Why – 1
In the quest to alleviate the frictions in customer journeys, it’s paramount to identify a pivotal fulcrum, an axis around which marketers and Martech 2.0 vendors can craft the solutions. Enter Email 2.0, a modernised avatar of a marketing channel nearly as old as the internet itself.
In the realm of marketing channels, email holds a unique supremacy: it stands as the most effective push channel among the myriad options available. The significance of a ‘push’ mechanism is rooted in its autonomy from customer-driven actions. In scenarios where customers may overlook or neglect to perform an action (like visiting a website or opening an app), a push message to one of their inboxes can serve to pique their interest and prompt activity. When considering the gamut of push channels, email delivers unparalleled returns on investment. It harmoniously blends the desirable attributes of other channels – the rich content of app notifications, WhatsApp’s interactivity, and the immediacy of SMS and RCS – whilst skillfully negating their disadvantages. Unlike notifications, emails cannot be blocked; they are neither expensive nor beholden to a central actor as is the case with WhatsApp; and they effortlessly circumvent the message length and size limitations of SMS and RCS.
And there’s more. Email is virtually ubiquitous: almost every internet user has at least one email address. This capacity for wide-scale outreach eclipses other platforms that may not be as universally adopted. Email is persistent. In contrast to social media posts that can quickly get buried under new content, emails retain their presence in the recipient’s inbox until they are deleted. This endows messages with a longer lifespan and a higher likelihood of being engaged with. Email is also extremely trackable. Open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates are some of the key metrics that provide insights into user engagement levels and campaign performance. This enables businesses to tweak their strategies and content for optimal engagement and conversions. Email is often tied to an “identity”, and hence personalisation becomes possible. Although this is changing in many markets with mobile numbers increasingly serving as key customer identifiers, brands should still prioritise email ID collection to ensure dual avenues to the customer.
Regrettably, Email 1.0, though a long-standing tool, has been constrained in its potential due to an innovation deficit. Overcrowded inboxes and rampant spam, resulting from email’s ease and low cost, have long plagued users. Additionally, emails have been restricted in their capacity for engagement, with clickthroughs to websites and apps being the only possible action customers can take after opening an email.
Emerging from the challenges is the game-changing Email 2.0.
