The 7 email marketing trends for 2014!

2013 was a big year for email marketing! A lot of changes, both in the industry itself with important buyouts (Neolane bought by Adobe, ExactTarget by SalesForce, ...), but also in the practices (an awareness of the importance and strength of email) and the ecosystem (improved filtering, innovations in Gmail, ...).

For 2014, I doubt that we will see any great revolutions. The groundwork has already been laid in 2013 and we will probably find ourselves in a year of transition, which will see some of the trends seen last year become more widespread.

1. Industry: The fall of some major players and the emergence of new ones

This is probably the most "jaw dropping" prediction (we'll see in a year), but I think some of the big names in the email marketing industry will suffer and other smaller players will emerge. In the emerging (but already important) players, I see particularly Litmus to flesh out its offer and why make some strategic acquisitions. But there are many extremely innovative start-ups that could well surpass some of the historical players of the sector. In this game, France will not be spared.

2. The growing impossibility of delivering an email if it is not opt-in (or double opt-in)

Filtering is becoming more and more intelligent, email users are asking for it and webmails/FAIs have every interest to go in this direction to keep their customers. In this arms race, it will become more and more difficult to deliver emails that have not received a strong consent from the subscriber. You will have to think about generalizing the practice of double opt-in, or even launching a re-authorization campaign if your past practices were not good enough.

3. New changes in the inbox and the emergence of micro-formats in the emailing world

In 2013, Gmail laid many of the foundations of the modernized inbox, the two most visible innovations for marketers are the famous tabsand image caching. For 2014, we can expect to see many webmails and ISPs following Gmail's lead. But we'll also see other technologies emerge, as players like Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail continue to work on improving the user-friendliness of their interfaces.

Another trend is theuse of micro-formats in email. Where Gmail is again leading the way with the use of this information in Google Now, other platforms will inevitably want to exploit this data to improve the user experience, especially on mobile devices.

4. Professionalization and outsourcing of emailing production

Emailing agencies are going to do well in 2014! With the emergence of new thoughts on the use of emailing, the need for expertise, training, ... we should see in 2014 the world of agencies specialized in emailing grow.

5. Focus on quality recruitment programs

Less fans and followers, but more quality in email recruitment. This is a trend that follows on from point 2 of this article, but also from some of the abuse of the past. No, sweepstakes aren't over, but the lead by the pound industry is going to suffer greatly in 2014. It will be necessary to completely rethink recruitment strategies in favor of more quality, strategies based on qualitative content, ...

6. Making responsive emailing commonplace

In 2013 everyone talked about it, in 2014, everyone is going to do it! Planning the template of your newsletters for mobile has become a necessity. We are moving towards a parity of email openings between mobile terminals and the desktop, so it is suicidal to miss out on responsive.

7. Email-to-store: The end of the border between the digital and physical world

The distribution appropriates the email! As we have already seen, some brands dematerialize the receiptIn addition to the initial contact made in the store, customers are trying to extend the first contact via email. In the same way, email is an extremely interesting tool to push the Internet user in store. This is done through better information, but also through tools such as electronic and/or mobile coupons.

8. Badsender has some surprises in store for you in 2014, more info in the coming weeks 😉

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