Writings – 2
AMPifier: The Heart of Email 2.0 Hotlines: “Ems, which offer daily short messages with informative content to be consumed in 15-30 seconds. AMP, which brings in interactivity, and can potentially eliminate the clickthrough to the landing page, thus removing a step (and friction) from the conversion funnel. Atomic Rewards, which offers micro-incentives to consumers for specific actions (like feedback, ratings, zero-party data). AMPlets, which can combine AMP and Atomic Rewards to transform the email footer with brandlets and gamelets. Adlets, which can potentially make B2C emails free. The primary objective of these initiatives (which I broadly club under ‘Email 2.0’) is to improve the efficacy of the email channel and thus help solve the crux of the brand-customer relationship: a communication and interaction which both parties benefit from. Customers get personalised messages with greater relevance and with reduced friction in the interaction. Brands get better engagement with their existing customers which can bring down the need to retarget via Big Adtech and thus cut down on AdWaste which could account for half of their digital market spend.”
AMPifier: “Just as cities upgrade their infrastructure every so often to make themselves attractive to new residents, Email 2.0 is also about bringing in millennials and Gen-Z customers who have grown up on messaging apps. The interactive and incentivised inbox will herald the renewal of email. For brands seeking profits, they need look no further than the AMPifier as the energiser the world needs to reboot and refresh email. At stake is the $200 billion AdWaste – half of the digital marketing spends done by brands. Also at stake is the path to profitability for brands. This journey runs via Email 2.0 hotlines, with the AMPifier as the underlying engine powering customer interactions.”
Quizzing in Email: An Innovation in the Inbox: “As I was thinking of interesting AMP use cases, I thought of quizzes. None of us has seen a quiz in an email because emails have not been interactive. Clicking through to a landing page and then answering questions creates inertia and we just let the moment pass. Remembering to open an app daily and participate leaves quizzing to the most passionate. I asked myself: what if we combined the power of AMP in email with the attraction of quizzing? Imagine getting a few questions daily in the inbox and answering them – all in a matter of seconds.”
Email and AI: A Perfect Match: “[Email marketing] is all about the right Rs: right person, right message, right time. As I had previously mentioned, there are 8 elements in an email that we need to discuss. Four of them are where some AI is already being used (subject, segment, time, delivery); the other four are where AI can be applied in the future (header, body, footer, landing page)… AI is the future of email marketing. So far, AI has helped in campaign management with the help of machine learning. Now, the time has come for AI to be used in the creative process. By removing friction from a marketer’s life, AI is the enabler for taking email marketing to even greater heights and RoI in the years to come.”
The Coming of Inbox Commerce: “In the US, email is one of the most important channels marketers use for their communications with consumers. (SMS is now rising rapidly but has many limitations which RCS promises to fix.) Actions inside email had so far been restricted to simply clicking through to a landing page. What we were showing [at the trade shows] was extraordinary – the ability to do “all-in-email” – search, browse, add to wishlist, add to cart, pay, and a lot more – right inside the email. This was something no one had ever seen or experienced. And that is when I knew we were on to something big.”
Email Shops can Transform eCommerce [LINK]: “eCommerce has remained largely the same with the actions and transactions taking place on the brand’s properties or via intermediaries (marketplaces) on their websites and apps. This is about to change…The transformative solution in eCommerce is to think of websites and apps inside emails – where the entire journey from search and browse to purchase can be completed right inside the inbox. AMP makes this possible. These “email shops” are the next storefronts – and one which marketers can control because they can “push” these messages to their customers rather than relying on them to remember to visit their properties. Combined with Atomic Rewards to incentivise opens and other non-transactional actions, email shops have the potential to increase conversions exponentially, thus reducing the need for expensive and continuous new acquisitions to drive revenue growth. Email shops can thus become the profitability drivers for brands… Email shops can beautify every broken profit-killing customer experience to help brands in their journey towards exponential, forever, profitable growth and eventually to a “profipoly’ (profits monopoly).”
So, is Email 2.0 ready to take on the super app mantle?
