Author: Franz Malten Buemann

2021 has been quite the year for, well, just about everybody. But particularly for email marketers.
After a wild 2020 that brought the beginning of a pandemic, a lot of uncertainty, and some unbelievable email numbers, 2021 didn’t give us much of a break. What a lot of us hoped would be a return to “normal” ended up being an acceptance of a different kind of normal. Though, Apple made sure none of us got too comfortable in this new normal.
As we tie the final bows on a more than eventful 2021, let’s take a look back at some of your incredible achievements from the past year.
Together we reached the world
This year, Campaign Monitor customers used our platform to send over 31 billion emails (31,350,157,127 to be precise!) opened in 245 countries around the world. That’s some serious reach.

57% of those opens came from mobile devices, up 3% from last year but down from 63% in 2019.
We made email work smarter and harder
You all took advantage of our smart email marketing features in a major way.
You designed 627,606 new email templates to stand out in crowded inboxes. You go, Van Gough.
You ran A/B tests on 136,406 campaigns, and built 53,427 automated journeys. That’s some seriously sophisticated marketing.

Technology kept us on our toes
Just as we were all beginning to settle into our routines, Apple dropped a major surprise on the digital marketing world when it announced Mail Privacy Protection (MPP). Putting open rates in serious jeopardy, this feature is just beginning to shape how we all, as email marketers, think about goals and engagement — something worth keeping an eye on in 2022.

Ultimately, we think marketers will be better off for it. More on our predictions for MPP and the email world here.
And, technology moved us forward
This was a record year for the product team at Campaign Monitor. Overall, we released 28 new features — all centered around making Campaign Monitor smarter, faster, and easier for you to create your incredible campaigns.

As new features were added, we were blown away by the rate you all took advantage.
It was a busy year, and our aspirations are only growing.
Here are a few highlights:

January – Social Links

February – Lists & Subscribers Refresh

March – Free Image Gallery

April – Footer Flexibility

May – New Overview Page

June – New Automation Page

July – Welcome Journey Recipe

August – New Campaign Experience

September – Apple Mail Privacy Protection

October – Campaign Reporting Refresh 

November – Help Menu

December – Journey Reporting Refresh

We had your back every step of the way
Our support team resolved 29,468 support tickets this year — or 80.7 tickets per day!

Our deliverability team continued to do amazing work, keeping our delivery rate at 99.86% in 2021. And with a 99.98% uptime, your app experience was pretty seamless.
Outside of keeping you up and running, we also did our best to deliver you features to help you do your best work.
Email Academy — We launched a free online learning platform to increase your skills, train your team, and build your business. We created 8 courses this year, with more to come in 2022. So far, almost 5,000 of you have begun your Email Academy journeys. If you haven’t yet, head here to begin!
Your go-to for all things MPP — We were here for you when things got, er, a little confusing. After Apple announced MPP, we acted quickly to pass along what we knew about the feature as well as how to adjust your strategy. Then, our product team made some changes to our reporting tool to reflect our post-MPP world. 
We’re still learning about all the effects of MPP, and we’ll be here to guide you through it all.
A new Campaign Monitor, inspired by you — Over the past year, we’ve been hard at work on building a completely new campaign experience with you at the heart of it. Change is always hard, even when it’s for the better, but our product managers Phil and Dan were here to walk you through every detail.
You all took to the refreshed interface at an incredible rate. After our new campaign experience went live, we saw a 20% increase in the number of A/B tests you sent and a 20-25% increase in the use of tags.
We can’t wait to see how these changes to the platform continue to unlock your creativity in 2022.
Our team grew together, even when apart
Even as some of our offices have begun to open back up, we’re continuing to focus on building a hybrid team. We now have team members across 11 different countries, working as connected and in-sync as ever.

We’ve placed a serious focus on employee health as well, offering a wellbeing allowance, free Calm app subscriptions, and encouraging time off for wellbeing — whatever that means for each person.
And we couldn’t have done it without you
Email is what we do, and you won’t find a group that’s more passionate about that than we are. But there’s more to it than just that. We’re consistently inspired by the work and creativity of the people that use our product, and we can’t wait to continue to serve you all and watch you grow in 2022.
p.s keep an eye out for our annual email benchmarks report coming in January. We’ve got some interesting insights from an unprecedented year
The post Email Recap: Our 2021 Year in Review appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

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Bringing a new product to life can be challenging. You know that you have an idea that can bring value to a target market, but you aren’t exactly sure how to bring your product to that market.
This process can become especially difficult if you’ve never done it before, as you may not even know where to begin. Thankfully, a blueprint exists in the new product development process, which is a strategy that will help you bring your ideas to life. Read on to discover how it’s done.

New Product Development Process
New product development refers to the process that goes into bringing a new product to market, from brainstorming an idea to understanding if it fits into the market, ironing it out to prototyping to final commercialization.
Although it can be a rather lengthy process that sometimes requires iteration, it’s all done to ensure that your product is the best it can be before it reaches your customers and solves their needs in the best possible way.
Let’s discuss the different stages involved in new product development.

1. Idea Generation
The new product development process begins with idea generation, where you brainstorm an idea (or ideas) that will help you solve an existing customer problem in a new and innovative way. As you’re coming up with ideas that will help you solve customer needs, it’s important to have a robust understanding of your target market and the pain points they have that you want to solve.
Your initial idea generation stage can be as simple as saying “What if we did this?” and then they become more ROBUST during the research stage.
2. Research
Once you’ve developed a product idea, the next step is conducting research to FLESH IT OUT. There are various steps you can take to do this, like:

Market research to understand the current sentiment in your industry and if there are any holes that your product will fit into, and if there will even be demand for it.

Competitor analysis to understand if customers think there are things your competitors’ products or services lack that you can incorporate into your product to better fit your target market’s needs.

During this stage, you can also get early feedback from customers about what they think of your ideas before coming up with a final definition for your product. One of the best ways to get this feedback is through surveys, where you can easily and quickly collect information from existing customers. A high-quality tool like Lucky Orange can help you create these surveys, and with it, you can ask multiple choice questions about types of products they may be interested in, or more open-ended questions that give you more insight into customer opinions.
This stage may include a bit of iteration because your research may tell you that you need to refine your original ideas and adjust your research scope before moving on to the next stage.
3. Planning
The third stage is planning, where you formulate a final product idea/definition based on your initial idea and research and begin coming up with your plans to bring it to life.
When you define your final product, you’ll want to begin planning for what you’ll need in order to create it. For example, if you’re creating a physical product, you’ll need to source the necessary materials or find production partners that will assist in manufacturing.
Planning also involves coming up with a marketing strategy that will help you effectively market when your product is completed, pricing models that make sense for your product, and that your customers will pay.
It’s also critical to identify the teams that will be involved in your product development process that will help bring it to market, from the marketing teams that will promote your product to any possible external partners that will assist with production.
4. Prototyping
The prototyping phase is when you come up with a sample product that is a mockup of what will be created during mass production.
This prototype is often referred to as a minimum viable product (MVP), which is a basic version of your tool, still similar to your final product, that will help you get a sense of how it functions and identify any areas that need to be improved.
You may make multiple prototypes and go back and forth between this stage and the testing stage before you have a finalized prototype.
5. Testing
Before launching your product you need to test it to ensure it will work as advertised and effectively solve your customer needs. So, during this stage, you’ll share your prototypes with target audiences and ask for actionable feedback on how the product works.  
Essentially, you want your product to be used in situations that are similar to real-world use cases so you know exactly what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes the results of your testing will require you to go back and make changes to your prototype, as mentioned above.
Once you feel as though your prototype is finished and ready to solve your customer needs, you’ll begin product development.
6. Product Development
This stage involves creating the final product that will be commercialized once completed. You’ll use the insights gained from testing your MVP to make final touches to your prototype, and begin mass production.
Depending on your type of business, you’ll likely have a different process for product development. For example, if you’re a SaaS business, your internal software development or programming teams will likely work to finalize code. If you create a physical product, you may outsource labor for certain components and assemble final products in your warehouse.
Whichever your process is, your planning stage should’ve helped you identify how your product development will go.
7. Commercialization
The final stage of your new product development process is commercialization, where you introduce your products to market. This is the culmination of your brainstorming, research, iteration, where your audiences can finally make use of what you created.
You’ll enact your marketing plans to make your audiences aware of your new product, and enact campaigns that will entice them to become customers.
Although this is the final stage, many businesses launch their products and, over time, return to make improvements to their products based on customer feedback and market changes to ensure they’re always providing the best possible customer experience.
From Brainstorming To Reality
When you complete your new product development process, you’ll have brought your brainstorming ideas to fruition, and created a real product or service that solves a customer need. If you find success, you’ll have created a valuable strategy to replicate that will help you continuously innovate and create new products, giving customers the delightful experiences they desire.

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