Nine in 10 internet users in the US rely on email, and many say it’s a preferred channel for receiving brand communications. Email also still plays a central role for marketers looking to maintain and nurture relationships.

Open rates soared during the early days of the pandemic. Acoustic, a marketing tech firm, found a 23.8% jump in open rates worldwide between February and March. In 2021, marketers will build on this growth in an intentional manner, improving in areas such as personalization, testing, measurement, and acquisition. Launch SMS programs.

Email marketing is still the marketing channel with the highest ROI, especially when it’s personalized. So, it should be no surprise that triggered messages, sent in response to specific consumer behaviors, account for 77% of email ROI, according to the Data & Marketing Association.

eMarketer principal analysts Nicole Perrin and Andrew Lipsman join host Marcus Johnson for our review of the most interesting stories this week, including figuring out the value of your data, paying for a premium email service and Instagram’s new Explore ads. We also discuss the cost of an ad-free internet, bring you the game of the week, useless dinner party data and more!

eMarketer was pleased to moderates a Tech-Talk Webinar presentation featuring Kara Trivunovic, senior vice president of digital solutions at Epsilon, and Shar VanBoskirk, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. They discussed how email marketers have moved beyond measuring just opens and clicks and are taking a closer look at email engagement.

Email marketing was one of the success stories of 2020 as open rates and engagement saw an uptick. We forecast that in 2021 80.0% of the US population will be email users. Leveraging offline data. Taking offline data and digitizing it can prove an innovative way to understand the consumer.