Email Marketing in 2020 – A Decade in Review

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A new decade has dawned (yes, 2010 was 10 years ago already, we're getting old), and it seems like a good time to take a look back at the past, present, and future of email marketing .

As an email marketing specialist , you are aware of the importance of the customer journey, segmentation , A/B testing , mobile optimization and the combination of all these elements in order to be as effective as possible when setting up your email marketing campaigns.

But do you know what this decade is taking us into? 10 years ago, we didn’t realize how ubiquitous the smartphone would become and, with it, the need to adapt our emails, landing pages and all our web content to the mobile format in order to ensure optimal display on a range of devices.

What does this decade have in store for us? Reading the future in a crystal ball? No, that’s outdated. What we are certain of is that Artificial Intelligence and mobile devices will be two essential elements of this new decade .



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Marketing from 2010 to 2019 in brief
It’s no easy task to cram a decade of developments in a technology sector into a single article, but we’re not ones to shy away from challenges. We’ve rounded up the most important and impactful advances of the last 10 years for you:

The disappearance of “Cold Calling”
Once upon a time, not so long ago, email marketing was just an abstract way to communicate and market. As strange as it may seem, email marketing is a recent development. In 2010, it was still relatively acceptable to do your marketing through cold calling. Marketers would call potential customers without consent or warning, and offer them their products and services.

This worked mainly because of the innovative nature of the approach france telegram data because at the time, prospects were not used to being approached in this way and the surprise effect usually had a positive impact on the prospect who was inclined to listen to you. This form of outbound marketing was a real source of income.



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The Rise of the Spam Filter
The term ‘spam’ was first used for unsolicited marketing well before 2010 (in 1988 to be precise) but, since the introduction of laws such as the Data Protection Act in 1998, the CAN-SPAM Act in 2003 and the Sender Policy Framework in 2004, there have been legal consequences for engaging in the practice, leading consumers to become increasingly intolerant of the bombardment of unsolicited and downright annoying emails.

These laws made it mandatory to include a sender email address and an unsubscribe link in all emails . And it also marked the beginning of a zero-tolerance attitude towards mass emails (broadcasting to the masses without segmenting) and cold calling. If you don’t already know the dangers of being blacklisted , there’s still time to learn the consequences. In 2017, about 40% of emails were considered spam .

To avoid ending up on a blacklist or your emails in the spam box, make sure to deliver your newsletters only to your opt-in contact lists , i.e. those who have chosen and approved beforehand, and only send them content that they have agreed to.



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GDPR and its impact on Email Marketing
GDPR has and continues to make marketers sweat, and its importance will only grow.

This regulation gives people the right not to be targeted by email marketers, or others, unless they have specifically opted in to being targeted. GDPR is not the big scary monster it’s made out to be, it’s a fantastic way to protect people’s privacy .

It is important to note that, rather than sounding the death knell for email marketing, this bill has helped to make it even more effective. The GDPR has allowed all email specialists to work more ethically.

The growth of responsive email
Responsive email was born about a decade ago. We all take it for granted that we can access our emails at any time using our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and even watches, but that wasn’t always the case.

A large proportion of emails are now read first on mobile devices, which means that email marketing is likely to evolve towards creating mobile-first content , rather than content that is optimized for mobile.

To put it simply, mobile will be the default, and marketing automation software will evolve accordingly. After all, when you can read and respond to emails from your smartwatch, why start with your desktop first?

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A Brief History of Email Marketing
Email marketing has become part of our daily lives . When was the last time you went an entire day without receiving at least one promotional email, newsletter, or transactional email?

When you're working with email marketing software and know the benefits of different aspects of marketing automation like the back of your hand, it's easy to forget how far you've come.

Here's a quick 30-second email marketing history update:
1971 – The first email is sent. The sender Ray Tomlinson doesn’t remember what he wrote “it was something like QWERTYUIOP (first line of the keyboard) or something like that” but, in any case, we are still a long way from dynamic segmentation and personalized content.

1972 – The first email management system is developed.

1978 – The first marketing email is sent to 400 recipients. Although the mailing list is small, the return on investment was impressive, generating approximately $13 million.