MR1
What are you doing to future-proof your career?
Despite still being an effective communication tool for organizations, I find myself nervous about the little niche I have found myself in after so many years in email design/marketing. I worry about falling behind trends and the general curve my peers are following.
Do you have concerns about the future of email?
What, if anything, are you doing to stay relevant?
What do you plan on doing?
WORK ON THE WEB TOO!!
Similar design principles. Same tools. Same HTML and CSS you already know. There's a ton of cross-pollination. + you can impact more of the lifecycle of a user journey (from email to web and vice versa).
To Ted's point, cross-pollination. Staying up to date on web marketing principles is key. Getting into data architecture and marketing automation is a huge plus as well as it helps you better understand and craft proper email segments, and identify data to collect and what to do with it. A nicely filled out skill set should touch web design & dev, web marketing, email design & dev, marketing automation and database architecture. Want more? Copywriting and marketing strategy can be the icing on the cake :) That skill set will be relevant for a long time to come.
Kevin Mandeville and I discussed this question in Email Design Podcast #47. You can find our thoughts on it here >>
https://litmus.com/blog/email-design-podcast-47-view-online-links-image-based-emails-and-above-the-fold-buttons