By Tom Wozniak, Head of Marketing – published on Forbes.com on 2/4/21

It’s that time of year when marketing experts publish forecasts and prognostications about various industries. I read a lot of them to leverage in my company’s marketing strategy, for my own knowledge, and to inform my own writing on the topic. But, I’ve noticed a few things over the years. Many of the same predictions show up year after year with only subtle variations. Sometimes this is due to industry experts either getting a little ahead of themselves or simply being overly optimistic about the development of new technology or a shift in consumer behavior. I remember the term “the year of mobile” being thrown around for many years in a row. A quick Google search for “the year of mobile” shows that people were discussing this term at least as far back as 2008, and then again year after year. I’m not sure if anyone can pinpoint the official “year of mobile,” but we can probably agree that we did indeed pass into the age of mobile at some point in recent years.

Similarly, in the email marketing arena, many annual predictions have included things like “increased personalization,” “more interactivity” and “more automation” as common predictions over at least the past few years. The fact that they keep popping up year after year may simply suggest what strong trends they are, but it could also suggest that achieving those goals isn’t something that may happen in one year. 

With that, I thought I would put together a short list of things I think will and won’t happen in the email marketing industry in 2021 and how you might set up your marketing strategy accordingly. I’ll make a promise today that in 2022, I will revisit this article and see how my predictions came out.  

What Will Happen…

Read the rest at Forbes.com.

Tom Wozniak heads up Marketing and Communications for OPTIZMO Technologies.