Tuesday Buzz: Where Email Marketing Is Headed

What will your members’ inboxes look like in the next few years?

The EmailMonday blog shares some thoughts on this and many other topics its seventh annual review of the future of email marketing  (opens in a new tab). The post synthesizes several email marketing reports to uncover current trends and predict where they’re heading in the future.

So, what will 2018 look like? “2018 will be the year where every savvy email marketer will introduce welcome series into their marketing programs, improving conversions, customer and brand loyalty,” writes email marketing specialist Jordie van Rijn.

Next year, we may also see more gamification in email marketing. “Translate game mechanics to motivate customers …” writes van Rijn.

A lot has been written about how AI tech will change events, but it may also play a role in email. We’re probably a long way off from AI actually writing content for us, but it may “match existing human written content with a customer’s interests.”

Keep It Simple

The Key to Better Cybersecurity: Keep Employee Rules Simple https://t.co/rRMOfDI1Oc  (opens in a new tab)

— Harvard Business Review (@HarvardBiz) November 21, 2017  (opens in a new tab)

Just as hackers don’t need advanced technological skills to attack your organization, your employees don’t need advanced skills to defend against an attack.

A recent post from the Harvard Business Review  (opens in a new tab) says that employees are your first line of defense against cyberattacks, but complex security rules can cause them to find workarounds that defeat the purpose.

“For example, password policies are so complicated and inconvenient that most employees just ignore them,” writes Maarten Van Horenbeeck. “Employees are told to change passwords frequently, but researchers have found that when people are required to come up with new passwords every three months they tend to do things like merely capitalizing the first letter or adding a number on the end to save time.”

Other Links of Note

Could your organization use an explainer video? A post on John Haydon’s site reveals the potential benefits of this type of content  (opens in a new tab).

You may be able to get people to open your email, but getting them to click on a link is a different story. The Movable Ink blog reveals how to boost your clickthrough rates  (opens in a new tab).

The 2017 hurricane season had a big effect on the meetings industry. Smart Meetings shares a few disaster-planning lessons  (opens in a new tab).

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