It seems like the staple diet of a digital marketing blogger is to declare something dead, or not dead, or cleverly D.E.A.D.
Only this week, our David Moth wrote a piece on email marketing’s rude health (email is not dead).
I think the reason we’re obsessed with the death of marketing technology is because, despite the pace of change in digital, there are many age-old marketing principles that remain absolute.
Relevance, timeliness, perhaps more broadly the four, five or seven Ps – these will ever remain in the marketing canon.
And, of course, no matter how sophisticated technology becomes, there will still exist businesses that don’t get the marketing mix right.
However, despite all this, I am interested in areas of marketing that might undergo automation and sophistication to the point where they require little work.
What I foresee is the perfection of certain disciplines (e.g. marketing automation) throwing light on new priorities, such as a renewed interest in conversion rate optimisation or data cleanliness.
With marketing as a department more powerful than ever, why would the amount of work decrease? Surely we’re sticking our elbows out, and our oars into every part of the org?
So, what about email segmentation? Will there be a time when it’s no longer a core skill, something to be done actively by marketers? Will technology take care of it for us?
