Email developers need to up their game and move beyond drag-and-drop templates and HTML and CSS. Indeed, they must become more like web developers and work with application programming interfaces (APIs) and a wider range of scripting languages, according to Jaina Mistry, director of brand and content marketing at Litmus.
“APIs are a good thing for businesses and marketing teams primarily because they’re going to make it easier to plug in and give the data to personalize emails and provide a more unified experience across all channels,” Mistry says.
Are we there yet?
“I don’t believe a majority of email developers know how to do this right now,” Mistry says. “Maybe there are a handful who work at agencies and have bigger demands from clients who continually want to push the boundaries. But in-house email marketers and developers are still working using marketing ops teams and existing tech teams.’
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However, that may be changing. In its survey on the state of email, Litmus asked 1,000 respondents who was responsible for implementing email personalization at their companies. Of those, 27% said it was the developer’s job.
“That’s interesting because we don’t tend to think of email developers as responsible for the strategy of an email campaign,” Mistry observes.
But that may be changing, although budgets are still getting in the way.
“Teams are going to be resource strapped,” Mistry states. “It has not been a high priority to have an inhouse email developer who can own the strategy of creating truly dynamic emails with the platforms they use.”
Don’t think Litmus is pitching a service here. “At Litmus, we help marketers do more complex personalization without the need of an email developer,” Mistry says. “We’re focused on empowering marketers who don’t have the resources available to have a developer.”
What Mistry is attempting to do is identify a challenge, and she is qualified to do so, having worked at Litmus for eight years and in the email field for 15.
The result of this shift is that brands and email marketing teams have to broaden their skill sets. But that may take time.
“The majority of companies using email now are still trying to tackle basics of getting a good email out the door at the right time to the right people with the right content,” Mistry comments.