It’s time to rethink email and how you approach it. Email marketing is the evergreen backbone of digital marketing promotion. Email marketing is underrated. At various times since the turn of the millennium, innovators have decreed it to be sliding into obsolescence. They said that social media is the future. Emails will be irrelevant. That’s hasn’t come to fruition.

When you live on the bleeding edge, it’s easy to conclude that anything relatively old must be losing its potency. Social media is certainly much more showy and absorbing. So, you can perhaps forgive the errant prognosticators. But while email marketing in general has been around for so long, the discipline hasn’t stagnated.

Email marketing has changed with the times.

Indeed, email marketing continues to change with the times. Fresh email marketing trends arise on a semi-frequent basis. The marketing email is a blank canvas. There are countless ways in which email distribution can be adjusted to maximize impact. New methods pick up steam, excel, lose their luster, and are supplanted.

If you are looking to excel with email marketing, you need to stay ahead of digital marketing trends. That’s easier said than done, of course.

Here are three tips for helping you rethink email marketing.

1. Follow relevant releases of digital marketing tools and integrations

What you can realistically achieve in digital marketing is only limited by the tools at your disposal. The main trick, then, is to keep track of new digital marketing tools. It’s important to know what features are pending and what you can realistically expect in the near future. This depends heavily on what content management system (CMS) you’re using for your website, as ecommerce platforms can vary in their native features. They can also support different extensions and plugins.

There are two main approaches. Choose a closed-source system with a ton of features or use an open-source solution with more room for creativity. Most innovation pertaining to email marketing comes from third-party tools. So, a good way to save money is to use a free open-source system and save your money for testing myriad integrations.

For instance, PrestaShop pricing only goes for hosting and certain modules. The core system is absolutely free. So, are are integrations with tools like Mailchimp and Sendinblue. Pick out the most innovative email marketing tools. Follow their blogs and lead developers. Get ahead of the curve by preparing your products and e-commerce store for the next big thing.

2. Pay close attention to what industry leaders are doing

There are two big reasons to see what other businesses are doing. There can be value in following or bucking an established trend. You can sometimes glean insight into where those companies expect email marketing to go. To do this, you should create some user accounts and sign up for as many rival mailing lists as you can.

Look for the commonalities and differences. What do you like about their emails in general? What do you dislike? How would you make them better? If you were a regular customer, would you want any particular options added? You may suddenly notice there’s something important that everyone else is missing. In this case, you could start a trend by embracing it.

Or perhaps you’ll notice slight shifts that indicate a change coming. You could spot a marked increase in the use of video production quality. This means that companies intend to invest heavily in video content to embed in their emails. You would then have the choice of being among the first to go along with it or figuring out a way to be different (e.g. using animated video instead of real-world footage).

3. Run short-term campaigns to allow broad adaptability

Lastly, if you’re going to be in a position to leap on new digital marketing trends, you need your marketing to be as flexible as possible. That means running short-term campaigns using agile sprints. You can come up with long-term tactics. This should only be done if you implement them in succinct bursts with plenty of chances to review the work you’ve done and make useful alterations.

If you do this correctly, then you’ll be capable of changing course much more rapidly than your rivals can. This will give you the opportunity to iron out the wrinkles and benefit from the fresh angle while they’re still trying to wrap up their now-outdated campaigns. Bring all these things together. Track digital marketing tools. Conduct industry research. Get ready to pivot. If you do these things, you’ll have a great shot at being among the first to embrace a powerful new email marketing trend.

This guest blog article was written by Rodney Laws, an eCommerce platform specialist and online business consultant. You can get his advice for free by visiting Ecommerce Platforms. For more tips and advice, contact Rodney on Twitter @EcomPlatformsio.