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Top 9 Email Trends for 2005

By Chris Baggott, CMO / Co-Founder, ExactTarget

...2005 begins the second half of the decade. It's finally time to stop marketing like we did in the 1990's. Email is the most revolutionary tool in marketing history, and everyone should take advantage of its flexibility, ease of execution, low cost, and trackability.

The following are my predictions as to the Top 9 Email Trends for 2005--they should be a part of every marketer's plan for the coming year.

1. Relevance is King.

Good marketers, prepare to reap your rewards. This year will finally bring the deserved demise of Batch & Blast email. Marketers and subscribers alike are beginning to appreciate the unique value proposition of one-to-one email in building relationships.

As email clutter competes with every other kind of interruption marketing, customers are going to give their attention to those organizations that deserve it. By definition, relevance is "the relation of something to the matter at hand." In the case of marketers, the matter at hand is what matters to the customer....

If you want to further a relationship, then you'd better talk to your subscribers as if you know them. Your messages should reflect your understanding of their specific needs and the unique aspects of your relationship.

In 2005, marketers will take further advantage of Dynamic Content in order to leverage what differentiates email from every other marketing medium: its ability to make each communication completely relevant to the recipient.

2. Frequency Becomes Individually Driven.

As emails become more relevant, the question of how frequently to email subscribers goes away. Marketers should not send emails based upon a predetermined schedule. Set frequencies are a relic of the print world, where cost constraints and events dictated the "campaign" schedule. Relationships are not "campaigns." They are experiences and communication between people.

Email gives us the power to change the relationship paradigm. We can let the customers' requests and behavior dictate frequency. In other words, one-to-one frequency is possible.

Sometimes it makes sense to communicate to a subscriber, sometimes it doesn't. Remember: every time you deliver an impertinent email, you are at a risk of losing your subscribers!

3. Software User Interface is Critical.

"Computers shouldn't be unusable. You don't need to know how to work a telephone switch to make a phone call, or how to use the Hoover Dam to take a shower, or how to work a nuclear-power plant to turn on the lights." - Scott McNealy

Just like anything else, if you want to optimize your results, you have to start with the right tools. As marketers desire to do more with their email, the ease of use of their tools becomes essential. If marketers have to reach out to technology resources every time they want to change a content rule or test a concept, guess what? They won't do it! The entire program will fall flat due to inefficient technology.

Batch & Blast is the result of such inefficiency. Trends for 2005 will absolutely drive the value of easy-to-use and intuitive user interfaces.

4. Data Integration Fuels Relationship Marketing.

Database marketing drives relevance. Data integration drives database marketing. Email marketers will move towards unfettered access to marketing data, with stronger and more invisible integration between their email systems and their other marketing technology solutions.

We are already seeing this with web analytics and CRM integration. Integration will continue to evolve into POS, MRM, and just about every other corner of the good marketer's data arsenal.

Accessing data hasn't historically been a problem for marketers; it's been executing on the data. Email is uniquely positioned to take data and execute to the level of relationship marketing that most marketers have only dreamed of.