Discover how performance marketing trends and tactics will evolve in 2021 and what you need to do to prepare. Click here to learn more.

8 Performance Marketing Trends to Prepare for 2021 | Union

Top 8 Performance Marketing Trends to Act on in 2021

It may be hard to believe given how long this past year seemed (remember when “Tiger King'' was a thing?), but <a href="https://union.co/articles/digital-marketing-trends-2020">2020 has drawn to a close</a>. The start of a new year is a natural point for brands to reflect on the previous year’s marketing efforts, evaluate what worked and evolve their marketing campaigns to meet their business’s and customers’ ever-changing needs.
Here are eight performance marketing trends to pay attention to that will help drive marketing success in 2021.

A positive user experience has been a critical factor in improving the customer journey and conversion rate of websites for years. However, in 2021, there’s a key reason for brands to focus on user experience – SEO.
<a href="https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/05/evaluating-page-experience.html">Google has announced</a> that, beginning in 2021, it is updating its all-powerful search ranking algorithm to factor in the user experience of websites. Known as Page Experience signals, factors like site load time, content interactivity and visual stability can impact a website’s organic search ranking on Google.
Actionable insight for 2021: Go beyond H1 tags and page titles to improve your search rankings. Appease the Google Gods by ensuring your website provides a positive user experience with minimal technical difficulties.

1. User experience

As a creative and performance marketing agency, we’re obsessed with ROI, which is why we’re excited to see more brands <a href="https://union.co/services/data-brand-strategy/conversion-rate-optimization">invest in Conversion Rate Optimization</a> (CRO). CRO is all about making incremental tweaks to your website or landing page to improve conversion rate. It goes beyond basic split-testing (or A/B testing) to create and execute a system built on data analysis, multivariate testing and user feedback to boost campaign performance. 
Even a small improvement in your conversion rate can have a noticeable impact on your bottom line. Going from a 1% conversion rate to a 2% conversion rate might sound small, but it effectively doubles your revenue from the same campaign effort. 
Actionable insight for 2021: Are you looking for a quick conversion rate optimization win? The <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/234884/us-online-shopper-conversion-rate-by-device/">average conversion rate</a> on mobile is 1.53% compared to 4.14% on desktop. Focus on improving your mobile website experience to help your brand stand out in your industry and drive mobile conversions.

2. Conversion rate optimization

2021 may very well be the year that the science fiction of machine learning and artificial intelligence becomes accepted as a marketing fact. Brands like Pepsi are using machine learning platforms (like <a href="https://www.adweek.com/programmatic/pepsico-wants-to-grow-its-in-house-ad-measurement-unit/">Pepsi’s use of ROI Engine</a>) to dissect their unstructured data, analyze their audiences and discover actionable insights that they can use to inform and inspire their marketing campaigns. 
Here are a few ways that brands of all sizes are using artificial intelligence to fuel their 2021 marketing efforts: 
<ul><li>Audience Sentiment Analysis</li><li>Audience Creation</li><li>Ad Placement</li><li>Conversion Optimization</li><li>Improvement of Personalization (<a href="https://us.epsilon.com/pressroom/new-epsilon-research-indicates-80-of-consumers-are-more-likely-to-make-a-purchase-when-brands-offer-personalized-experiences">80 percent of consumers are more likely to make a purchase</a> from brands that personalize the experience.) </li></ul>
Actionable insight for 2021: Stop being a data hoarder and start exploring opportunities to begin leveraging these technologies to improve your marketing performance. Don’t feel like you have to invest millions in a build-your-own platform; there are a myriad of less expensive pre-built solutions available on the market.

3. Artificial intelligence and machine learning

The pandemic has had a significant impact on one of every digital marketer’s favorite channels – email. As of August 2020, email revenue has <a href="https://union.co/articles/email-marketing-campaign-tips">grown by</a> 86% compared to the previous year. Average open rates have also increased over the same period – up by 21.8%.
While the core aspects of <a href="https://union.co/services/performance-media/marketing-automation">email marketing</a> haven't changed over the last decade, email marketing platforms have become more sophisticated. Brands can now more easily build out complex workflows and email automations that are personalized to the actions of specific individuals on their audience lists. In 2021 we’ll see more brands leverage data and personalization to improve the performance of their email marketing efforts. 
Actionable insight for 2021: Supplement your monthly community newsletters with personalized, automated, one-to-one messaging based on where readers are in their customer journey.

4. Email marketing

Unless you have a pretty hefty marketing budget, chances are you aren’t going to be able to commit to a long-term influencer marketing partnership with a Kardashian. 
The good news, though, is that brands don’t need to work with uber-celebrities to benefit from the performance-driving <a href="https://union.co/services/performance-media/influencer-marketing">power of influencer marketing</a>. (Note: 85% of consumers think user-generated content is more influential than branded content). A <a href="https://influencermarketinghub.com/Influencer_Marketing_Benchmark_Report_2020.pdf">recent survey</a> found that nano-influencers (with less than 1,000 followers) have a 7x higher engagement rate than mega-influencers (with more than 100,000 followers). 
As social networks continue to adjust their algorithms and throttle organic reach, strong engagement rates can be critical to ensuring a successful influencer marketing initiative.
Actionable insight for 2021: Influencers should be valued for more than just the size of their audience. Elevate your influencer marketing presence by identifying the influencers in your space that have the highest audience engagement relevant to their audience size. Then work with those influencers to develop multi-post campaigns that are personalized according to the influencer and their audience.

5. Influencer marketing

Raise your hand if you ordered from Amazon during the pandemic. You’re not alone. Digital Commerce 360 estimates that despite the pandemic, Amazon Prime Day 2020 sales hit <a href="https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/amazon-prime-day-sales/">$10.4 billion</a> – up from $7.16 billion over Prime Day 2019 and from $4.19 billion over Prime Day 2018. 
Given the current state of the pandemic and the vaccination timeline, Amazon will continue to be a sales-driving powerhouse in 2021. Brands that want to improve their sales on Amazon should take a hard look at <a href="https://union.co/services/performance-media/amazon-advertising">developing Amazon A+ Content</a>.
Amazon <a href="https://union.co/articles/what-is-amazon-a-content">indicates</a> that product sales can increase by 3-10% due to A+ Content. With A+ Content, brands can go beyond the typical Amazon product page and create a more robust experience to market a product, provide an overview of key features and extend a call to action to complete a purchase. 
Actionable insight for 2021: Invest in your Amazon channels just like you would your website to drive sales.

6. Amazon A+ Content

Recently, we partnered with Google to <a href="https://union.co/white-papers/food-beverage-brands-driving-growth-in-a-covid-and-post-covid-world">create a whitepaper</a> that explored the impact of the coronavirus on food &amp; beverage consumers. Through our research, we identified how strong of a role purchase convenience factors into a customer’s buying decisions. During the pandemic, customers have wanted even more convenient purchasing options. 
Actionable insight for 2021: Work to give customers the convenience they want. Specifically: 
<ul><li>Online purchases with contactless delivery or curbside store pickup.</li><li>The opportunity to purchase product subscriptions for a hassle-free reorder experience.</li><li>The ability to check local product availability online before they make an in-store purchase.</li></ul>

7. Improved consumer purchase convenience

GDPR was only the beginning. 2021 will bring with it even more privacy restrictions. <a href="https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/345676/google-to-phase-out-third-party-cookies-within-two.html#:~:text=Google%20announced%20Tuesday%20that%20it,within%20the%20next%20two%20years.&amp;text=Google%20in%20August%202019%20announced,that%20also%20protects%20user%20privacy.">Google plans to phase out third-party cookies</a> as early as 2022. Even sooner, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/3/21420176/apple-ios-14-tracking-permission-rule-developers-delay">Apple’s new iOS 14 privacy update</a> goes into effect in January. Developers will now need to get permission from users before capturing data with this update. 
Actionable insight for 2021: Audit your current marketing campaigns and identify which channels rely on cookies and soon-to-be-outdated data-capturing techniques. Identify your weak spots now so that you can effectively plan for a cookieless world.

8. New privacy laws and restrictions

Is your marketing strategy ready for 2021? Our team of performance marketing experts is here to work with you to strategically concept, execute and optimize your 2021 performance marketing campaigns. <a href="https://union.co/contact">Contact us</a> today to get started.

Ensure your marketing tactics perform effectively in 2021

Valtech Union is a creative &amp; performance marketing agency that creates omni-channel campaigns, unleashing creativity on a data-driven world, helping brands produce memorable, measurable and repeatable results. Obsessed with data-driven performance, we believe every marketing dollar should be viewed as an investment. Our clients expect a meaningful return and we prove the ROI of our work with quantifiable data.