Trends 2011: Email marketing begins to reinvent itself

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2010 has been a hectic year for email marketing with a multitude of changes, most of which will be reflected throughout the coming year. Marketing departments that have been able to identify these changes and act accordingly, adapting to the new ways in which consumers communicate with companies, will have a competitive advantage over other companies.

These are the trends that will change email marketing:

1. Adoption of social media: Facebook is already approaching 600 million users and Twitter is reaching millions. “Social” commerce is the next step to follow without a doubt.

2. Smartphones: This type of mobile phone is expected africa whatsapp number to outsell computers in 2011, laptops in 2012 and desktop computers in 2015. Mobile phones should be considered as platforms and not channels.


3. Social Inbox: Users are evolving towards a multi-channel inbox and that is where the fight to capture the user's attention will begin.

4. Marketing based on geolocation: Facebook Places, Foursquare, Gowalla… are just some of the services based on geolocation that will end up combining with companies specializing in local offers such as Groupon, since geolocation is going to be the hit of the coming years.

All of these trends will be reflected in email marketing, as consumers will be more selective and choose different channels depending on the type of message. The role of email within the marketing mix will be more clearly defined, which will lead to better communications and more creative content, as well as internal recognition and the budget that email marketing deserves.

Email marketers will have to keep in mind social media and mobile phone users, a large group that they will be interested in attracting, but without neglecting current customers, whom they will have to focus on in order to retain and engage.

Finally, email marketing will become a more dynamic content platform including product reviews, recommendations and personalized technologies using APIs that will allow the development of more personalized messages with relevant content for each recipient.