Channels Crisis
Marketers are facing a mammoth problem reaching their own customers. Push-driven marketing messages, which are so critical to bringing customers back to their properties (website/app), are either not being delivered or not being acted upon – what I have previously called “attention recession.”
- Emails: In India, the belief is that the email inbox is full of spam and not being opened. (Fact check: 130 million Indians open their inbox at least once a month, and 170 million do so at least once a quarter. This represents a significant, untapped opportunity.)
- WhatsApp: Even as popularity of this channel grows, especially for bottom-of-funnel conversion use cases, delivery rates are falling as Meta has introduced frequency caps on promotional messages. Cost is also prohibitive – with WhatsApp costing almost 50-75 times that of an email, creating an unsustainable economics for regular engagement.
- RCS: This rising star suffers from being delivered to the SMS inbox, long ignored by many consumers. Despite rich media capabilities, it struggles with consumer attention and familiarity barriers.
- SMS: With pricing almost the same as RCS, SMS is perhaps on their way to extinction except for regulatory messages. As a marketer put it, “I have 1 unread WhatsApp (which just came in), and 1,500 unread SMSes. Same is the case with my email inbox – I rarely open it.”
- App notifications: While potentially effective with zero marginal cost, they require (a) an app to be installed, which not every brand has, and (b) consumers to opt in. Push fatigue and notification blocking further limit effectiveness.
This crisis is unfolding against a backdrop of channels transitioning from one-way broadcasting to two-way engagement platforms. AMP in email is making the inbox interactive and dynamic, enabling actions to be completed in-place without the clickthrough friction that typically loses 80-90% of potential conversions. WhatsApp offers conversational capabilities, and RCS is evolving in that direction.
Yet, from a marketer’s standpoint, these advancements haven’t sufficiently stemmed the flow of money to adtech platforms for retargeting and reacquisition – contributing to the massive $500 billion global AdWaste crisis where brands repeatedly pay to reach customers they already know.
The solution I propose to marketers is multi-layered:
- Focus on email because it offers the best combination of cost-effectiveness (fractions of a penny per send), universal reach (5+ billion global users), content versatility, and measurability.
- Become a daily habit through reliable hotlines by evolving beyond promotional offers to become a genuine utility delivering consistent value – creating “brain gain” experiences (as opposed to “brain rot”) that establish predictable connection patterns and transform occasional interactions into anticipated daily engagement.
- Monetise attention via NeoN – an authenticated advertising network that enables brands to transform email from cost centre to profit driver through precise targeting without platform intermediaries.
- Leverage AI agent orchestration to deliver hyper-personalisation at scale, making every communication feel individually crafted rather than mass-produced.
To rethink the email program, we need to look at innovations across the value chain:
- Gamifying opens: Mu and Mu Ledger
- Daily engagement: Microns and Magnets
- Greater interaction: AMP and AMPlets
- Monetisation: ActionAds and NeoN
- Multipliers: Progency and NeoMails
In this series, I’ll combine established concepts with innovative new ideas to provide a compelling case for investing strategically in email as the centrepiece of a retention-first marketing approach that eliminates AdWaste while building deeper, more valuable customer relationships.
