• by Jess Nelson , February 28, 2017

Email will continue to grow in 2017, according to a new Email on Acid study that suggests a majority of marketers and developers will spend more resources on email marketing this year. 

Email on Acid polled 3,000 individuals who work in the email industry, including developers and marketers, on their email marketing programs. Seventy-four percent of respondents planned to spend more time on their email marketing programs in 2017, while an even larger 87% of respondents planned to invest more money in their email budget, according to the study. 

The majority of companies polled by the email testing and marketing technology company currently spend an average of 1-5 hours developing an email campaign, with a third planning to spend an additional 20+ hours a month on email this year. 

Increased investment in email marketing will most likely be funneled into new technology and tools, with 50% of respondents asserting that this is how they plan to spend their money this year. Technology and tools led the pack in terms of planned email ad spend, followed distantly by email list growth, email development, design and finally, staff.

The study suggests that email marketers and designers are looking to increase email ad spend to develop dynamic and contextually relevant email campaigns. The content of dynamic emails is populated when the email is opened, as opposed to when it is sent, meaning tjat message content is personalized in real-time with the most up-to-date information and customer data.

Improved content and contextually relevant email experiences were marketers' main goals for 2017, according to Email on Acid, while interactive features was the top-ranking email trend for 2017. Almost a third of respondents selected interactive features as the biggest email trend this year, followed by 19% of respondents who ranked contextual relevance as their top trend.

More than a third of respondents were looking for tools that helped them fix code this year, with 35% citing coding for email as their biggest email marketing challenge. An additional 39% of marketers surveyed selected email rendering as the most annoying aspect of email marketing. Yet the importance of mobile rendering is essential, with the majority of emails opened today on a mobile device. More than 60% of marketers surveyed responded that 50% or more of their readership is derived from mobile devices.

Email remains a strong revenue driver, according to the study, with a third of respondents asserting that they make $10 or more for every dollar spent on email marketing. This number would likely be higher, however, if a majority of respondents tracked engagement. Surprisingly, 52% of respondents did not track email engagement metrics.