Name: The 2026 Marketing Playbook
Uploaded: 2026-01-15T20:16:06.112Z
Duration: 1 h 12 s
Description: The 2026 Marketing Playbook

Transcript for "The 2026 Marketing Playbook": Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our webinar, the 2026 Marketing Playbook. We're going to be talking about five trends that are reshaping digital strategy in the upcoming new year. We're very happy to have you join us for that. Obviously, the digital marketing landscape is changing rapidly with the advent of AI. And I shouldn't really say advent because it's more like the continued presence of AI. But we're here to discuss that and give you some tips and tricks for the new year ahead. So welcome. I'm just going to briefly go over today's webinar agenda. So we're going to do a little bit of a welcome, which is what we're doing right now for the next five minutes. Then I'm going to introduce our lovely panelists. Then we will jump into our panel discussion about our five trends, and we'll finish up with concluding remarks and some more information on both Guru and Emma. Just some quick housekeeping items. So we will send a recording of this webinar to all of our registrants within the next twenty four to forty eight hours. So if you missed something, no worries. We'll send out the recording for you to review. Also, please use the chat feature to ask questions throughout the webinar. We're going to try to answer as many as possible throughout the webinar, but feel free to use that and somebody will be monitoring the chat and get back to you with an answer. And then we're going to try to wrap up by 02:00PM Eastern at the latest. We know everybody's busy and we want to let them get get on with their day but that is our plan. So to start off, I just want to introduce our expert panelists. I'm very excited to have you all here, particularly excited for Jay Schwedelson with Guru Media Hub. Jay, welcome. Thank you for being here. I'm stoked. This is going to be fun, and I'm honored to be with this crew, and we're going to rip through a lot of good stuff. Nice. Thanks, Jay. Next we have one of my other favorite people, Mary Mitchell. She is the VP of Customer Success at Emma. She is another expert panelist. Mary, welcome. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. Excited to do another one of these fun panels with Jay as well. Yeah, this is your second together that you've Yes. All of our second together. Yeah. Okay, great. You old friends. You. Thank you for being here. And then last but certainly not least, we've got Nate Gallagher from Emma as well. Nate is our Director of Professional Services. Nate, welcome. Thank you. Yeah, I'm the rookie on the panel, looking to just kind of pull my weight. So not to run me on the topics though. He knows more than the rest of us No hazing, don't worry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And last, last and the least is myself. I'm Beth West. I'm a lead marketing consultant for Emma. I've been working with Emma for about six months or so. Very happy to be here with everybody and looking forward to diving in. So without further ado, let's talk about trend number one. So I think it's safe to say AI is going to be at the forefront of all the things again, marketing and otherwise. What do you all foresee as being some ways that AI really influences the marketing landscape, particularly the digital marketing landscape in 2026? Well, I'm happy to jump in. Obviously, AI is everywhere. It's a big deal. But I think that the problem that most marketers are getting wrong is that they think they need to be an AI expert in order to take advantage of where everybody is participating and using AI, or they think they need to use certain platforms that are AI specific and all these things, and that couldn't be further from the truth. The reality of it is that 60% of all Google searches now are resulting in people not leaving Google. And people are just getting all of their information on the different platforms, whether it's Claude or Gemini or Chateapati or whatever. So the game for marketers is to not be scared of AI, to lean into AI and then to spend the time understanding that this is not SEO but AEO, you know, answer engine optimization. What are the small tweaks and things that you need to do? It's not hard to make sure that your content, your information, your offers are showing up on these AI platforms? To me, that is the number one thing every marketer should be thinking about because it's not hard. But if you don't do it, you're going to lose an incredible amount of business. Yeah, Jay, I completely agree. I will say that I have been, if you ask anybody that works with me, I've been very hesitant about AI just because I'm like, but I want to do the work myself. And I want to get the credit. And somebody said something that really resonated with it's not like, you're not going to be replaced by AI, you'll be replaced by somebody who's working AI and who knows how to work AI. And so that really resonated with me again, just to say like, okay, number one, I don't need to be scared of this. And then number two, like, I don't have to be an expert. Just let it help me. So yeah, really appreciate that sentiment. Yeah. I do think it does drive me a little bonkers when people are like, you know, AI is going to take your job because I think that's actually a load of garbage. AI won't take your job if you knew how to use the basics of AI. I mean, listen, I'm all for plumbers, electricians. I thank God for them because my house would fall apart. But for the last year, all anybody says is that everybody should go out and become a trade worker because those are only jobs that are going to exist in a few years, which is it's just so it's just scare tactics. It's ridiculous. We're going look It's over 400,000,000 plumbers in this country. It's a lot of toilets. Mean, it's working smarter, not harder. Really taking advantage of the tools that are available to you as a marketer and understanding that, well, yes, those can help streamline a lot of your workflows and perhaps help you come up with new ideas and how to best reach your constituents. It's not going to know everything you know about your audience. So keeping that forefront is important. Absolutely. And I think, too, I mean, regardless, you still need someone to feed AI the information. You need somebody who knows a lot about the topic to do that. So that's why I think there's a case to be made for there's still going to be marketing jobs out there. Like Nate said, the LLMs don't know everything about your job or about your topic. And at the end of the day, do you want AI to learn about your business and your offering, your products from you? Or do they want to learn it from whatever your competitors or others are pushing out about you? So if you're not putting in some of that effort, they'll write the story for you. And it may not be the story that you want. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, good talk. Let's go to our next topic and I will flash my oops, hold on slideshow. There we go. Trend number two. In the era of uncertainty around data security and privacy, brands need to be trustworthy. So, you know, there's there's always a lot of talk around how how organizations can stay secure. There's the ever increasing looming threat of cyber attacks and just uncertainty around that. What do you all think is the key to brands maintaining trustworthiness and people understanding how how you work and and that you're you're legit? What what are some ideas around that? Yeah. So first, I don't want to like point out the elephant in the room, right? This is, you know, talking about data security, talking about privacy. It's like the least exciting topic ever. But it really is very important. And I mean, within 2026, you're going to see this dominate the landscape even more. It's inevitable. Consumers are just more aware of how their data is getting collected and stored and used. So for brands, what that really means is like the trust that your consumers have with you can't just be implied anymore. It really has to be proven. The good news is there are a couple of easy ways that you can do this that we talk about at Emma as well as just being very transparent about how and where that data is being used and stored. Mean, that's a very simple, easy way to do so, just letting your consumers know where it is, we're doing with it. Clearly communicating the security best practices, but just in that plain language so that everyone, like even somebody like Jay, could easily understand. I'm just ripping on Jay. Jay, that's amazing. And true. But yeah, but just making sure that you're clearly communicating, it's easy to digest. Like, can I explain this to a kindergartner? Great. And then also, can make sure that those privacy controls are easy to find, understand. But at Emma, we really like to talk about consistency equals trust. So I think that's another critical piece too, is making sure that you have that consistency, especially when you're connecting that storytelling about your brand. When we think about today's audiences and consumers, they're really moving, I guess you could say fluidly between, you know, emails, social media, websites, apps, even down to like customer support. And they really expect that brand experience to feel very cohesive and have that meaningful connection wherever they encounter the brand. So what I would recommend is these brands need to have that one unified voice across all of those channels. So consistent messaging, consistent values, not like siloing campaigns, but making sure that you're including all those earned media channels as well, shared media, the social platforms as well. And then just making sure that that experience is essentially seamless from that first touch to that long term relationship. Because when brands are feeling, you know, disconnected, or the story feels fragmented, it creates a lot of friction and confusion. But when it feels consistent, it creates, again, that confidence and that trust. And the most effective brands will tell that one story and just reinforce it everywhere. Yeah. I know. I would think when we're looking at data for 2026, one of the most interesting things that, you know, in EMEA, in Europe, they have GDPR. Big pain in the butt. And one of the things that they've been discussing, and it looks like it's heading in a certain direction, is this thing they're calling the digital omnibus, which is actually a reimagining of the GDPR regulations because, what everybody has found is every time you go to a website, there's all these consent buttons that pop up. Are you okay? They want to do this. It's the most annoying thing in the world, and nobody's really reading it. Nobody's really paying attention to it. So they're trying to streamline it. So they're actually talking about having GDPR be a little bit less, which is great. But what I'm always, advocating for with marketers is if you're in a meeting and the discussion is, you know, is this legal? Do we have the rights to do this? Then you're already out of the gate failing in terms of trust because that is the lowest bar. Right? It's it shouldn't be a legal discussion about how you're using your data because right out of the gate, that means you're using your data wrong. And so while the legal side is going get a little bit easier, that really shouldn't play into how you're actually leveraging your data for marketing. Totally. And again, the brands that are the loudest or the most innovative, those days are over. We're not going to succeed in 2026 with that. I mean, it'll help some, but the brands that are going to succeed will be the ones that are earning that trust, essentially, through that transparency and consistency. Absolutely. You go on to any company's website these days and see just a plethora of blogs on trustworthiness and what our security certifications are. And it's a huge theme. So I think for brands to continue to emphasize that is really important and really the way to you know, not only gain trust, but position yourself as a really strong organization out there. Well, it's a competitive advantage at that point. Exactly. Not everyone's doing it or taking the time to, you know, make sure that they are earning that trust and, keeping it consistent. Right. The good ones are, but yeah, the for sure. Okay. Well, let's dive into our next topic, which and our next trend, which is something that is near and dear to my heart because I have spent my entire career worrying about SEO and so search engine optimization. For those of you who might not be familiar, Most of you probably are because you're marketers, I would assume. It is rapidly being replaced by AI enabled search, we have lots of different acronyms for that. There's AEO. There's AIO. I don't even know all of them. But our third trend is the shift from SEO to AI enabled search. And I know, Jay, that that's a topic that you feel passionately about and know a lot about. What are your thoughts on that? And what do we need to be prepared for in 2026? Yeah, I think the first thing is to figure out a baseline of where, how your company is showing up, right? So go to an incognito browser, go to the different AI tools and say, know, what are the, the top five solution for blah blah blah, whatever you're doing, or the top five products in this category blah blah and see if you're showing up. Likely, you're not because less than 10% of all consumer and business to business sites are optimized to appear in these results that any of the AI tools are giving back. So that's scary because you're not optimized. All you need to do though is actually go to any of your favorite AI tools, Claw, Gemini, whatever, Chattypeauty, and say, This is my website. What are the simple things I need to do to optimize my site to have it appear in the results that you're giving back to people? And they'll give you back very simple things, and there really are very, very simple things. But the reason that this is more important than ever is the explosion of AI browsers. Right? We all use Chrome or Safari or if you're weird, Microsoft Edge to go on the Internet. But now, there's AI browsers. Chateapity has Atlas. Perplexity has Comet. And the biggest one is now Gemini is now baked in. It's not an extension. It's baked in to the Chrome browser. And so right within the browser now, people are going to be searching for things and not going to Google and not even going to Chateapity ask things right in that Gemini thing right there in the browser. Understanding how you're showing up and then optimizing to show up should be the absolute number one priority for any organization on the planet. 100%. And I think, Mary, you said earlier, who do you want the information to come from? Right? Can you expand on that a little bit? Like, you you obviously want to be in control of what AI is learning about your company, right? So who do you want that to come from? Yes. I mean, when you're looking from your brand from an internal perspective, do you want your competitors writing your narrative? Do you want other consumers or brands writing your narrative? You don't know what their experience has been with you. Or they may not know the full story. We don't know what we're working on day in and day out. So you really want to leverage that. You want to leverage AI to essentially write that story for you. You feed them the information. You tell the story that you want. Make sure that it's a true story. Make sure that we're honest. But we want it to be effective as well so that you're actually getting the right consumers and the right kind of folks that you want to come into your brand instead of having that narrative written for you. Right. And I think another thing that they talk about too is make sure your company is producing a lot of thought leadership material. That's a really great way to get ahead of the game and, you know, position yourself as an expert. Yeah, great. Okay. Well, let's move on to trend number four, which I think Mr. Nate actually knows quite a bit about. We're going to let him share his expertise. Trend number four. So we have new, but then new ish platforms and technologies are going to take center stage coming up in 2026. So Nate, do you want to tell us a little bit more about that? Sure. Yeah. And I added the ish to the deck ahead of this. Because relative to email, is where Mary and I focus, everything is new. Email's been around forever. A constant, it's a dinosaur, it's still a great ROI tool but everything is new compared to email. So there are a number of different platforms and things that are starting to take center stage and I think we'll just continue to accelerate in 2026. One key thing I wanna highlight is just how people are searching for things. So we talked about how people are using AI tools to search for answers. People are also using voice search and visual searches to explore dupes for products that they see in a store, they take a picture with their phone and they wanna try to find a better deal. Browsers are offering visual searches for things like that. People are talking into their phones more than ever. I'm getting audio voice memos from people, like your buddies are sending you long diatribes, like via the voice memos. And so, you know, it's just a convenient way to utilize the technology and that goes for marketing as well. So people might, talk into their phone and ask, What's the best email marketing tool for nonprofits? Or snap a photo of a fancy chair they see in a furniture store and go on Amazon to try to find a dupe of that. So this means that brands just need to be more optimized for natural language, clear answers, strong visuals on their sites. These platforms, you know, again, new ish, they're not brand new, but they're just becoming more and more common. I saw you guys not along. Mary, have you left any long voice memos recently? No, but I get some from a fellow colleague of ours when they don't feel like, slacking it over, you know. They got some things to Yeah. Tell 90% of my texts are voice memos now. Yeah. That's it. I I'm either lazy or I don't know what it is, but that's it. I don't like calling people because I'm antisocial. So this is a great way to feel like you're talking to someone. It's like you're still having a conversation without having to hear them back and get the response immediately. You have time to think about it and then respond. Exactly right. Exactly right. So my daughter said the other day, she was like, I just got a ten minute voice memo from one of my friends. I thought that was so funny. Ten minutes? Yeah. That is so funny. Well, the new thing now is all the like, my daughter would have they listen to everything on, like, double speed. Mhmm. Which is just I mean, what is going on? I don't know. I know. It makes it it well, and it's nice to sometimes do the the double speed when you're trudging through, like, a boring training or something like that. But most of Somebody's double speeding this right now. I was gonna say, not simply not this one. You're doing no. Stop it. A great, natural transition into my next, shout out here. Please do. Short form video, which you can watch on double speed, Reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and again, new ish, not brand new, everyone's using the stuff already but compared to email, very, very new. Yeah, are grabbing attention of pretty much everybody from our parents to our children. Everyone is using YouTube, Shorts, Reels, TikTok and so those thirty second videos, the how to's, the before and after's, you know, that aren't all polished, that are feeling more raw and authentic, those are capturing people's attention, those are getting the clicks, You don't have to worry about spending a ton of time editing a video, you can simply make a quick thirty second reel, upload it, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, things like that, and show just a rapid fire outcome of a marketing tip or technique instead of a longer form video. So those are just gonna, I think, get more and more popular as we enter 2026 and beyond. Right. And especially if you're trying to engage the younger audience. I know I'm very young, there are people that are younger than me. That's their life. That's what they're doing. They're on social media. They're social beings. That's all they're doing regardless if they're on phone calls or not. Because if I call my nieces, they're like, why would you ever call me? Send me something via Instagram. So I totally get that. And it's in your face. It's everywhere. So it's not going away. Yeah. And I would even add to that that, you know, we did a lot of research around lo fi content versus regular content and lo fi content in email newsletters, you know, pictures of you and your team or going on social media and your company page pictures of, you know, everybody's dog or cat or whatever. It crushes it in terms of engagement and click throughs and email and on social versus the boring stuff. Right? And we weren't put on this earth to share stock photos with each other. We just weren't. And AI has turned this world into this generic AI slop. So the thing that actually works now is being a human, whether it's in short form video on Shorts or in your emails that you're sending out, it is not having the most polished things. So, being bad at taking pictures thank God for me, getting terrible at it is finally paying off. Yeah. I don't want to say you have to be messy, but definitely be genuine and more authentic. You don't have to face tune everything. It should feel real. It should feel like a person created the asset that you're Absolutely. Right. And that goes back to what we were talking about earlier with that trust, right? So, it's like, you want to tell a good story, you want the consumers to trust your brand and what you're doing and acting like an actual human and not being so polished is the best way to do so. I mean, every time you see a major brand use AI to make a commercial or something, there's just instant backlash. Just instant backlash. And that's a great thing, I think, it also should be driving this whole idea of being authentic because that's where we're at. I agree. Was it the Coca Cola ads that we're getting a lot of backlash Yes, for Coca Cola, there was McDonald's, there was a few of them and you know, they look great and all, but people want to see people. They do! Those are notorious in, I think, Gen Z, amongst my kids age for just being just not great. So I agree with the notion of be authentic, show your true self, even if it's imperfect and messy. I think that's really important in this day and Yeah. And a lot of people are using micro influencers now, too. Like, taking advantage of those folks who have really personal connections with their audiences, creators who, you know, instead of, like, hiring Leo to go promote a cologne, you can find someone with 15,000 followers who, you know, if they're really into tennis, they have a really engaged audience, and you could do a thirty second reel promoting the new version of your racket. Like there are better ways, more authentic ways to connect, with, you know, your target audience in a genuine way. Absolutely. Yeah, that is, that's something that I'm seeing all over the place, right now and continues to be continues to be very popular. And I think, yeah, I don't think it's going away anytime soon, like you said, Nate. So, all right. So for our last trend, we're going to do something kind of fun. We're going to do what's in and what's out. So let's just kind of do just off the top of your head, rapid fire, like for marketing, digital marketing, or just marketing in general in 2026? What's in? Mary, go. What is in? Emma smart sending. So that's smart sending based on recipients' open habits. I think that is in. We need to make sure that we are targeting our audience at the time in which they are more likely to engage with us. So that is in. I love it. Jay, what do you got? I would say, specifically on the email side, I think Sunday midday email sends, we're seeing them do really, really well. This idea that the weekend is not really like the week, I think is ridiculous. And people should be benchmarking not the weekend versus the week, but the weekend benchmarks for their performance and separately their sends during the week because the weekend has become really, really valuable real estate, especially, in the world of email marketing. Okay. Okay. How about you, Nate? You got anything? Yeah. Echo both of those. Yeah, those are some emails. You have more time. Sit down and read them. I would say segmenting based on the data that you have. You're a trustworthy brand, if you're doing everything correctly, and your subscribers are providing you with some really good data points, and so you can curate the content. So, making sure to segment the target with curated content that makes sense and resonates with them. Right, Right. I agree. Yeah. And maybe one more would essentially just have everything we've chatted about today, just being and telling the story of a human in the world of AI. That will help you stand out too. For sure. Okay. And then what's what's in just in general, not even marketing in 2026? What do guys have? So I would say Love Island is in and the Bachelor franchise is out. That pains me to say that because I'm a big Batch Nation fan. Okay. That's not fair. The Bachelorette is a Mormon wife and I know that you're a wife. Jumped the shark there though. Once you start getting like well known people to be that, then it doesn't work out. I, in long term. So I think Bachelor franchise going to the toilet. Love Island's doing great. Love is Blind needs a little reboot there. But all those franchises are very important to our fabric of our culture. Mary and Nate, do you guys have anything to add on this pop culture? Would say this is this was in in 2025 for sure, but I think it's going to just completely explode even more in 2026 was in as mahjong. Oh. Everyone is doing it. No, they're not. Everyone is playing it. Not. I would love to really become good at it. I haven't had a ton of opportunities to play, but it is just it's just such a fun game. I'll learn with you. I want to learn it. Perfect. Yeah. I mean, I know how to play, but I'm just not an expert. But then I see, you know, videos, again, these short these short form videos of people playing mahjong and, you know, all the different ways that they set it up and then how they win. Slap it, and it's just amazing. Jay is not gonna Nate, are you gonna do that, Nate? I'm more a cribbage guy, to be honest. I like cribbage. I'm more of a shuffle shuffleboard gal. Go ahead. You guys are Do you like cribbage? I love cribbage. Oh, wow. I don't know if I know much about that game, but I don't either. Yeah. Oh, it's a great card game. Yep. Okay. So is that your that thing for 2020? It is true. Cribbage is in. In. And then out? I got an out. $6.07. What does it mean? Oh my goodness. Stop. We got to stop. Seven'seven. Well, know what's to be well, it was kind of in at the end of 2025, but like '41. That's the new one. It went from six'seven. Now my son and his friends are saying 41. They have hand signs. I still don't understand what any of that is. We went to a football game on Sunday, and they were all doing the six, seven. I don't know. Do you know what's going to be in or adults and parents doing all of that? Cause it's just so cringe and the kids are going get so upset. Yes. That's like the dabbing of, you know, scrolling our children. What also is that is using the thumbs up emoji, which I recently learned does not mean everything's good. It means you're not good. So, yeah, do not use thumbs up emoji. Yeah. Do not use that as a reaction to anything. When did that happen? I thought that was around. When I used it and sent it to my wife. Is it like a passive aggressive like, Oh, okay. Other finger on your hand. Oh, I see. Okay. Okay. Well, shifting back to digital marketing That's like no more fun. Marketing. No, no, no. We'll still have fun. What are some things that we think are out in 2026 for digital marketing? Yeah. I I think that, on social media, sadly, a lot of organic traffic relying just on organic and not boosting things. You know, micro boosting on posts on almost every social platform is working really well. So if you go on Instagram, you have a post and you spend just, you know, just $50, Instagram will circulate well beyond the $50, like, way far. And same with LinkedIn, same with the other a lot of other platforms. YouTube, the same. Micro boosting has become essential for anything that you're putting out there because organic traffic is just extremely hard to generate now. Interesting. Okay. Okay. Anyone else wanna weigh in on what's out for digital marketing? I'd say stock images, we touched on it before, but if it looks like you just downloaded a photo from Getty Images, I'm out. So, I'm gonna disconnect real quick from your content. So, stock images are out. Very fair. Yeah, I cringe when I say those. Again, know we've been a little contradictory in the AI space because, you know, it has its place for and it has its reasons. But I think something that was probably out is, you know, not even trying. Got to do a little bit. Let it do the work for you. Don't be like me, where it took you a long time to get there. Now you're She's coming around, though, folks. Me wishing that I had dipped my toe in a long a lot longer ago. Okay. Good. Good. Good. Alright. And then pop culture or just anything else? What's out? Nate and I are obsessed with The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. Yes. Oh, so that's in. Every Thursday morning, we talk about them. True. Yeah. Okay. Wednesday, they play when it's played on Thursday. So we talk about that. There you go. That's solid. Pretty interesting. Yeah. Salt Lake is good. I watched Beverly Hills. Very involved with that. Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Anything that is trash TV, I think is definitely, in. Because it feels authentic. It feels more authentic. Yes. That's right. It feels authentic and it's easy and it makes you realize that even on your hardest days, it could be worse. That's true! That's exactly right. That's why you watch it. You say, At least that's not me. Authenticity is not my reality, this is not how my friends operate. You have friends. What's out for TV? Stranger Things, right? No more Stranger Things? Yes. Because they're all, like, joining senior citizen homes. They're very, very old now. So that is extremely the problem is that children took place between 1983 and 1986, and everybody that stars in it's in their mid twenties now. And it's like, they can't ride bicycles when you're, like, 25 years old. I mean, it's gotta stop. True. True. That is a very good point. Anything else that we can think of All without all the no offense. But all of these rebrands that all these streaming services are doing, you know, HBO, the HBO Max to Max, HBO it's just like, give us what we want. Just HBO. Thank you. Right. Right. Oh, absolutely. It's way too confusing out there. We don't need a rebrand to engage with your content. We just need better content. Yes. There you go. There you go. That's true for every brand. We're going put a bow on it, Mary. Right? Mary, that was beautiful. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you all so much. This has been very enlightening and a very fun discussion. I just want to quickly let our audience know that if you're interested in learning more about any of these awesome people on this call or what we do Jay is the founder of Guru Media Hub. We will send this deck out with a link to the website. Check it out. It's got all sorts of incredible content out there, podcasts, videos, everything you could ever imagine. And then we would also love it if you would visit the Emma website, cruise around, check out what Emma does. We're an email marketing platform, as you might know. We do have an on demand demo video out there to watch, so you don't necessarily have to meet with anybody. You can just watch it at your leisure and, find out a little bit more about what we do and what our great product does. So there you go. And then my final slide says thank you. Thank you all so much for joining today. Thank you to our panelists. It's been an absolute blast chatting with you and learning more about what you're foreseeing. You all are experts in your field, so learning your insights about what's up and coming for digital marketing and just in general on TV, reality TV. It's been a pleasure. Thanks to everybody. Thanks to our audience. And talk to you soon. Take care. See you. Bye bye.