With 2012 upon us there are a large number of articles and blog posts about predictions for what the New Year will bring to digital marketing.  There is a buzz about all of the new products displayed at CES earlier this month regarding what new technology innovations will drive digital content consumption.  Marketers and consumers alike are all eagerly anticipating what will be the next big thing in digital.  Waiting and watching to dive head first into the next trend.  I am not a prognosticator.  I do believe, however, that there will be some major themes that will be important for marketers, specifically email marketers, need to be conscious of when putting together their email strategies for the year.  Here are a few of those themes:

-          Mobile Inbox:  The mobile inbox will get more and more attention as 2012 goes on.  In 2011, mobile email marketing took center stage with marketers looking at the best way to handle the growing trend of mobile email consumption by recipients.  The question of continuing the status quo or moving to mobile optimized content was raised and discussed, and the jury is still out.  2012 will see more marketers asking their email recipients about their email consumption habits and where they spend more time looking at email, on their mobile device or desktop.

 -          Integration Across Channels:  With marketing budgets still being scrutinized and lowered across both digital and traditional marketing strategies, marketers will look to optimize their digital campaigns across email, mobile, and social channels.  Service providers will follow suit with integration of email, mobile, and social capabilities into a single platform framework.  Email services providers will look to provide all things digital to marketers in order to present them with a fully integrated execution platform that eliminates the needs for other service providers in the mobile and social channels.

 -          Managing Inbox Delivery Through Engagement:  Getting legitimate email marketing into the inbox will become more difficult for marketers in 2012.  This will not be a result of an increase in the number of spammers out there, but a result of the focus of major ISPs to increase the value of their offering.   Increased attention paid to the engagement of users within their email will continue to be the driver to inbox placement.  Content filters, black lists, and other reputation services will still be part of the placement algorithm, but will be secondary to engagement.  As a result marketers will look to fortify their email databases with active and engaged recipients while looking to eliminate those records that do not show any signs of life.

 -          Indisputable Focus on Analytics:  In 2012 there will be a renewed interest in analytics and results of digital marketing efforts, specifically email marketing campaigns.  The days of “batch and blast” are over.  Email recipients expect more from campaigns they receive.  Email is not a new concept to consumers.  They have signed up to receive email from you as a marketer and as a result expect that email to provide value.  It is the responsibility of marketers to take all of the data they receive from their recipients, including campaign performance data, and make campaigns relevant and actionable.

In looking at 2012 one thing is for certain, marketers will still send email campaigns to help generate revenue for their organizations.  Social and Mobile marketing will continue to grow and evolve throughout the year as marketers and consumers alike learn to harness the power of each medium.  Email will serve as a bridge and a catalyst of these two emerging channels.  Email is not dead.  Email is alive and well and continues to be a medium that proves a positive return on investment if used as a component of a digital marketing strategy.

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