Freeman also foresees:
Posted: Mon Dec 23, 2024 4:24 am
Mobile commerce is on the rise. In 2019, mobile shopping accounted for 25% of the e-commerce market, and Business Insider predicts that by 2020, mobile shopping will account for 45% of all e-commerce.
That’s enough to make SMS marketing a powerful tool. Unlike ads that haven’t saturated SMS inboxes, SMS allows marketers to reach audiences while they shop, using the same devices.
Consumers seem to appreciate the convenience. In October 2020, G2 predicted that 48.7 million consumers would opt in to receive SMS messages from brands by the end of the year.
Brands love SMS marketing, too. Exhibit A: Celebrities like Amy Schumer and Gary Vaynerchuk have flocked to apps like Community that allow them to text directly to fans without the interference of social media algorithms.
“This is the most powerful thing I’ve seen since the early days of email,” Gary Vee exclaimed on the Community site. “As a guy with hundreds of thousands of SMS subscribers, I’m at 98% open rates and 90% engagement.”
That’s hard to ignore.
…but it won’t replace email marketing.
“Email isn’t going away. It’s just getting better,” email marketer Karina Vitale of VitalEmail Marketing told MarketerHire.
We observed the same thing this holiday season. Over Black Friday weekend, when CPMs and CACs soared across paid ad platforms, companies like men’s skincare brand Black Wolf used email marketing campaigns to promote flash sales and new product launches to existing subscribers.
In fact, Black Wolf used both email and SMS marketing to promote its Black Friday campaign — a sign that owned channels reinforce each other, not compete with each other.
In 2021, Vitale sees an opportunity for data-driven email strategies. Specifically, she sees email service providers (ESPs) leaning toward features like:
Send time optimization
Dynamic content
A/B testing capabilities
Video embeds
Live-updating embeds
“We’re going to see more features on ESPs that will make segmentation, testing, and delivery opportunities bigger and better than ever before,” Vitale said.
Email marketers will design for dark mode.
For those unfamiliar, “dark mode” — available at the OS, browser, website, and app level — changes the default background color of your screen to black and the default text color to a contrasting light hue.
This means your screen emits less blue light, which is widely believed to cause eye strain. Of course, the medical community generally agrees that it doesn’t cause eye strain, but the non-medical community generally agrees that everyone loves the placebo effect.
Exhibit A: In 2020, the market for blue light blocking glasses was $19 million. So that’s pretty popular!
Dark mode is likely popular, too. It’s hard to determine how widely adopted it is, but 2019 saw a slew of dark mode launches. Digital strategist and CRM consultant Ellie Stamouli believes 2020 was a big year for dark mode adoption “because we’re spending so much more time in front of screens than usual.”
She predicts that in 2021, “designing emails for dark mode first will become mainstream, even for brands outside the tech industry.”
Video (especially TikTok) will dominate.
Online video has a bad reputation, and understandably so. Back in 2016, Facebook encouraged advertisers and media to “pivot to video” based on misleading (and even deliberately fake) data.
But we think video marketing will be big in 2021, and we’re not relying on Facebook data here — we’re focusing on TikTok.
TikTok and its short videos exploded into popularity in 2020, especially during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Initially popularized by Gen Z, the app passed the 2 billion download mark in the second quarter and gained so much popularity that Instagram launched a sad Tik Tok knockoff in August: Reels.
(Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?)
Strangely, though, brands have been slow to follow TikTok users “due to uncertainty about the app’s long-term viability in the U.S. market,” Brian Freeman, CEO of Heartbeat and an early adopter of TikTok’s marketing capabilities, told MarketerHire.
He was referring to President Trump’s plans to ban the app from the U.S. over data security concerns. Those plans appear to have been put on hold, though.
(Indeed, Trump is now arguably banned from TikTok, ironically.)
So, in 2021, “TikTok, with a slew of new users that go far beyond the young user base it had built for itself in the years leading up to 2020, is poised to become the next great social marketing channel for brands,” Freeman said.
It’s hard to deny the platform’s potential. If you’re looking for case studies, take Ocean Spray — its cranberry juice went viral on the platform before the brand even had a TikTok account, thanks to this viral post from @420doggface, set to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams”:
Meanwhile, Ocean Spray’s cranberry sauce — a fluffy, not-so-photogenic treat — got a big boost on the platform around Thanksgiving:
This was thanks in part to TikTok’s For You page (FYP), which Freeman calls a “state-of-the-art viral channel.” It’s powered by advanced AI, allowing a standout post from an account — no matter how many followers it has — to go viral.
Freeman believes that by 2021, major brand brazil phone number example and startups alike will “become very savvy and good at growth hacking with FYP to reach large audiences cheaply and quickly acquire new social followers.”
(Amazon has already started sponsoring unboxing videos on the platform.)
A surge in the number of TikTok brand accounts and more fan-generated video content
Brands giving TikTok creators more creative freedom
TikTok’s ad products will grow significantly in popularity—its ads could be as robust as Facebook’s ad suite by the end of the year
Brands use their TikTok accounts to drive traffic back to their Instagram and YouTube pages, as TikTok makes it easy to build audiences and link to other social accounts.
TikTok is currently operating primarily in the B2C space, but we also see potential in the B2B space for video explainers, live videos, webinars, and product tutorials—especially since embedding videos on websites can improve SEO rankings.
The bottom line: In 2021, marketers will be at a loss if they ignore video.
That’s enough to make SMS marketing a powerful tool. Unlike ads that haven’t saturated SMS inboxes, SMS allows marketers to reach audiences while they shop, using the same devices.
Consumers seem to appreciate the convenience. In October 2020, G2 predicted that 48.7 million consumers would opt in to receive SMS messages from brands by the end of the year.
Brands love SMS marketing, too. Exhibit A: Celebrities like Amy Schumer and Gary Vaynerchuk have flocked to apps like Community that allow them to text directly to fans without the interference of social media algorithms.
“This is the most powerful thing I’ve seen since the early days of email,” Gary Vee exclaimed on the Community site. “As a guy with hundreds of thousands of SMS subscribers, I’m at 98% open rates and 90% engagement.”
That’s hard to ignore.
…but it won’t replace email marketing.
“Email isn’t going away. It’s just getting better,” email marketer Karina Vitale of VitalEmail Marketing told MarketerHire.
We observed the same thing this holiday season. Over Black Friday weekend, when CPMs and CACs soared across paid ad platforms, companies like men’s skincare brand Black Wolf used email marketing campaigns to promote flash sales and new product launches to existing subscribers.
In fact, Black Wolf used both email and SMS marketing to promote its Black Friday campaign — a sign that owned channels reinforce each other, not compete with each other.
In 2021, Vitale sees an opportunity for data-driven email strategies. Specifically, she sees email service providers (ESPs) leaning toward features like:
Send time optimization
Dynamic content
A/B testing capabilities
Video embeds
Live-updating embeds
“We’re going to see more features on ESPs that will make segmentation, testing, and delivery opportunities bigger and better than ever before,” Vitale said.
Email marketers will design for dark mode.
For those unfamiliar, “dark mode” — available at the OS, browser, website, and app level — changes the default background color of your screen to black and the default text color to a contrasting light hue.
This means your screen emits less blue light, which is widely believed to cause eye strain. Of course, the medical community generally agrees that it doesn’t cause eye strain, but the non-medical community generally agrees that everyone loves the placebo effect.
Exhibit A: In 2020, the market for blue light blocking glasses was $19 million. So that’s pretty popular!
Dark mode is likely popular, too. It’s hard to determine how widely adopted it is, but 2019 saw a slew of dark mode launches. Digital strategist and CRM consultant Ellie Stamouli believes 2020 was a big year for dark mode adoption “because we’re spending so much more time in front of screens than usual.”
She predicts that in 2021, “designing emails for dark mode first will become mainstream, even for brands outside the tech industry.”
Video (especially TikTok) will dominate.
Online video has a bad reputation, and understandably so. Back in 2016, Facebook encouraged advertisers and media to “pivot to video” based on misleading (and even deliberately fake) data.
But we think video marketing will be big in 2021, and we’re not relying on Facebook data here — we’re focusing on TikTok.
TikTok and its short videos exploded into popularity in 2020, especially during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Initially popularized by Gen Z, the app passed the 2 billion download mark in the second quarter and gained so much popularity that Instagram launched a sad Tik Tok knockoff in August: Reels.
(Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?)
Strangely, though, brands have been slow to follow TikTok users “due to uncertainty about the app’s long-term viability in the U.S. market,” Brian Freeman, CEO of Heartbeat and an early adopter of TikTok’s marketing capabilities, told MarketerHire.
He was referring to President Trump’s plans to ban the app from the U.S. over data security concerns. Those plans appear to have been put on hold, though.
(Indeed, Trump is now arguably banned from TikTok, ironically.)
So, in 2021, “TikTok, with a slew of new users that go far beyond the young user base it had built for itself in the years leading up to 2020, is poised to become the next great social marketing channel for brands,” Freeman said.
It’s hard to deny the platform’s potential. If you’re looking for case studies, take Ocean Spray — its cranberry juice went viral on the platform before the brand even had a TikTok account, thanks to this viral post from @420doggface, set to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams”:
Meanwhile, Ocean Spray’s cranberry sauce — a fluffy, not-so-photogenic treat — got a big boost on the platform around Thanksgiving:
This was thanks in part to TikTok’s For You page (FYP), which Freeman calls a “state-of-the-art viral channel.” It’s powered by advanced AI, allowing a standout post from an account — no matter how many followers it has — to go viral.
Freeman believes that by 2021, major brand brazil phone number example and startups alike will “become very savvy and good at growth hacking with FYP to reach large audiences cheaply and quickly acquire new social followers.”
(Amazon has already started sponsoring unboxing videos on the platform.)
A surge in the number of TikTok brand accounts and more fan-generated video content
Brands giving TikTok creators more creative freedom
TikTok’s ad products will grow significantly in popularity—its ads could be as robust as Facebook’s ad suite by the end of the year
Brands use their TikTok accounts to drive traffic back to their Instagram and YouTube pages, as TikTok makes it easy to build audiences and link to other social accounts.
TikTok is currently operating primarily in the B2C space, but we also see potential in the B2B space for video explainers, live videos, webinars, and product tutorials—especially since embedding videos on websites can improve SEO rankings.
The bottom line: In 2021, marketers will be at a loss if they ignore video.