Yes folks, social may be sexy, but email delivers—in terms of both customer acquisition and retention. Clearly, that’s not lost on either investors or marketers even though the space doesn’t usually garner as much media coverage as the latest social analytics innovation or this month’s marketing automation breakthrough.
I believe the title was a little on the link bait side, because I don't see anything in the article saying anything about emails eminent demise. If anything, it discusses the rise of email. Email has become, under the radar by the way, the dominant marketing channel in the digital age. Why is that?
The convergence of data and technology has made personalization a reachable goal. The ultimate tool to reach those customers is through email. The platform lends itself to personalization. With email, a marketer already knows who the message is for, there is no need for a user to authenticate themselves to understand who they are.
Another main reason is how rich the message can be. My up-and-coming channel of dominance, mobile, doesn't have this rich push feature. It's like receiving a text message with a link. There is nothing visual drawing the customer into interacting with a push notification. Now the dominance of the mobile device will eventually win out and this will be the dominant channel, but for now it is not.
With email the message is very rich. There's images and targeted content/offers. Email can adjust the message based on where you are opening the content. It can change based on when you open it. It is a mature platform. Everything mobile will be in the future, email has already become. When a marketer sends an email to a customer, it can be highly customizable based on their past and predicted future behavior. Combined with a great marketing automation tool, it can be based on an action just happened minutes or seconds ago. Today, the possibilities are endless with email marketing.
Two themes that will dominate developments in email innovation in coming months: how seamlessly a service can be integrated with other campaign touch points, especially mobile initiatives; and how personal any given message can become.
This is already happening. When disparate data are brought together, the possibilities are infinite. This can also be overwhelming for a marketer. Where to start? How to segment the customer? How to develop a communication strategy? I predict the new strategy will be one of Continuous Marketing. Continuous marketing relies on the lifecycle and behavior of a customer. The customers behavior drives the communication and the content, everything is dynamic. Moving customers through the lifecycle is the new measurement of success, replacing redemption percentage.
If your email marketing is not already tied to offline, online and mobile behaviors of your customers, as marketers you have a new imperative. Email is not a silo of the organization, it is a centralized channel for communication with all of your known customers. It can be the most powerful tool in the toolbox when connected to a strong marketing automation tool and most importantly, organized data.
One big wildcard for the next decade, of course, is the fast and furious rise of messaging. It’s by far the dominant electronic communications method among teenagers, used by almost 91% of all teen mobile phone owners. The average volume sent is 30 messages daily. Far fewer use email regularly, at least to communicate with each other.
Then again, when teens do visit their inbox, they’re doing it for far different reasons than their parents. If anything, it might be easier to capture their attention there.
Messaging is very interesting, but as a platform to beat email, I am skeptical. Messaging is a communication tool to have quick interactions with your close friends and loved ones. Are the people in messaging apps going to like advertising popping up in their streams? I don't know. I can't believe these customers will like that model, which is also why I am not as high on messaging apps, even though they are used quite frequently. Time will tell.
There is a great point made by Heather Clancy in that second paragraph. When a teen or millennial visits their inbox, they are going for a specific reason. If the inbox becomes a place they go because they want to interact with brands, then emails demise is greatly exaggerated. Email then becomes even more essential to the marketing toolbox in the mobile age. Figuring out how to integrate the email experience in the mobile world will be the ultimate prize for app developers, because they can charge a premium for marketers in that world. The future is still bright for email, especially for now.