The Permanent Pivot: Planning the 2021 Message

First party data are not only the highest octane fuel for personalized marketing but also the safest. With over a billion emails sent a year to drive multiple digital businesses, Publishers Clearinghouse has decades of expertise at maintaining the hygiene of the list without sacrificing actionability. Longtime email and compliance guru Sal Tripi shares lessons from a two year project to build data-driven email operations that are ready for the next two years of regulations, cookie lockouts and consumers taking control of their data.

This year rearranged priorities for all email marketers as their channel became the critical point of contact with customers. But as flux becomes the new normal into 2021, planning, budgeting, campaigning, content creation all still need to be done. We ask our veteran email marketers to share how they are mapping resources and strategy for the next year. Is this a time for greater personalization, new messaging, a bigger, better tech stack? What will their outboxes look like next year?

When Policygenius streamlined its manual insurance matchmaking process and redesigned its email program, the brand needed to maintain its roots in human connection while providing expertise to guide customers through the insurance shopping process. Sometimes it’s the little things, it turns out, that keep messaging personal, not just personalized.

You'd be surprised how many major league brands continue to lurch past batch and blast emailing into even rudimentary audience segmentation and personalized messaging. So let's compare notes. In this roundtable veterans and neophytes to personalization explore how to get started, what to look out for, and how to execute their next stage of personalization.

When you promise countless custom varieties of burgers and shakes, don't customers also expect the same level of personalization when communicating with their QSR brand? In order to bring that brand promise into every aspect of the digital experience, SONIC leverages data-driven segmentation, triggering and personalization to tailor the digital touchpoints and messaging the customer prefers. What does it take to build customized experiences at such scale and what have we learned about what, where and when consumers really want to hear from their brands?

Beyond clicks and opens, there remains much more room for email marketers to tailor their attribution and measurement models for the demands of contemporary performance and brand marketing. How are lifecycle marketing, customer journey mapping and tracking moving the field into new levels of measurement sophistication?

Every click is a hurdle, not an invitation for users. And every form to fill is a mountain for them to climb. EIS veteran Chester Bullock explains how reducing that friction has increased email's effectiveness in driving qualified leads and at the same time leveraging customer brand loyalty.