5 Digital Marketing Experts Share Views on Predicted Trends for 2018

There’s no certainty that yesterday’s digital and social media marketing strategies will work tomorrow. In fact, in my digital and social media experience, full-blown trends that become mainstream, become ineffective and eventually die just as quickly as they come. To understand what the digital marketing trends you should focus on in 2018, we asked 5 digital marketing experts the following questions.

What are the 3 best digital marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

What is the best way to implement these trends?

How will blockchain affect digital marketing in 2018?

There’s a lot of buzz about blockchain as a payment mechanism and how it might affect the digital marketing scene.

Some of our experts believe that 2018 won’t see much development in that regard, while others on the panel have expressed their excitement for the potential that it holds. Read about this and more on this expert interview series.

Before we go into the answers, here is a short introduction to our expert panel.

Ron Sela

Digital marketing expert and social media influencer Ron Sela has acted as Director of Marketing for top companies such as Pagewiz, Klear and Dapulse. He now heads his own consultancy (RonSela.com) and has an influence marketing blog which has been named as the second best globally.

Aaron Ginn

A Silicon Valley Tech guru, Aaron Ginn is considered an early influencer in the growth hacking movement. Named in Forbes 30 under 30, Ginn specializes in product development, data science and digital marketing, and currently heads Lincoln Network, a community of like-minded technologists.

Gary C. Bizzo

Gary C. Bizzo has been an International Business Mentor to over 1000 entrepreneurs, leaders and investors. He’s a published author and has been referred to as one of the 17 masters of Marketing & PR and an incredible resource for entrepreneurs by Entrepreneur Magazine, and is currently Founder/Partner at Kickstart Ventures Inc.

Eric Enge

Named US Search Personality of the Year and Search Marketer of the Year in 2016, Eric Enge has extraordinary SEO skills and has worked with several Fortune 500 companies. Enge frequently shares his expertise via several prestigious publications, some of which are Forbes, SearchEngineLand and CopyBlogger and is CEO of Stone Temple.

Aaron Agius

With over 14 years of making impact in the digital marketing space, Aaron Agius has worked with high-profile clients such as Coca-Cola, Salesforce and IBM. Agius is an experienced search, content & social marketer who excels at developing enterprise-level digital marketing solutions and is currently Managing Director at Louder.Online.

Ron Sela

1. What are the 3 best digital marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

Chatbots developed using AI technology is one of the top marketing trends in 2018. The chatbots can maintain conversations with customers using machine learning. It gathers information to improve its conversational skills over time. Leading brands like Facebook have already come up with their chatbot platform and chatbot. There are various tools AI based chatbot platforms like ChattyPeople, ManyChat, ChatFuel, and FlowXO which can be used to develop chatbots for websites and mobile apps.

Voice-controlled devices have brought a change to how brands used to develop their content strategy. Leading players like Amazon and Google have introduced their voice-based devices which have sold in millions. This has lead brands to shift their content strategy to include potential customers in this new audio-based channel. Companies are thinking beyond just simple narration and coming up with innovative techniques to engage the audience making it an important trend in 2018.

Predictive lead scoring is another essential trend which has changed the way marketers deal with leads. It produces more value than traditional lead scoring, accurately identifying the potential leads that can be converted to sales. Marketers can now prioritize their leads better and close deals with increased success compared to traditional lead scoring. The system adapts to changing market conditions to provide an accurate result.

2. What is the best way to implement these trends?

The best way to implement the changes is to develop a marketing strategy with timeline, objectives, and goals along with metrics to evaluate success. The company should create a marketing team that gets the responsibility to carry out the marketing project. The need may arise for collaboration with an external marketing partner who can help to implement the strategy and get access to resources. The marketing team should be aware and educated about the strategy and any specific technique that is going to be applied.

Marketing project management software can facilitate the implementation. It can be used to assign duties, manage campaigns, track deadlines, measure success and gather analytics for creating marketing insights. The results of the marketing campaigns can be measured using the metrics you developed like the number of sales or amount of readers who accessed the content. Changes should be made to the strategy based on insights and changing marketing conditions for better success.

3. How will blockchain affect digital marketing in the 2018?

Blockchain has already proved to be a disruptive technology which can enable real-time automation. The feature of smart contracts allows real-time universal updates which are accessible to all parties. The tamper-proof system is suitable for developing an automated process for formal client agreements. It can replace the multi-layer executive approval process to offer instant approvals eliminating any project delays. Blockchain can also be used to record each stage in the supply chain of contracts. The whole contract lifecycle can be accessed and used to automate supply chain processes like sourcing.

The system ensures that all data and transactions are entirely accurate and accountable creating a reliable and innovative way for marketers to engage with customers and provide improved service. It will also be possible to monitor products across their entire lifecycle and track down to the minutest detail. Blockchain automation will impact marketing strategies by providing a new way of company and customer interaction.

Aaron Ginn

What are the 3 best digital marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

• Movement back towards 1-1 communication
• Death of the “open platform”
• Contact book is king again

What is the best way to implement these trends?

The number one priority should be building up your own direct communication with your customers. Social platforms are now unreliable and there is constant pressure to change algos which impacts organic marketing, forcing companies to paid marketing.

How will blockchain affect digital marketing in the 2018?

Probably will have limited to no impact on marketing as it is a means of contract formation and validation and the vision casting about blockchain hasn’t come to pass. Most of marketing has focused on Bitcoin over blockchain but these haven’t been marketing advances per say.

Gary C. Bizzo 

1. What are the 3 best marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

• Brand marketing will replace Cause marketing. It’s a different way of thinking but brings in the cause and ties it to the corporate vision. Just a different way of seeing it. In the past corporate responsibility to the community was the mantra. Now it’s an executable brand philosophy that is more about how the company manages day-to-day operations.
• Storytelling will be part of new long term play to keep people engaged. However it is done people want to follow the message. Video will continue to dominate the market.
• Machine learning. Marketers will have to embrace the d=idea that they need data collection and analytic tools so they can see patterns and trends faster and quicker than the competition. Google is the leader in this.

2. What is the best way to implement these trends?

• A company wide realignment in thinking
• Use video to do the storytelling
• Put some money into the best analytic tools then learn how to analyze the data

3. How will blockchain affect marketing in the 2018?

Marketers need to realize a change is coming in the form of blockchain and be prepared to pivot but I don’t see blockchain making major inroads to the consciousness of marketers until the mass market adopts it. We are still a couple of years before prototypical blockchain will be advanced enough for adoption in everyday work.

Eric Enge

1. What are the 3 best marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

The continuing use of Machine Learning by Google is a big trend. What this is driving is three things:

• Google is getting much better at understanding a user’s query-intent.
• Google is getting much better at understanding content depth and quality.
• Google is getting much better at matching content to user query intent.

These trends mean that your business need to focus on creating content that Google will want to select to match up to your targeted search queries. The best way to do that is to focus on how you create the best user experience for someone who enters that search query. If you fail to match up with that, you’ll have a great deal of difficulty in ranking for those queries. Broadly speaking, you can think of this as “aligning your interests with those of Google.

2. What is the best way to implement these trends?

More and more businesses will create apps for Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. There are more than 400M active installs of the Google Assistant, and the Smart Speaker category is growing rapidly, with about 44M US households having one. Users are becoming more conditioned to use voice commands with devices as well, and this will drive more adoption of the digital personal assistants. By developing an app, you enable your business to reach large audiences that currently don’t have that much competition as yet.

Feeding into the digital personal assistant (DPA) opportunity, is the role of featured snippets. When using voice commands to conduct searches via a DPA, you typically get only one response. The great majority of the time this result comes from the corresponding featured snippet that you’ll get if you conduct a types in search on your desktop or mobile device.

As a result, learning how to obtain featured snippets is very important for your business. The basics are to map out common user questions related to your business. Then, create content that answers that question in a direct, and concise, manner. Then on the same page, have additional content that answers the related questions that Google may have. Google does value the more in-depth content, and our research shows that these types of pages are far more likely to get and keep featured snippets.

3. How will blockchain affect marketing in the 2018?

It will take time for blockchain to have a major impact on marketing, and this will unfold over time. In 2018, I’d expect that we’ll begin to see some marketing applications that rely on blockchain begin to emerge. In the longer term, what blockchain has the potential to do is to eliminate the need for intermediaries in advertising. For example, programs like Google’s AdSense program could get replaced, as advertisers will be able to deal directly with the web sites themselves, and the blockchain will provide them with the security needed to be confident in placing those ads.

Aaron Agius

1. What are the 3 best digital marketing trends to adopt in 2018?

The three I’m focusing on most in 2018 are content marketing for thought leadership, customer experience as marketing, and personalisation in marketing.

2. What is the best way to implement these trends?

For content marketing as thought leadership, I’m continuing to invest in blogging, guest posting and speaking. I’m also advising Louder’s clients to think of marketing from the broader perspective of the full customer experience. As marketing gets more complex, it’s not enough to think in channel-specific terms. Your SEO, content and PPC ads don’t matter if your product isn’t good or if you’re letting new buyers down during the onboarding and activation processes. Marketing has to start thinking bigger.

Personalisation will continue to grow in importance as well, though implementing it can look very different, depending on your company and how you connect with customers. Personalisation might be as simple as incorporating better merge fields into your marketing emails. But it’s also about better segmentation, CTAs that are hyper-targeted to specific pain points and even building out product features for a niched-down audience. There’s no “one size fits all” anymore, whether you’re talking about marketing or the broader question of product development.

3. How will blockchain affect digital marketing in the 2018?

Honestly, I don’t think it’s going to have that much of an impact in 2018. I think we’ll start to see it in the future – in the way PPC ads are bought and sold, in particular. But I don’t think adoption has been widespread enough yet to really affect marketing this year.

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FAQ This! Why Should I Care About Amazon AI?

The past three months, it seems, have been a nonstop parade of major tech events and the new product announcements that come with them.

One of the latest was last week's AWS re:Invent, where Amazon announced a new suite of AI-enabled technology designed with businesses in mind.

And while these new products, features, and tools come with a host of opportunities for the developers, marketers, and others who plan to use them, they also raise a few questions. What are they designed to do? How can they help you? How do they work?

Learn more about bots and AI here.

There's also one less-official question that occurred to me as I learned of these developments. Is Amazon trying to creep into Google's territory?

Let's take a look at some of these AI announcements from AWS re:Invent and dig deeper into just what they mean.

What's Amazon Web Services Doing With AI?

1. What Is AWS Re:INVENT?
2. What Were the Major AI Capabilities Announced at AWS Re:INVENT 2017?
3. What Is Deep Learning vs. Machine Learning?
4. What Is Amazon Comprehend?
5. What Is DeepLens?
6. What Is Amazon Transcribe?
7. What Is Amazon Translate?

1. What Is AWS Re:INVENT?

AWS re:Invent is what Amazon describes as "a learning conference" produced by Amazon Web Services -- that's what AWS stands for. The intended audience is what it calls the "the global cloud computing community," but the event features content for anyone who wants to learn how cloud technology can help grow and scale a business. From AdTech, to content delivery, to the internet of things, the conference ranges in learning opportunities from keynotes to certification sessions.

2. What Were the Major AI Capabilities Announced at AWS Re:INVENT 2017?

While a handful of new capabilities were unveiled by AWS, there are four that I'd like to focus on (with a bit of teaser text below on what each one is capable of doing):

1. Comprehend: text analysis for a variety of content formats
2. DeepLens: a wireless, artificially intelligent video camera with newly enhanced object recognition
3. Transcribe: speech recognition technology to convert the spoken word to text
4. Translate: what it sounds like -- advanced text translation technology 

If some of these sound familiar -- or seem reminiscent of similar capabilities previously made somewhat famous by a certain search engine giant -- chances are, it's because they are familiar. I'll delve deeper into this below, but many of these capabilities reflect those for which Google has been known to be a leader, especially in the realm of translation. After all, who could forget this jaunty promotional video on the topic?

3. What is Deep Learning vs. Machine Learning?

The reason why I want to establish the difference between these two technologies (and what they are, in the first place) is that most of these capabilities use one or both.

Machine learning essentially describes the ability of a machine to learn things -- habits, language, behaviors, and patterns, to name a few -- without having been programmed to do so, or pre-loaded with that knowledge. It doesn't describe artificial intelligence in entirety, but rather, is one very important AI capability.

Deep learning is a type of machine learning -- and is a bit trickier to explain. Basically, it takes the next (big) step in that it's designed to imitate the way the human brain works by way of something called neural networks. In our brains, we have biological neural networks in which the action of one neuron creates a series of subsequent actions that ultimately result in our different behaviors.

In technology, artificial neural networks seek to replicate that phenomenon by becoming "trained" to comprehend data based on a certain set of criteria. One of the more notable examples of deep learning in practice is in image recognition, in which neural networks are able to recognize different data patterns or cues to learn what, for example, a cat looks like.

4. What Is Amazon Comprehend?

Amazon Comprehend uses something called natural language processing (NLP) to better understand and determine the meaning within text. It's an instance of machine learning, in which the technology learns how to comprehend -- if you will -- and process language as it was intended by the human being speaking or writing it.

Comprehend performs this capability with a series of steps:

1. Identify the language.
2. Pick out the phrases that most strongly indicate what the text is about -- things like names of people, companies, places, or important events.
3. Use those phrases to determine if the sentiment of the text is positive or negative.
4. File that set of text according to its topic within a collection of subjects it has already organized based on patterns it's observed.

So, how does this technology apply to the real world? Well, it's particularly helpful in an instance of, say, analyzing written customer feedback. By feeding these comments to an API like Comprehend, marketers can use this technology to synthesize data from their audiences to determine something like thematic areas of improvement.

5. What Is DeepLens?

Simply put, DeepLens is a high definition video camera that was designed with developers in mind. It was built with deep learning capabilities and what AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr describes as "pre-trained models for image detection and recognition."

In other words, it's a very smart camera: one that can recognize objects, faces, motions, and creatures (e.g., a dog from a cat). And while that's very cool -- not to mention, somewhat reminiscent of the recently-announced Google Clips camera -- there's a reason why it could prove so helpful to businesses.

To start, DeepLens comes with a number of "templates," or recognition technologies that users can build upon for their own projects. Object and action recognition, for example, can help to more seamlessly create something like product tutorials or demonstrations, by developing a system or algorithm that learns to recognize how the two are paired for different outcomes.

For example, if you're demonstrating how a certain cooking appliance can be applied to different scenarios, it seems that DeepLens can be utilized in building a system to recognize the appliance itself (like a standing mixer), the actions the user can take with it (like mixing cake batter), and the resulting outcome (a delicious cake).

Source: Amazon Web Services

6. What Is Amazon Transcribe?

Anyone with a journalism background is more than familiar with the headache joy of transcribing spoken interviews. We want to get it just right, be sure not to misquote the interviewee, and communicate what was said in the right context.

If only, back in my earliest days of reporting, there were advanced transcription services available to the common writer.

But now, there's Transcribe: an AWS service that uses machine learning technologies to recognize the spoken word and transcribe it into text.

While the function itself is fairly intuitive, the benefits might not be. So let's lay out two instances where technology like this can be applied to a marketer's world:

1. Interview transcription. I already covered this a few paragraphs earlier, but let's say you're writing up a blog post that requires quotes from a spoken interview. This technology eliminates the time-consuming step of transcribing what was said, and leaves you instead with all of the text from that conversation, allowing you to pick and choose the quotes you want to incorporate.
2. Video transcription. Accessibility is no longer optional. It's important to provide a way for individuals who are hearing impaired to be able to consume and enjoy your video content, even without the audio. Transcribing what is said in the video by way of full paragraphs or subtitles allows them to do so -- and, it allows those who simply prefer to watch videos without sound to be able to absorb the content, as well.

These are only two of the more prominent examples of how such technology could be applied, but there are many more, from transcribing podcasts to documenting notes from an important meeting.

7. What Is Amazon Translate?

This development might be my favorite.

Around here, we talk a great deal about approaching marketing with a global mindset. While I might use JetBlue as a remarkable example of marketing, it might not resonate as much with audiences in countries where this airline doesn't operate.

To put it simply, the internet is a global, international destination. The people reading your content might not regularly engage with the same brands you do, and they might not speak the same language.

That's why a growing number of developers and marketers are building a multilingual web presence -- one where their online properties and content can be seamlessly viewed in the language preferred by the user. It's a trend that, as HubSpot's own global presence continues to grow, I take inordinate glee in seeing.

It's also why I love seeing tools become available that make it easier to approach marketing with a "global first" mindset. Translate is one such tool: a service that uses machine learning to more naturally translate text from one language to another.

Here's a look at how it worked when translating a French paragraph to English:

Source: Amazon Web Services

So, here's the million-dollar question: Is Amazon creeping into Google's territory?

Maybe.

It's not the definitive answer I hoped to have, but in these early release days, it might be too soon to tell. While most of Google's headline-making AI developments are largely consumer-centric (like the previous example of Clips), it is true that the company has been working on its own stack of machine learning capabilities for businesses. Look no further than Google.ai, for example, where the mission is to bring "the benefits of AI to everyone" -- including, I assume, marketers.

This is only the beginning.

What are you most excited about? What confuses or scares you, and what fills you with delight? Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts on these AWS AI developments on Twitter, or let me know if you have a question about it.

 

 

 

 

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Why Live Chat Usually Sucks

It’s the holiday season again, which yields at least four truths:

1. Huge uptick in cranberry sauce consumption (seriously, when ELSE is that eaten?)
2. Huge uptick in deck and patio fires, due to foolhardy and drunken usage of turkey fryers
3. Huge uptick in customer interactions with companies, as we agitate for the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals
4. Huge uptick in consumer frustration, as we encounter truly terrible live chat and chatbot experiences

I get it. I really do.

Every company is reading white papers and sitting in on webinars (some produced by me) that talk about the need for omni-channel consistency and customer-focused interaction mechanisms.

“If customers don’t want to use the phone, let them use chat!” say the white papers.

“Facebook Messenger is all the rage! It’s going to replace email! You need to build a bot!” bleat the webinars.

Consumers not only face a frenzy of navigation choices and special offers when they land on a retail website. Now they also must weigh the pros and consequences of using live chat, Messenger, phone, email, Twitter, Facebook, fax, or needlepoint as a contact mechanism when they inevitably have a question or problem.

For Whose Convenience?

Yes, I believe that companies should interact with customers in the fashion and platform of the customers choosing, rather than demanding customers use phone and email because it’s the company’s legacy preference. I talked about that a lot in Hug Your Haters.

That book was published 18 months ago, and the increase in live chat and chatbots has been remarkable. But here’s the problem:

If you’re going to add an interaction modality for your customers, shouldn’t you take that opportunity to ensure this new channel offers a BETTER experience? Unfortunately, I often find the exact opposite to be true.

I had a problem yesterday with a company I use routinely. I went to their website and decided to use the live chat so I could check my email during the “conversation.” The agent was incredibly slow and knew almost nothing about the product. Ultimately, after 35 minutes of painful back and forth, the agent gave me a phone number to call.

I called the number and had the problem fully solved in five minutes.

The problem is that companies rolling out live chat and chatbots do it for the wrong reasons. It’s not to offer an enhanced customer experience for consumers who prefer those channels. Instead, it’s to save money on a per-interaction basis. A chat agent can handle three to six conversations at once via chat, and a telephone agent can handle just one. And Messenger bots, once programmed, can handle infinite simultaneous conversations, bringing the average cost per interaction as close to zero as possible. “Hallelujah!” says the CFO, delighted at the cost savings provided by this new technology.

But the customer does not say hallelujah. They say a different exclamation that starts with “F.”

One Chance to Make a First Impression

If the company ultimately wants to encourage customers to use live chat and chatbots to save money, then why do they routinely put their very worst reps on live chat? Why are so many Messenger bots nearly useless? Consumers will behave in a way the company desires, if they are consistently incentivized to do so. A glance at the Cyber Monday phenomenon is all the proof we need of that point. Businesses decided to incentivize consumers to spend money online in a dedicated time horizon and discounted prices sufficiently to force the desired behavior change.

It’s realistic to believe that many customers will opt for low-cost interaction methods like live chat and chatbots, and that’s good news for business, ultimately. (Note that not all customers will do so, as some people really prefer phone and email, and that will continue to be the case until we have full generational turnover). But this gravitation from phone/email to chat/bots will only occur if companies commit meaningful resources to providing an outstanding customer experience via these new channels.

85 percent of Americans say they hate to wait on hold. That makes sense, and every time I hear that stat I wonder, who are the other 15 percent? And why do they have so much free time? Very few people want to call, and not many folks are hoping for more presents in their inbox, either. Chat and bots should be a huge hit among consumers.

But they are not.

My friend Ed Davies is a digital marketing consultant in the United Kingdom. His recent experience illustrates the core problem:

Ed needed to contact One.com, a web hosting provider, about a domain name issue. He chose live chat and was told he was #20 in line (for live chat support!). After a few minutes of waiting, the chat software sounded a chime and nudged him to find the answer himself on the website.

He was never given a sense of how long he might have to wait (something that is common on the telephone), and after 45 MINUTES, a chat agent logged on. With no acknowledgement of the wait, the agent dove into the issue.

During the subsequent interaction, the agent left Ed waiting for 10 minutes, with no message or input of any kind. Even on the phone, when you are forced to wait for a long time, agents typically pop back in every once in a while to apologize and make sure you’re not sharpening an axe.

As a result of this poor experience, Ed took his business elsewhere.

As Ed wrote to me when he told me this tale:

“Chats should provide a better experience for the customer—there are tools available that keep the customer informed, and not just saying ‘you are in position number 14.’ I found myself thinking I’d rather be on hold on a phone than a chat—I can stick the phone on speaker, dance to the tinny pop music they have playing, make a coffee, move around the house, etc. It comes down to not respecting my time in a world where I value it more highly than any other thing.”

Ed is exactly right. It’s about respect. Companies are patting themselves on the back after they check the “launch live chat” box on their strategic plan without realizing that the execution of this new option is actually driving customers away.

As always, just because you have technology doesn’t mean it provides a better experience. And in this case, the experience is often worse.

I know there are instances of great live chat and chatbots. I’ve experienced some myself. I don’t want to indict the entire category, as that is both unfair and untrue. But just about everyone I know has a disappointing chat/bots experience. How has your experience been?

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Is AI Capable of Creativity? 4 Fails, and 3 Successes

The robots are coming here.
We know -- we've been over this. Messenger and live chat are quickly becoming customers' preferred methods of communication. And for both, bots are often the first line of defense: the triaging system that connects the user to the right human being who can solve the problem ... if it even needs to get to that point.
In other words, bots are eliminating some level of need for human labor.
It's a hotly-contested point, one that's met with a lot of questions rooted in concern.
"Is my job in danger?"
"Will I be replaced?"
"A bot can't do everything -- what about the creative stuff?"
Aha. It's that last question that often sparks the most debate around here.

Learn more about bots and AI here.

Is artificial intelligence capable of truly creative work?
As it turns out, there's no truly definitive answer. There have been cases when the response is, "Of course," and those where attempts to make an AI-powered presence creative fell completely flat.
So, we sought out to find instances of both. There are quite a few -- some amusing, and some horrendous. Here are seven of the best examples we could find.

Is AI Capable of Creativity? 4 Fails, and 3 Successes

1. Microsoft: Tay
2. IBM: Chef Watson
3. Research Scientist Janelle Shane: AI-Named Paint Colors
4. Oscar Sharp and Ross Goodwin: Sunspring
5. Primordial Research Project: Hack Rod
6. Manny Tan & Kyle McDonald: The Infinite Drum Machine
7. Google Creative Lab: AutoDraw

The Fails

1) Microsoft: Tay

Oh, boy. Where to begin, with this one?
Here's the thing about machine learning: Typically, if it works properly, it's designed to function based on its users. Sometimes, that can be a good thing, like when Spotify's algorithm uses your listening behavior to curate playlists of songs it thinks you might like.
But in the case of Tay.ai, a Twitter bot designed by Microsoft to function like any "normal" teenage girl using the social media channel, things went terribly wrong.
The problem is that, as "smart" as it might be, AI isn't quite capable of establishing its own ethics. Its only sense of right and wrong is what's dictated by its algorithm, and even then, machine learning AI is still generally informed by the humans it's determined to engage with. That's why Russian ads on Facebook, for example, may have been so effective during the 2016 U.S. presidential election -- based on users' behavior on Facebook (likes, follows, comments, clicks, and more), its algorithm is "informed" enough for that content to accurately reach the people it was meant to influence.
Such was the case, somewhat similarly, with Tay. As the story goes, Tay began to emulate the behavior -- or in this case, the language used in tweets -- of the users engaging with it. Unfortunately, that language was charged with anti-Semitic and anti-feminist sentiment, causing Tay to tweet out such offensive content that Microsoft had to take it offline.

Source: Quora

2) IBM: Chef Watson

I like to call this one "The Great Chocolate Burrito Incident of 2015." That same year, Watson -- the IBM AI robot that once beat a reigning Jeopardy champion -- became "Chef Watson" and released its first cookbook. Watson developed the recipes almost completely independently using its flavor algorithm, with only a bit of help from Institute of Culinary Education human chefs to make a tweak here and there.
There was reason to be optimistic. Prior to the cookbook's publication, a few tech writers had been sent a complimentary bottle of BBQ that was also formulated by Watson, and earned positive reviews. But then came the Austrian Chocolate Burrito: a recipe with results that ranged from "a bunch of little balls of quasi-dryness in my mouth" to "so bad that I thought it had to be good."
(It wasn't all bad -- the Washington Post, evidently, had better luck with the same recipe.)
We have yet to test the recipes ourselves, but in the meantime, um ... bon appétit?

3) Research Scientist Janelle Shane: AI-Named Paint Colors

When someone pens an article about AI titled, "We’re Pretty Sure the Robot That Invented These Paint Colors Is a Stoner," our guess is that it's about an experiment that either went very well or very wrong.
In this case, it bordered on the latter. When research scientist Janelle Shane trained a neural network to create new paint colors -- which are already so interestingly named, like my favorite, Benjamin Moore's "Custis Salmon" -- the results were ... different. The AI was designed to create new shades, and assign names to them, but the two were often mismatched.
Case in point:

So, maybe that last one on the list is, um, fitting. But how does one explain the pinkish hue of "Grass Bat," or the bluish-purple one of "Caring Tan?"

Maybe we just don't have the artistic eye to appreciate these, but until we do, we'll go ahead and categorize this one as "not quite a success."

4) Oscar Sharp and Ross Goodwin: Sunspring

Have you ever wondered what would happen if scripts from classics like Ghostbusters and the original Bladerunner were fed to a neural network for the purpose of creating an original, entirely AI-written screenplay?
The results can be summarized by Sunspring, a short film that was acted and filmed entirely as the machine that wrote it intended. We'll let the work speak for itself ... 

SUNSPRING by 32 Tesla K80 GPUs

... as well as our team's response when it was shared over Slack:

The Successes

5) Primordial Research Project: Hack Rod

Self-driving cars, are making many headlines these days and are even the stuff of high-profile lawsuits. But before the likes of Google, Lyft, and Uber began fighting over who would reign supreme in the area of autonomous vehicles, there was Hack Rod: one of the first artificially intelligent automobiles that had people talking.
The project began as a research-based side gig that was rooted in co-founder Felix Holst's background at Mattel, where he worked on Hot Wheels toy cars. First, he and co-founder Mouse McCoy built a team to create a high-performance race car, which was later driven by a human through the Mojave Desert. That's where the cool part comes in: The team was able to capture the driver's brainwaves. That, combined with information collected from sensors placed within the vehicle itself, was converted into data that served as a foundation for the machine learning that would create what Fast Company once referred to as the car's "nervous system."
Hack Rod has been noticeably absent from recent self-driving headlines, but there's little doubt that it paved the way -- if you'll excuse the pun -- for autonomous vehicles to come. 

6) Manny Tan & Kyle McDonald: The Infinite Drum Machine

We've heard cases of AI-created musical composition, like Emily Howell, the classical-music-composing machine created by UCSC Professor Emeritus David Cope.
But we haven't come across as many examples of AI-powered musical composition that allows the user to create its own audible masterpiece. That's where The Infinite Drum Machine comes in: an AI experiment that uses machine learning to capture thousands of sounds we hear in day-to-day life, like a bag of potato chips opening or a file cabinet opening, and organizes them to create percussive patterns.
And thanks to Google's AI Experiments site, everyday tech nerds like us can play with it. 

7) Google Creative Lab: AutoDraw

Okay, the jury might be out on this one. We're calling it a win, because it makes for a fun way to pass the time, say, while putting off one's blog-writing duties.
AutoDraw, another Google AI experiment, helps novice artists -- er, those who like to doodle on the internet -- create better quality images with the help of machine learning.
For example, here's what happened when I tried using it to draw a picture of my dachshund-mix dog:

Cute! After about 50 seconds, AutoDraw figured out that I may have been drawing a dachshund. But here's what happened when I tried to replicate its own work:

Granted, I'm not exactly a brilliant artist -- but I did find it interesting that AutoDraw couldn't recognize the subject of its own work being copied.
So, is AI capable of creativity? Sure. But in terms of its ability to completely replicate what a human mind might do -- write a screenplay, accurately create and name paint colors, or emulate a teenage girl without offending the masses -- it's not quite there yet.
Are we on our way? Probably. But in the meantime, we'll be preparing our popcorn and watching Sunspring on repeat.



Source

The Future of email marketing – 2017 edition

Email is a mainstay in the marketing toolbox, but marketers need to continuously evolve their email tactics to cater to a changing audience. Join me in a leap forward into the future of email marketing in the 6th annual review of email marketing trends, changes, predictions, and constants.

Compiling this overview has always been a good excuse to highlight what’s happening right now, and taking a peek at what is just around the corner in 2017 and beyond.

So let’s jump in and see what marketing industry thinkers today have to say about the future of email marketing tomorrow…

Email marketing 5 years ahead…

How will email marketing evolve? Econsultancy asked brand side marketers: “Looking ahead five years, what do you think the single biggest change to email marketing will be?”

The following word cloud is the result. The biggest changes in the coming 5 years gravitate around Personalisation, Data, Automation, Devices and Content.

10 MarTech Experts Decipher the Future of Email Marketing and Marketing Automation

What will be the most interesting developments and trends? Ten industry experts came together on request by the emailvendorselection.com site and shared their views on what the future of Email Marketing & Marketing Automation will hold.

• Scott Brinker Marketers will rationalize technology stacks to achieve economy of architecture and Account Based Marketing (ABM) will remain one of the hottest categories.
• Pawel Sala Increasingly lower costs unlock a work-flow of data between web tracking, social media, BI solutions, CRM or ERP systems and email marketing. Making communication more personalized and relevant.
• Krzysztof Jarecki Artificial intelligence will take over campaign execution, especially for companies with large content libraries.
• David Raab Video is the up-and-coming functionality, easy creation will be accompanied by changes that make it easier to deploy and understand video content.
• Willem Stam E-mail systems move towards the data instead of other way around, senders will need more data-points to personalize communication that will drive user engagement.
• Benoît De Nayer Machine Learning will steer adaptive campaigns for smaller Marketing Automation platforms where AI will allow to continuously adapt campaigns to the individual customer journey.
• Jordie van Rijn The definition of MarTech will change as small market, ABM and dynamic content functionality comes together
• Tink Taylor Innovation will come from an explosion of machine-learning start-ups. For top-tier industry leaders, data is often in good shape, but it’s not all held in the same place.
• Assaf Ben-Asher Integration platforms are on the rise to extend the top marketing and engagement applications and increase service reach.
• Matt Hayes Iterative development on content automation in order to solve content production problems.

Read the full article with the complete and most juicy MarTech predictions here: 10 MarTech Experts decipher the Future of Email and Marketing Automation

What one learns from reading 134 mail marketing predictions

What happens if you read all the “Top email trends for 2017”, “Where is email headed in the year to come?” and “2017 email marketing predictions”articles out there? Gerald Marshall took the gamble and went through 134 email marketing predictions. My advice, don’t try this at home. And in one sitting, you’ll have a 100% chance of information overload!

The top 4 for 2017 are in the category data analysis, emails and ESPs, content and segmentation. The other big winners this year are email design and improved ESP platforms followed by video content and AI-assisted segmentation/ personalization.

AI is have email data analysis for lunch. The data analysis category includes artificial intelligence and bots with nearly half (15 of 33) of the category predictions dominated by that type of smart tech.

Have a look at the complete breakdown of predictions 

The Biggest Email Marketing Trends in 2017 Are…

Litmus asked 1.200+ marketers to rank the biggest email marketing trends for 2017. Chad White provided the context as Litmus’ research director and industry trend hawk-eye. The research shows that marketers are betting on Interactive email, Big Data personalisation and HTML 5 video in email to break through in 2017.

2017 will be the year of… Interactive emails
Email interactivity pulls some of the interactions from the landing page into the email. You can think about, for instance, Hamburger menus and other navigation, Carousels, Image galleries, and sliders, Offer reveals and Add-to-cart functionality.

By allowing more interactivity inside the email, it has potential to reduce barriers to engagement. It produces clickers with higher intent. The two biggest issues that still hold back adoption are 1: technical challenges around implementation and 2: Tracking and attribution changes.

2017 starts the half-decade of… Big Data personalisation in emails
Translating Big Data into actions for email marketers starts with breaking down data silos across channels. this means connecting the dots – which is no small technological or political feat. Marketers have embraced personalization driving most of the content in emails.

However, Big Data personalization is so complex and involved that it’s never likely to be a huge trend in any particular year. Instead, it’s probably truer to say that we’re in the half-decade of Big Data personalization.

2017 will be the year of… HTML5 Video in email taking off
Video in email is straightforward and easy for subscribers to understand — and for that reason is likely to be a catalyst in making both marketers and email users more receptive to other forms of interactivity.

With the launch of iOS 10, HTML5 video support is back! As of November 2016, more than 53% of emails were opened in Apple email apps justifying trying it as long as there is a fall-back for subscribers with email clients that don’t support HTML5 video.

2017 will be the year of… Automated and triggered emails
Marketers know the importance of automated emails. At some brands triggered emails, like welcome emails and cart abandonment emails, already generate the majority of email marketing revenue.

The outsized productivity of such a small percentage of email volume presents huge opportunities for brands to better engage subscribers.

More trends? Read the whole article including quotes from the experts on the litmus blog.

Experts on MarTech transformation of the email and marketing automation industry

With technology, marketing strategies and tactics constantly evolving, the eco-system is ever so important. We asked experts exactly what they think are significant changes and trends in the role of agencies, 3rd party technologies, and vendors in relation to each other? Find out below what these global experts had to say about the transformation of MarTech

• Roland Pokornyik agencies will be forced to bring the creative spice and become fluent in Automation, otherwise advanced DIY (do It Yourself) tools will be eat their lunch.
• Pawel Sala Integrated systems and data makes that triggered emails will fill in a larger share of email efforts and a be a big driver behind positive email marketing ROI.
• Matt Hayes Content Automation is the must have for marketers to save time and personalise at scale. Must-have innovations will come from 3rd party platforms and agencies.
• Krzysztof Jarecki The Chatbot Space will impact email and marketing automation. You might be subscribed to a Chatbot in the near future. With APIs making integration between email and chatbots seamless.
• David Raab Strong movement towards channel-independent data and decision systems. making it easier to share resources and coordinate customer treatments across channels.
• Fabio Masini Demand for on-premise and Hybrid email (MTA) systems grows due privacy concerns and wishes for data control.
• Willem Stam Deliverability trends will shape campaign types and ask for new complementary measurement of Deliverability
• Benoît De Nayer No more BYOMT (Bring Your Own Marketing Technology). Market Consolidation will accelerate, while new players enter the game.
• Jordie van Rijn ABM will start to appear in every (B2B) platform.
• Tink Taylor Migration back from the single marketing suite to a connected marketing stack.
• Kath Pay Specialist 3rd Party suppliers are on the rise, adding to the services provided.
• Gerald Marshall Productising AI will affect email marketing agencies and brands.
• Scott Brinker Account-based marketing (ABM) and the rise of “Smart Outbound” as a counterpoint to inbound-only.

Read the full article with all the MarTech prediction trimmings here: 13 Experts on MarTech transformation of the email and marketing automation industry.

Email marketing trendbook 2017

What are the most interesting trends that could play a bigger part in your email marketing strategy in 2017? Email marketing experts Krzysztof Jarecki, Aleksander Heba and Adam Ambrożewicz from Expert Sender discuss it in their Email marketing trendbook 2017.

1. Expect Chatbots to run e-commerce email marketing
   Customer behavior can already trigger automated emails. Expect chatbots to start doing the same. They’ll run automated workflows; send confirmation emails, abandoned cart emails, create newsletter sign ups, all personalized with data from the chat session.
2. Email will shrink
   Mobile phones are now the most common devices to access emails. According to 2016 research, the sweet spot for email length was between 50-125 words for optimal effect. With less space and minimal attention spans, expect email content to get shorter.
3. Eye-tracking is back! and now for kick-ass email
   Are you looking at me? Eye-tracking was mainly used for websites, but is now being used for testing email creative. It uses focus groups with real end users. Thanks to more affordable hardware, it’s now possible to run fast and inexpensive email eye tracking tests.
4. Context makes real-time email
   There’s going to be a whole lot more emails using contextual data, in real-time. Content will be based different sources including for instance geo-location, device, weather, time, (twitter) trends and stock levels. Based on real-time variables the emails will be generated at moment-of-open (not send).
5. Predictive lead scoring is picking up
   More businesses choose to have integrated models that are employing Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to generate lead scores automatically. This is what we call predictive lead scoring. A predictive intelligence layer on the top of the marketing automation we will hear more about in 2017.
6. Email will have a more conversational tone
   Keep it real, be honest, don’t take yourself too seriously, write like you talk, ask questions that encourage your customers to respond. A casual conversational tone will help your customers better relate to you and by extension to your brand, thus, creating a personal connection.
7. Machines will match subscribers with content
   Segmentation and personalisation produce better-targeted emails but are often too time-consuming. We crave a way for content to be matched with our customers automatically. With so much data and content, marketers will look to machines for content matching.
8. Cross-channel data will fuel the customer view
   Channel data silos are going to be less prevalent. We’ll see behavioural, demographic, contextual and transactional data used across campaigns to give us a single customer view. Push emails with the right content with right timing to always-on devices.

Download the trendbook here.

5 Email marketing trends to consider for your email communication strategy in 2017 – and a few things to safely ignore

The heart of (email) marketing remains the same. It is about providing customer-centric experiences. Don’t expect 2017 (or 2018… or possibly ever) to see technological perfection for getting the right message/person/time combination. So how is this mantra translated into the reality of the day? Tim Watson shares his 5 trends to act on.

1. Email Targeting
   Capturing user interests with preference centres is dead. Brands not using behaviour in 2017 will be brands stuck in the past. I expect to see more medium sized brands of scale adding behavioural driven content blocks, such as recommended items.

2. Customer Data regulation and privacy
   Permission is getting stricter; what marketers can do with data is going to be more tightly regulated. Within the next two years, the requirement for unambiguous consent looks like it may end the practice of pre-ticked check boxes for email permission during a purchase.
3. Blended and supplemented Automation
   Many brands already have some automation included in their email programmes. In 2017, they will be supplementing existing email activity and blending in automation programs to add to their broadcast activity. A few adventurous brands will try out innovative approaches to decisioning of what emails to send to each contact.
4. Deliverability, Inbox placement and email bombs
   Indiscriminate and illegally sent email has been beaten, the bar is rising on standards for B2B brands to get to the inbox. Poorly permissioned, third party permissioned or sending on opt-out basis is going to be an increasing challenge for B2B.
   Seed list based inbox monitoring tools no longer give usable inbox placement results. The trend of email list bombing we have seen at the end of 2016 is going to lead to more use of reCAPTCHA on subscribe forms and double opt-in processes.
5. Email Design and creatives
   Expect to see the trend for use of animation and video to continue in 2017. The key is to make the animation support the message and capture imagination, not just add a pointless decorative element.
   Pushing the Enveloppe
   Some brands experiment with interactive emails featuring push the envelope – email design techniques, such as creating carousel elements, hamburger menus, and interactive features in their emails. However, these design innovations still are largely unproven in value.

Are smart watch users, Google Home Assistant and Amazon Echo things we can safely ignore? Read the full article here on SmartInsights: 5 trends Email marketers need to stay on top of and a couple you can safely ignore…

Email Marketing Innovation

According to Econsultancy research companies intend to innovate their email marketing this year with more creative uses of behavioral triggers (66%), greater use of dynamic elements and marketing automation to reach one-to-one communication.

Agencies expect to see a bit less innovation for their clients, except for content messaging apps and the use of email as identifier on external platforms. Such an identifier can be used for for instance retargetting or profile enrichment.

7 email marketing predictions for 2017

Top minds in the email marketing industry have come together for some crystalball gazing over at Campaign Monitor. With predictions about what the future holds for email marketing in 2017 and beyond. Below a short summary. Read the full article here: 7 email marketing predictions for 2017

1. Chad White of Litmus: Data-driven marketing will rule.
   Data science is making email marketing smarter by powering better automationand personalization. But It isn’t “set and forget”, Marketers will zero in on the data points and behaviors that lead to value.
2. Alex Williams of Trendline Interactive: Mobile payments will come to inboxes.
   A native, fingerprint-based integration for inboxes on mobile that will allow 1-click payment from email in 2017.
3. Matthew Smith of Really Good Emails There will be a revolution in email design.
   With sets of modular templates and meaningful content components. Less time will be needed in the design of emails. Focus will shift to creating more meaningful content rather than constantly designing and creating the “container”.
4. Daniel Codella of ZURB There will be an evolution of marketing automation.
   With more options to fine tune automated campaigns like advanced segmentation and time optimized sending. Secondly, there will be more g pre-packaged customer journeys to help move the needle.
5. Andrea Wildt of Campaign Monitor: Behavioral data will help marketers dominate their competition.
   As consumers welcome smart devices into their homes and lives, marketers can integrate consumer usage data like sites visited, apps downloaded, or games played.
6. Jordie Van Rijn of Email Monday Email: Marketing is reinventing itself by acknowledging Person + Profile + Purpose = Performance. I think this is profoundly influenced by tactics advocated in B2B marketing automation. It is changing how everyone (including B2C) looks at their audience value. I think we will see a rise of (predictive) lead scoring and matching.
7. Ros Hodgekiss of Campaign Monitor: As we see email further integrate with other marketing and analytics platforms, I predict that more marketers – and not just engineers – will be able to determine ROI, but also see how email is influencing repeat purchases, renewal rates, feature adoption and more.

2017 will be the year of the savvy emailer

Josie Scotchmer of Mailjet declares this year’s theme “Start practicing what you preach”. Not a bad idea. In her post Email: the trends for 2017, she encourages to get the basics right, stop talking about what you’re going to do and start putting practices into action. Let’s take that as a five-step program.

Step One: Personalization… closing the disconnect between brand and customer
Every year we talk about personalization, yet so many marketers still think this ends with adding a first name to an email. Yikes! To connect with your contacts by taking a look at your data, to find true segments and personalize our messages based on the needs of each segment.

Step two: Build an emotional connection through Brand Storytelling
To be truly great at brand storytelling, you need to first understand your customer journey. An evocative story is both true to your company and your customers’ lives. Use the story to uncover the hidden treasures you have in your product catalog.

Step three: Use Transactional Emails as a part of marketing
Marketing teams tend to govern marketing emails, whereas transactional emails often sit under IT departments. The space within your transactional emails can help you to connect your customers with their wants and desires. Even if they didn’t know they wanted it. Give your transactional emails the same brand feel as your marketing emails for a consistent experience.

Step four: Trust The Machine, marketing automation
Wow, 48% of SMBs are not using any form of marketing automation. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is getting smarter and more intuitive, so, yeah, 2017 is the year to put your faith in technology and trust the machine, especially for capturing them when they are in the moment.

Step 5: Make Email an interactive experience
By now, you’ve mastered crafting beautifully responsive emails (well, hopefully anyway). So let’s make your subscribers love them, by making them interactive. Perhaps you’re looking to increase conversions, allowing your customers to shop directly in the email.

Read the whole article here on the Mailjet blog.

Email Marketing in 2020: 3-Year Outlook On Email Marketing for Small Business

Clate Mask, CEO at Infusionsoft, looks ahead to 2020 from the doorstep of 2017 and notes that the near future will see some powerful trends, especially in email marketing. The rapid shift over the next few years will have serious implications for small businesses trying to keep pace:

• Bulk email marketing dies (It’s nearly dead now). Small businesses can no longer hammer inboxes with impersonal email.
• Email marketing will keep growing. Right now, the number of emails Infusionsoft sends on behalf of our customers is growing faster than the growth of our customer base. This means more emails per customer year over year, which reveals a continual high demand for email that we expect only to increase.
• Small businesses won’t be able to compete in the email marketing space on their own. Any business that wishes to compete must use automation software.
• Seamless CRM integrations will allow for a focus on personalization, powerful reporting, and improved sales.
• Small businesses will be able to implement highly sophisticated marketing campaigns without having to understand how they work. The automation will be that good.

The year 2020 used to sound so distant, but now it is right around the corner. Email marketing will be as important as ever, but it will also become increasingly difficult. Small businesses working with ESPs will be able to take advantage of all the powerful new tools and resources that the future holds.

Read: Email Marketing in the Year 2020

Top 5 email marketing trend predictions in 2017

So what does 2017 have in store for email marketing? One thing is for certain, it’s going to be another very exciting year for email says Jenna Tiffany of Communicator! Here are her Top 5 email marketing trend predictions in 2017:

1. Back to Basics means smiling customers and more Automation
   Research showed that consumers respond well to brands that get the basics right. As a result of optimizing the basic elements, the adoption of automation will grow. This technology currently isn’t being fully used. Optimizing from the ground up with be vital in 2017, so evaluate the basics you configured many moons ago.
2. Strategy is driven forward by Machines that Learn
   Email marketing comes from a history of tactical implementation. Over 60% has an email marketing strategy but the majority is at a basic level. AI and machine learning will drive your strategy forward in three areas: Sophisticated segmentation, Lifecycle marketing optimization and Intelligent personalization
3. Email Content comes to life
   Finally, cat videos in our inbox! Email marketing content can be more interactive, it can be more engaging and start to reflect more and more what a website can display. And don’t forget real-time optimization and functionality like including live shopping carts in the email.
4. Data quality & trust
   Trust is important. Make sure your existing marketing practices are compliant because the GDPR will come into effect May 2018. By taking an active stance on this, you can truly demonstrate the value and respect you have for using and storing their data. It’s never too late to start building trust.
5. Modular Design builds a library of partials
   Email marketing has now got to a place where the majority of a design can be dragged and dropped. Modular designs mean less time is spent on designing the email. Designers are still needed to build your library of partials – no matter if they are locked in a cupboard or not.

Read the whole trendy article at the communicator blog

10 Email Design Resolutions

Have you thought about your email design resolutions for 2017? Kelly Shetron at the BeeFree blog reached out to email marketing experts to get their resolutions for the new year. They weighed in on everything from improving design techniques for headers, GIFs, CTA buttons, and more to Inspire your own email design resolutions. As this email from Daniel Wellington says, the best time for new beginnings is now. : )

1. Add Cinemagraphs and Dive Deeper Into Geo-Targeting – Priya Bransfield, Email Consultant
2. Increase Interactivity With Engaging Photography and Bold CTAs – Melanie Kinney of G3 Communications
3. Make Sure to A/B Test More Design Elements – Shannon Crabill Email Developer at T Rowe Price
4. Include Fun Animation (No Matter How Small) – Kathryn Grayson of Everyday Health
5. Experiment With GIFs for an Animated Email – Leo Thom, Freelance designer and developer
6. Rely on More Data-Driven Design Decisions – Annett Forcier of Hootsuite
7. Grab Attention With CTA buttons and Avoid Gimmicky GIFs — Kiandra Plummer
8. Use Emoji to Encourage Emotional Impulses – Nick Haby from RevSquare
9. Improve Rendering Across Gmail, Outlook, and iPhone – Belinda Blakley, DeVry Medical International
10. Focus on Content-First Strategy Principles – Courtney Prebble, Digital Designer at Bronto

Read the full article with all resolutions: 10 Email Design Resolutions for 2017.

The future of email marketing is already here

Is your Email Marketing manager already a Director of Essential Engagement? Len Shneyder shares why the future of email marketing is already upon us, although the rules of email marketing are still about to evolve in ways we won’t even notice until well after the fact.

Companies must have the vision to realize a logical step as personalisation of each message and say goodbye to Batch-and-Blast like Pinterest did. But what about Big data and Artificial Intelligence? Unlike Ultron, this AI will want to sell you something.

Len lays out six steps to get to a Big Data and AI powered email scheme:

1. Get your Big Data house in order
2. Lay a Plan
3. Think 1-to-1
4. Explore the provider landscape
5. Pay for performance
6. Elevate email in your marketing mix

Email marketing won’t change through radical leaps like jet-packs or better email technology. Instead through improvements to the ways that companies gather and leverage customer data and the systems’ ability to make automated inferences about user behaviors and needs

Read The future of email marketing is already here

Email marketing in 2017 – Gurus reveal their predictions…

At the close of every year, the email marketing gurus of Striata get together and discuss their predictions for the year that lies ahead.

• Mia Papanicolaou – Interactive email will be huge and everywhere (with increased support for CSS), email will start to mimic our online experiences.
• Sheryl-Lynn Omar – Emails and digital content that adapt to a user’s age will take relevance and user experience to another level.
• Stergios Saltas – Less use of stock images. ‘Real’, ‘in the moment’, ‘slice of life’ type images are going to appear on email and websites.
• Alex Papadopulos – More synergy and dialog between the email designers and the email applications. Changes to Outlook and Gmail lead to a better inbox.
• Ross Sibbald – Going forward it will be about the quality of the customer’s experience within the communication and not the quantity of emails you send that will differentiate you.
• Adam Q. Holden-Bache – we are now seeing a shift towards using data to predict what a recipient wants, and delivering that to the inbox.

Read Email marketing in 2017 – Gurus reveal their predictions…

Four Unexpected Investment Areas For 2017

In the coming year, marketers plan to focus on building a better email marketing program mix and better messages. But it is more interesting to hear what email marketers are not saying when talking about their strategy and plans.

George Bilbery president of Return Path urges marketers to consider adding the following fundamental areas where major investment doesn’t appear to be planned for 2017:

1. Increase the subscriber list size
2. Increase list quality
3. Improving inbox placement
4. Finding the right email frequency and cadence

Read Four Unexpected Investment Areas For 2017

5 ways email will evolve in 2017

There’s been quite a bit of transformation for email in recent years. April Mullen, strategist at Selligent, lists a wave of changes for our beloved email channel to watch out for.

1. The customer journey will become a crucial focus.
   Customer experience will be the single most important attribute that brands live or die by, and your role as an email marketer will be to develop programs that touch various parts of a consumer’s journey with your brand.
2. Reporting will begin to shift from campaigns to consumers.
   Deeper development of customer journeys will bring a change in how marketing efforts are evaluated. Brands will look at the effect their marketing orchestration has on individual customers.
3. Delivering to messaging apps will become apart of an email marketer’s job.
   Apps are the new inbox opportunity to send hyper-focused, opt-in promotional messages and service notifications. And email marketers will be tasked with developing the strategy and executing these programs as they are direct marketing experts.
4. Shared IPs will become more prevalent. 
   We may start seeing major email service providers/marketing clouds offering a shared IP option to clients of all sizes. With major changes in recent years in how reputation is established, dedicated IPs aren’t as critical as they once were.
5. We’ll see leaders test in-email conversion buttons. 
   Given that email is a universal app with a lot of flexibility, one-click conversion technology is ripe for someone to implement it. What brand will be the first? I can’t wait to see it hit my inbox.

Read the full article on Mediapost

Email Marketing Trends 2017 from Industry Leaders

FreshMail asked key industry leaders what is their “must-have” email marketing trend that will be extremely relevant in 2017. Here are their answers:

Turning deliverability into a KPI 
Laura Atkins of Word to the Wise: We must start treating deliverability as a valid way to measure our campaigns. Not because failure to reach the inbox means our campaign has failed, but because we can improve inbox delivery by improving our marketing.

Acquisition is #1 priority for all marketers 
Scott Cohen of InboxArmy: You’ll see the embrace of address collection and the channel in everything marketers do. Greater investment and resources will be devoted to email as the channel will get its due as the hub of digital marketing and customer communication.

Improving sender reputation 
Guy Hanson of Return Path: Subscribers are more likely to provide a primary email address when they trust the sender, and over 80% of all email reads are generated from these addresses.

The era of Mailable Microsites 
Jaymin Bhuptani of Email Monks: The use of innovative elements like Hamburger Menu, Accordion, Carousel, Search, Slider, Rotating banner, Flip effect will catch momentum and enhance user experience.

Becoming a strategist In 2017 
Kath Pay of Holistic Email Marketing: Email marketers will increase their use of personalization, automated lifecycle programmes and intelligent testing to deliver an improved customer experience and reap the rewards accordingly.

Email Content Automation 
Jordie van Rijn of Email Monday: Pull content, products, and information from your site or database into the email. Add a bit of logic and segmentation (no AI needed) and you have the foundation for a homemade recommendation engine.

Going back to basics 
Jenna Tiffany of Communicator: It’s important to get the basics right because this is what consumers want and voted Amazon as the brand that does email best. For Amazon, it’s not about just including the latest tech, it’s about defining a clear email strategy that optimises the customer’s journey.

Dynamic personalized product emails 
Rob Allen of Smart Insights: Marketers will turn product emails into ‘micro-stores’ where customers are able to do more than just look at a list of product options. That means more engagement and better conversion rates.

We will see the complete ecosystem of data work-flows
Pawel Sala of FreshMail: With the relatively lower costs of big data technology, it seems that finally we will be able to see comprehensive ecosystems with the work-flow of data between web tracking, social media, BI solutions, CRM or ERP systems and email marketing.

Read the whole article and check the infographic at the Freshmail blog

Email Marketing: The Best, The Worst, and What’s Next

What does the future of email hold? Since they don’t have a crystal ball, Aweber asked five email marketing experts to share their predictions during #Emailchat. Some highlights:

This is what we predict for 2017
Data will play a bigger role than ever
More personalization, more relevance
Holistic email experiences

The email design trends we saw everywhere
Interactive content, i.e. live Twitter and Instagram feeds
GIFs and emojis
Minimalist templates
Mobile-friendly design

And these brands killed it with their campaigns
Collaborative Fund’s magazine-style newsletter
Spotify’s “Most Listened to”
Movember’s fundraising campaign

Read the full article, #emailchat 140-character style, here.

The greatest 2017 email marketing predictions of all time

The fundamentals of email haven’t really changed in the last 10 years, in truth, Elliot Ross of ActionRocket doesn’t expect a sweeping change to happen and a lot of innovation is in improving boring things. But one day… So what is the direction we would like to see it go?

Easy segment of one marketing – if it works
There are some amazing things able with hyper personalised email, but only after we know when and where to use it. And the ESPs makes it simple..
Fixing the email production process.
The process of making a marketing email, from managing it to producing content to QA to personalisation, is disjointed and inefficient. Fixing this will enable everything else.
A focus on brands and experiences, not tech.
If we use technology to improve our emails, it’s imperative that it improves the experience — so we need to think in those terms. Technology for the sake of it achieves nothing.
Truly considering mobile.
Aside from tweaking the design, what do we really think about when it comes to mobile email? Mobile changes the entire experience, also because so much of it is shaped by social media cues.

Read The greatest 2017 email marketing predictions of all time

The Top Email Marketing ROI Trends to Watch in 2017

Marketers should be careful not to rest on their laurels when it comes to this “oldie but goodie” marketing tool and keep up with changing trends. Email may be a long-established communication format, but today’s email marketing strategies can’t afford to be old-fashioned.

Live and breathe mobile first
The rise of mobile means all age groups are using their smartphones to check email, with Millennials leading the charge. Marketers should experiment with sending emails in the early morning or late at night for this audience subset. Brands absolutely must think mobile-first or risk alienating the users that live and breathe with mobile.

Channels add further degrees of details
Email marketing can work in tandem with larger campaigns across channels. If you’ve got a great campaign happening on social channels like Facebook or Instagram, email can further describe the campaign with supplemental, relevant details.

Taking visual impact cues from social
When targeting email for Millennials especially, brands should take their cues from social. Optimizing emails for great visuals and using emojis strategically will appeal to an age group that increasingly relies on visuals to communicate.

Read The Top Email Marketing ROI Trends to Watch in 2017

Future Trends in Email Marketing for 2017

“In 2016, we experienced a surge in use of interactive emails, more mobile-friendly and email automation, and a loooot of emojis”, says Kevin George from the Email Monks. So, what should email marketers look forward to in the coming year? The struggle to STAND OUT in the inbox will accelerate; all you need to do is think out-of-the-box.

Use context for Superior Segmentation
Beyond the regular profile-based segmentation. Now make it more contextual, individual. What time of the day do your subscribers generally open your emails? Some like higher frequency while some like just a few and specific type. Understanding the interest of the person you are sending an email to is the need of the hour; it will help you segment better.

Taking Personalization to a new level
Personalization will now surpass the basic stage. Algorithms applied to behavior of subscribers will help to find out what they will do next. Geo-targeting can prove useful in delivering custom branding offers to subscribers. Demographic, firmographic, behavioral and psychographic data can together help in building a buyer persona, a trend that is likely to pick speed in 2017.

Mobile Optimization for Optimal emails
It will thus become quintessential for email marketers to think mobile first; there is no option but to create responsive emails (single column template is the best solution). The content of the email, too, should be written with mobile users in mind.

Bringing Social content into email
Sending emails about the campaigns you run on your social channels like Facebook can supplement your marketing efforts in 2017. Another trend is the use of live social media feeds in your emails. Channels like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. This way, you reach out to a broader audience, making sure no one misses out on any of the fun.

Bring life to Your Emails with Interactivity and animation
Interactivity has already made a grand debut and it is the future of email marketing. Innovative elements make today’s emails truly engaging and helps to offer more content compressed in a short and user-friendly format. GIFs have brought that fun element to emails. Video is bound to make a comeback in 2017. Thanks to Apple’s iOS10 supporting videos in email.

Think about intereactive items like a Live Shopping cart, Countdown timers, Rotating Banners and Sliders, Scratch Effects and Menus, Accordions, and Flips

Read Future Trends in Email Marketing – The Monks Predict

Four predictions for email marketing in 2017

What is the future of email marketing? Expect nothing to change with email in 2017, until marketers start acting on the trends and rethink their email strategy. Ryan Phellan hopes to see more marketers become “first-person” marketers. For these active marketers, he crafted this must-do, must-look-into topics list based on his predictions and trends for 2017.

1) In 2017 more email marketers choose first-person marketing.
System, budgets, company structures and internal politics often won’t allow to make big leaps. So first-person marketers work hard for incremental changes. Change one thing at a time and build on that progress. Each customer is an individual, and every email gets them closer to marketing to their customers as individuals, not just another email address in a database.

2) First-person marketers will focus on wearable devices.
Don’t obsess about email rendering on a smartwatch. Mobile devices are all about notifications of information rather than the information itself. Marketers need to figure out what customers expect and perceive information. What will eventually evolve the email industry is how the consumer uses that information.

3) Marketers will catch up to mobile-first consumers.
The first-person marketer will look at how their customers consume information, not just if they did.

We are in the mobile-first age; maybe even mobile-only. Email proofs on our desktop computers, we’ll look first on phones to see rendering and behavior. For email marketers, the issue has gone beyond using responsive design. Developing metrics and KPIs for mobile is what’s important.

4) Global privacy comes to the forefront.
The “private right of action” of Canada’s anti-spam law goes into effect in July 2017. Individuals and government agencies can now initiate complaints. Marketers will start reviewing their data gathering and protection practices to comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which goes into full effect in May 2018.
The privacy debate is important to trust and relationships with their customers and subscribers.

Read: Four predictions for email marketing in 2017

What’s Ahead for Email Marketing in 2017

Keep these email trends in mind to guide budget and planning of your email marketing strategies in 2017. Six current and continuing trends.

• Improved Automation
  More companies will use emerging technologies to better automate the creation, distribution, and management of email content. Email automation is expected to help save businesses time and money.
• Machine Learning
  With machine learning, marketers can mine data more effectively. These tools are key for everything from email automation to better personalization and targeting.
• Mobile Optimization
  Chances are that your target audience will access their email via mobile devices. This means your emails need to be optimised and easily readable on a mobile device.
• Visual Content
  Yes, visual content is super important in email marketing too. Document a well-researched visual storytelling strategy around the ongoing delivery of valuable information through visual media.
• Integration of marketing channels
  Integrate your email campaigns across channels. Email is a great tool for supporting campaigns on social and other channels.
• Compelling Writing
  From subject line to the body copy. It is all about compelling, creative content that tells a story about your brand and your products and services.

Read What’s Ahead for Email Marketing in 2017

Key Predictions for email marketing in 2017

Orchestrate sees email coming back with a vengeance. Cognitive of the benefits of email marketing they predict what they see as the trends email marketing is most likely to follow in the year 2017.

• The rising adoption of responsive email design is increasing the conversion rates on smartphones.
• Automated emails become important to address the need for a better personalised customer experience.
• Innovation in triggers for automated emailing make campaigns more timely and relevant to the subscribers.
• Integrating email marketing with CRM and ERP will bring that elusive one-to-one communication with customers closer.
• Modular templates make running campaigns much more accessible and can drive adoption of email automation.
• Drag-and-drop technology will make email marketing simpler and more convenient.
• Kinetic email makes it possible for marketers to develop engaging and eye-catching campaigns that are much more distinct a recipient’s inbox.
• By applying machine learning and data mining, marketers can use their email marketing toolkit to improve results and drive profits.

Read Key predictions for email marketing in 2017

Looking back at the Future of email marketing

Do you have the 1.21 Jiggawats it takes? Technical development in email and marketing automation has been spectacular in the last year. And I have the feeling that in this quickly-evolving world we are nowhere close to seeing the end of technical possibilities and creativity.

If you could go back to the future, what would you say to yourself? These are the previous “future of email marketing” predictions.

The future of email marketing 2016 edition
The future of email marketing 2015 edition
These Trends show the Future and Evolution of Email Marketing (2014)
The future of email marketing 2013 edition
The future of Email marketing 2012 edition 
Email marketing insights for 2011

PS: As more and more future of email marketing articles are published, I’ll be updating this list. If you have any additions, comments, questions or just like to say HI, do post it below.

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