Email Marketing in Flux: The Biggest Changes Impacting the Channel

The email marketing channel has evolved considerably over the past decade, but the pace of change has accelerated going into 2022. The three biggest changes rocking the email marketing channel right now are:

1. Pandemic-fueled consumer behavior changes
2. Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection re-defining what an active subscriber is
3. The sunsetting of third-party cookies driving the need to build and understand first-party audiences

Let’s look at each of those…

1. Pandemic-driven consumer changes

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted consumer behaviors in a few notable ways. First, it changed consumers’ buying habits and priorities, spurring them to buy more online and to try low-touch shopping options, such as curbside pickup and buy online pickup in store (BOPIS). 

Second, it caused supply chain shortages globally that are still being worked out. These shortages drove consumers to switch product brands and retail outlets at record levels, shaking up the brand loyalty landscape.

Third, a byproduct of the product shortages, the pandemic sparked the worst spike in inflation in more than a generation. This spike has sapped consumers’ buying power and started to put more focus back on pricing.

2. Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection

MPP has caused a wide range of problems for email marketers, but the most challenging one has been Apple obscuring opens by creating a flood of auto-generated opens. This is a major issue because opens have traditionally been key to how marketers qualify subscribers as active and therefore safe to mail.

As a result, marketers have been put in the uncomfortable position of either losing subscribers because they can’t qualify them or mailing subscribers who will likely cause deliverability problems for their brand. That has brands looking for alternative approaches.

Read our most comprehensive advice on MPP by getting our Definitive Guide to Adapting to Mail Privacy Protection via a free, no-form download.

3. Sunsetting of third-party cookies

The ongoing phaseout of third-party cookies will deprive marketers a key consumer identifier that they use across touchpoints. That will put even more focus on the No. 1 consumer identifier: email addresses.

In addition to needing to capture more email addresses, brands are also finding that they need more zero- and first-party data as third-party cookies wane. Again, email marketing can help, along with loyalty programs. Through preference centers, progressive profiling, and engagement data, both permission-based channels are great sources of actionable zero- and first-party data.

Want ideas for growing your email list? Get our Audience Acquisition Source checklist via a free, no-form download.

Ready for solutions?

Email marketing is more powerful than ever, but the strategies and tactics needed to succeed are changing. In the on-demand webinar below, we discuss all three of those changes in more detail and recommend how to respond, including the 3 key priorities that our 3 mega-trends are driving for marketers.

We hope you enjoyed “Email Marketing in Flux: The Biggest Changes Impacting the Channel.” Some of our other on-demand webinars include:

• Content Planning: Advice from Oracle’s Global Digital Marketing Agency
• How to Transform Your Customer Experience with a CDP
• Priorities for a Mail Privacy Protection World
• Modular Email Architecture: The Next-Generation Template

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Need help adapting to these changes? Oracle Marketing Consulting has more than 500 of the leading marketing minds ready to help you to achieve more with the leading marketing cloud, including an Analytics & Strategic Services team that can help you use your data more effectively to align with your customers.

Talk to your Oracle account manager, visit us online, or reach out to us at CXMconsulting_ww@Oracle.com.