, including our very own superstars. Consent is a watch word throughout and the aftermath of GDPR will still be felt in 2019. Many experts predict a back-to-basics mentality with GDPR forcing brands to reengage their audiences and review the very foundation of their email programme. The consequences of this leaves smarter more engaged consumers expecting more, can you deliver in 2019?

• Campaign Monitor: Like Taxi, they brought a great blend of expert views. This report shines a focus on using technology to enable brands and aid meaningful interactions across this article. Moving on from machine learning to AI to aid decisioning and content choices has been growing in popularity leading to brands wanting to focus on predictive personalisation more and more. As technology enables us in 2019 this trend will only grow.

How important are the trends?

The annual predictions are a good indication of where the market is going in terms of technology advancements and a great way to guide planning for the year ahead. The challenge is they also pressurise already fraught marketing teams with limited time/budget into judging their efforts unfairly against what they believe all brands are already doing.

Trends work best when they are treated as a great assortment of pick and mix. Focus in on the trends that link to your objectives and don’t be blind sighted by tactics that may not even fit with your industry or audience.

Finally, to get the best success possible always widen your view into trends and behaviours of channels/sectors that vary to yours.

Remember you are competing for share of wallet from your competitors, share of inbox from every brand and share of attention span from every brand across every single digital channel.

Let us know what you think and if this article has been helpful. Keep an eye out for next months blogs, for the month of December were going to be delving into how digital facilitators drive consumers life and showing the role digital channels play in enabling action.

Holly Mander
Strategist @ Action Rocket