Right now, most email marketers are focused on what’s right in front of them: holiday message execution.

If you fall into that bucket, you’re missing out on the bigger picture. Sure, a pile of money is waiting to be made during the holiday months.

But ignoring 2019 email marketing planning could nullify all the hard work you do now.

That’s why it’s important to plan for the first quarter of 2019 and beyond. With that in mind, we’ve put together a few 2019 email marketing planning items to check off your list right now.

They’ll help you avoid the pitfalls of executing blindly and give your team a clear path forward for the new year.

post-holiday strategy

The first item you’ll want to tackle is post-holiday strategy. Plan overall themes for each month and the quarter and ie specific objectives to them

For example, riding the holiday engagement train for the first quarter of 2019 isn’t just possible, it’s a must. If you launched a wish list campaign in November or December, it’s time to remind those shoppers to purchase.

You’ll also want to send reminders to those who received gift cards not to wait to redeem them. A discount always helps get the redemption faster. And for those making returns, you can offer upsells for different sizes, colors and styles of the same brand or item.

Target people right after the holidays with these messages. Don’t wait to send them out. The more time that goes by, the higher the likelihood the ask becomes less and less effective.

 

email marketing trends

Planning your email marketing strategy for the entire year should start by considering what the experts say. Email marketing trends should take a front seat in any plan you create.

One of the most underutilized features with possibly the biggest potential for email marketers is SMS marketing. Tying permission-based SMS marketing to your email marketing creates a hyper-personalized experience for users. And the positive engagement metrics can’t be denied.

Privacy is also a factor to consider in 2019 email marketing planning.

After the initial scare of the first GDPR lawsuit, many email marketers are shrugging off the importance of this pivotal European legislation. It’s no casual matter, though.

The rest of the world is moving towards privacy protection, not away from it. Putting safeguards in place to make sure your email marketing lives up to these standards should be at the top of your email marketing planning list.

These are just a few email marketing trends to implement in your 2019 email marketing planning. There are additional ones out there, and we encourage you to do careful research as you strategize for the coming year.

email marketing post-mortem

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. That’s the definition of insanity. And that’s what you are – insane – if you keep the same email marketing plan year after year.

Sure, there are messages, topics, and strategies that are repeatable. But they are few and far between and can always be improved.

The digital world changes too fast for you to be able to do the same thing every year and expect success. You must sit down with your team and look at the metrics. What worked last year? Why did it work? What can you do to make it better?

And what do you need to delete altogether from your 2019 email marketing playbook?

These are all questions you need to ask as you complete your 2019 email marketing planning. Answering them honestly will help you avoid failure in the year to come and drive an even bigger ROI from your email program.

conclusion: don’t avoid 2019 email marketing planning

You’re busy. There are holiday campaigns to plan and execute. And there are a lot of them. It doesn’t seem like you have time to sit down and think about next year.

The struggle is real.

But if you don’t make time now to put a plan in place, your team and your company will suffer when it comes to successful execution in the new year.

Don’t avoid 2019 email marketing planning. Having a game plan in place can save you hours of lost time, money, and stress.

If you need an extra set of hands to help you map out a blueprint of next year’s strategy, our team of experts has done this for hundreds of clients over the past 10 years. We know a thing or two about planning and can recommend the latest trends to work into your plan. Just reach out.