Solving Problems
I have written about how marketers must shift their focus from acquisition to retention if they are to go from “profitless” to becoming a profipoly. This quest is about solving the three problems of marketing waste, funnel frictions, and poor data to increase CLV (customer lifetime value) and reduce CAC (customer acquisition cost). Three breakthroughs that can help them in this journey are: Martech 2.0 Unistack, Email 2.0, and Progency. Each has a specific purpose: the Unistack is to increase conversion on the brand’s website and app and help with retention via better personalisation, Email 2.0 is about enabling the creation of hotlines so engagement improves and making inbox as the new storefront, and Progency is about bringing on a partner to help complement the efforts of the internal marketing teams with a pay-for-performance model.
Among these three innovations, the one which is new and can deliver a multiplier to outcomes is Email 2.0. It is the one solution that can address all the three problems: it can reduce marketing waste by enabling reactivation instead of reacquisition, it can eliminate funnel friction by powering in-channel commerce (inbox commerce), and it can create a data-rich foundation by enabling zero-party data collection right inside the email.
To summarise what I wrote in The Profipoly Quest, Email 2.0 is poised to revolutionise the way businesses interact with customers by establishing direct communication channels akin to hotlines. This next-generation email system is grounded on four key innovations: AMP, Atomic Rewards, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Action Ads. The strategy involves wrapping each email in an appealing package, with enticing incentives in the subject line and engaging content in the footer, effectively turning emails into ads that demand attention. The integration of AMP allows for interactive functionalities within the email, eliminating the need for clickthroughs to landing pages, while Atomic Rewards introduce a gamification element to boost open rates. AI will play a crucial role in generating personalised and compelling content for both the main body and footer of emails. Furthermore, Email 2.0 introduces “Action Ads,” a novel concept that embeds interactive ads in email footers, enabling actions such as purchases directly within the email environment. This approach could potentially render email services cost-free for users by monetising through in-mail advertising.
The vision for Email 2.0 extends beyond mere communication; it aims to be a comprehensive platform for brand engagement, conversion, and customer retention, offering a cost-effective alternative to messaging apps like WhatsApp, which, despite their effectiveness, come with a higher cost barrier for mass marketing. Email 2.0 represents a promising avenue for reinvigorating email marketing by blending the efficiency of instant messaging with the affordability of traditional email, setting the stage for a new era in digital marketing. Email 2.0 can transform the EnCoRe (Engagement, Conversion, Retention) funnel, making it an important foundation for the Profipoly journey. In this series, I will go deeper into how this can be made possible.
