New Dawn
What has held back the rise of Email 2.0 as the new super app is a combination of two factors. Email Service Providers (ESPs) have been slow to take AMP to their customers; marketers need handholding and education with implementation because the emails need to combine creativity and code. Marketers on the other hand have taken email for granted and limited its usage to sending posters or a collection of items (headlines, products), where the only action possible is a clickthrough. Imagine headlines which expand in-place, imagine carts which can be managed within the email, imagine feedback and ratings collection without the need for a redirect to a landing page. Would we not view more stories (each of which could have an interactive ad)? Would we not add more items to the cart if we did not have to exit the email with the first click? Would we not provide more responses if all it needed was a tap? A new world beckons – one which few have experienced.
Brands today are beset with profit-killers in the engagement with their existing customers. Email 2.0’s super app status can beautify every broken profit-killing customer experience and accelerate the brand’s march to exponential, forever, profitable growth and eventually becoming a profipoly (profits monopoly). This journey cannot be undertaken with the burden of AdWaste on new customer acquisition; it necessarily needs success with existing customers. Email 1.0 may have fallen behind other exciting new channels like two-way SMS, push notifications, RCS, and WhatsApp, but Email 2.0 leapfrogs them all with its “All-in-Email” approach. What marketers need to grasp is the superpower they now have in their grasp.
Every consumer company needs to rethink their business and ask: “How can I AMP-ify my customer engagement?” AMP can be combined with innovations like Ems (short emails), Atomic Rewards (gamified incentives for non-monetary actions which are at the upstream and downstream of transactions), rethinking the email header and footer with AMPlets for search and NPS ratings respectively, exploring the possibility of free B2C emails financed by ads, and rethinking the email inbox as an AMP ‘micronbox’. Together, they can create a new magical experience in the lives of customers with the elimination of friction-laced clickthroughs.
For the past few weeks, I have been taking ‘brain breaks’ with QuizMails. These 30-second thrillers would have been unimaginable in the pre-Email 2.0 world. Just finding an app and opening it would have taken more time! Now, these emails just show up in my inbox twice daily to test and educate me. I am hoping that in the months to come, marketers open their eyes to the opportunity that lies in front of them, the power to delight their existing customers and boost profitability by cutting down on AdWaste. That which was once old and forgotten is new and magical. Email never really went away from our lives. All it needed was an upgrade and refresh for the modern era. The Email Era is coming for everyone – from Gen Z to the seniors. Like a superhero who had slipped into the background but never really disappeared, Email 2.0 is coming back as our new super app.
