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During the pandemic, email marketing budgets remained steady while marketers considered new technology to get the most out of the channel, according to a new report from email optimization company Litmus that surveyed 400 marketers.

Marketers this year are most interested in automation. Of those surveyed, 59% said expanding automation was a priority for 2021. Also, 55% are looking to boost personalization, while 35% are considering enriching customer profiles.

Privacy. This year’s iOS changes, including Apple Mail Privacy Protection, have 43% of marketers saying they will look for new ways to measure their email campaigns. Conversely, 24% say that don’t plan to make any changes.

Also, nearly 20% of marketers will run more A/B testing as a result of the new measurement challenges, while 16% will change automation flows and 10% will message their audience about the Apple updates or privacy issues in general.

Budgets. Just because email marketing budgets didn’t increase notably thus far in the pandemic doesn’t mean there aren’t plans for them to grow in the next year. More than 40% of companies intend to up their spend in the channel in 2022.

There is also a shift within email marketing to move the efforts in-house, the study indicates. For instance, 41% of companies plan to hire more email marketers, and 52% expect to decrease the use of agencies, consultants and freelancers.

Relevance. Close to two-thirds of marketers say that they change the tone of their email messages in response to world events.

Specifically with regards to diversity, 27% of companies have sent an email detailing their stance on DE&I. Most of those who haven’t don’t plan to. Only 7% say they haven’t yet, but expect to send out this kind of email.

Why we care. The MarTech Replacement Survey showed a similar interest in boosting email capabilities over the same period. The Litmus survey suggests that even though there was a great need to innovate, budgets were still lacking to make a serious investment in transformation. More optimism about 2022 will likely carry this momentum, as a good many marketers will have more options and funding to make serious changes to their email stack.

Read more: Marketers search for new email marketing technology to meet pandemic challenges

Utilizing the latest email marketing strategies is a great way to expand the reach of your business and help you connect with a wide range of customers. You also want to stay in touch with those prospects who didn’t purchase your offer…yet. They might need a little more convincing that you know your stuff and email marketing is an easy way to get inside their inbox and appeal to them. Looking at ways to improve your email marketing strategy is essential to your success.

Implement these simple strategies to improve your email marketing efforts.

#1 Tweak Your Messages

Many entrepreneurs use various types of email sequences to help them maximize sales during a live launch. However, you can reuse these messages by simply performing a few tweaks to the original email. Performing these tweaks is a great way for you to save time while also improving your marketing reach. Ultimately, tweaking your messages only requires a little bit of work to your existing emails.

#2 Check Out Your Email Marketing Metrics

Another way to improve your marketing strategy is to check your metrics consistently. This is also one area that many entrepreneurs overlook or just don’t take the time to do. This information can play a key role in helping you determine the highest performing emails. Metrics can include a variety of information, such as click-through rates, open rates, and purchases. You can use these metrics to learn effective marketing strategies to help you maximize your consumer base. If you never, or rarely, look at your numbers any tweaking you do could be the proverbial ‘shot in the dark.’

#3 Craft New Emails

Taking the additional time to craft new emails is well worth the effort in helping you to expand the reach of your business. Writing new emails is especially effective if you are running a special promotion or giving away a free item. You can also reuse older messages to help your business grow and reach many more customers with only a minimal amount of effort.

#4 Create a Sense of Urgency

One of the best ways to reach new customers is to create a sense of urgency within each email. For example, you can offer a limited special offer that is only available for a few days. You can also use various elements, like a countdown timer, or programs, like Deadline Funnel, to help you include urgency in your emails. This simple marketing technique is highly effective in improving your sales rate since subscribers won’t want to miss your deal.

Read more: 5 Simple Strategies to Update & Automate Your Email Marketing

Email and digital marketers can be excused if they have been feeling a bit stressed over the past year. Beyond the immense challenges presented by the pandemic, there have been ongoing developments in the data privacy landscape and changing technologies to deal with. But it’s good to remember that challenges also often provide opportunities. Let’s take a look at a few big changes that could impact email marketing in 2021 and in the future — and how marketers can adapt and identify new opportunities.

Evolving Consumer Engagement

Consumer behavior evolves constantly. Some changes can occur suddenly and require quick decisions, while others allow marketers the time to adapt more gradually. Over the past year, email marketers have been dealing with largely unprecedented and sudden changes in consumer behavior.

Just one example was the shift to working from home that impacted workers around the U.S. and the entire world. People who had previously never had the option of working remotely were now scrambling to set up home offices with no certainty about when or if they would return to a traditional office setting. While marketers had already seen a shift toward more remote work in years past, according to Global Workplace Analytics data (via Business 2 Community), the massive acceleration of the change was a game changer for many companies. Consumer needs for some products and services skyrocketed while the need for others plummeted, and many marketers found that all of their existing campaign performance forecasts and benchmarks needed to be reevaluated and potentially tossed aside as organizations pivoted on long-standing strategies.

More people working from home means more people spending more hours in front of their desktop or laptop in a home office setting. Marketers may be seeing this shift in the form of increased desktop email activity and decreased mobile email activity.

Read more: Three Digital Marketing Industry Challenges That May Positively Impact Email Marketing