Solving the Email Open Problem

Published February 8-15, 2024

Overview

“So how will you get people to open emails?” This is the first question I get asked when I talk about Email 2.0 interactive email ideas and its power as an engagement and conversion channel, or its use for reactivation. Email open rates are low and clickthrough rates are even lower. As the use of email has grown, brands and spammers send a lot of emails to our inboxes. Our attention has receded. Spam filters in Gmail, Yahoo and other mailbox providers have ensured that only the most relevant emails reach our primary inbox.

While email remains the most effective channel for driving commerce in the US and other developed markets, other channels like push notifications and WhatsApp are providing very competitive alternatives. Email could become even more powerful if the problem of getting customers to open emails can be solved. But email has seen very little innovation in the past 15-odd years, and even the ESPs (email service providers) are in a “keep the lights on” mode – many having been acquired by CPaaS companies whose focus tends to be more on SMS and voice.

Not having good push messaging has a big impact on brands in terms of their ability to get customers back to their properties for transactions. The lesser the engagement, the more they must spend on advertising via branding and acquisition via the digital adtech platforms. This is detrimental to their profitability because CAC (customer acquisition cost) increases and CLV (customer lifetime value) decreases.

Email’s openness, cost, and capabilities make it a very compelling engagement channel. But the declining open and click rates through the years have reduced its efficacy. If the “attention recession” in email can be reduced, it could provide a big boost to brand profitability. There are multiple challenges to be tackled with email – how to get the first open from customers, how to get the second and third opens, how to make opening emails a habit thus giving brands a hotline to their customers, and finally, how to fast-track conversion. Until recently, the poster-like content in emails offered limited options: subject line could be tweaked, creative could be played around with, and time of sending could be optimised.

In a meeting recently, a marketer told me, “Email is dead.” I replied, “Yes, Email 1.0 is dead. Long live Email 2.0!” A flurry of innovations promises to transform email with the potential to not just improve open rates but also drive in-channel conversion. “Inbox Commerce” is coming to email, removing the friction of clicking through to the website or a landing page. I have written previously about Email 2.0 and its opportunities.

In this series, I will focus on a narrow problem: how to improve open rates in emails and make email a good habit in the lives of customers, and thus creating a win for brands also. The combination of Atomic Rewards, AMP and AI can transform emails – and with it dramatically cut AdWaste, reduce friction, and improve brand profitability.

ChatGPT Inputs

I began by asking ChatGPT for ideas on how to improve email opens. Here is the list:

Personalised Subject Lines: Tailoring the subject line to the recipient’s interests, past behaviour, or name can significantly increase the likelihood of the email being opened.
Segmentation of Email Lists: Divide your email list based on demographics, purchase history, or engagement level. This allows for more targeted and relevant emails, which are more likely to be opened.
Optimising Send Times: Analyse data to determine the best time to send emails to your audience. Timing can greatly influence open rates.
Mobile Optimisation: Ensure emails are mobile-friendly, as a significant portion of users checks email on mobile devices.
A/B Testing: Regularly test different elements of your emails (like subject lines, images, and call-to-actions) to see what resonates best with your audience.
Engaging Preheader Text: Utilise the preheader text effectively as it provides additional space to entice the reader to open the email.
Regular List Cleaning: Remove inactive subscribers to maintain a high-quality email list, as high engagement rates can improve overall deliverability.
Creating a Sense of Urgency: Use language in your subject lines that creates a sense of urgency or exclusivity to prompt immediate opening.
Loyalty and Reward Programs: Implement loyalty programs where subscribers can earn rewards for regularly opening emails.
Educational and Valuable Content: Provide consistently high-quality, informative content that adds value to the reader, establishing a reason for them to open future emails.
Storytelling: Use storytelling techniques to make emails more engaging and create a narrative that readers want to follow.
Feedback and Surveys: Encourage feedback and conduct surveys to understand what content your audience finds most engaging and relevant.
Consistent Branding: Maintain consistent branding and voice to build familiarity and trust with your audience.
Preview Text Optimisation: Craft compelling preview texts that complement the subject line and provide additional context or intrigue.
Social Proof and Testimonials: Include customer testimonials or user-generated content to build credibility and interest.

Many of these ideas are already being used by marketers but they have not moved the needle much in open rates – especially for non-transactional and non-triggered emails. Promotional emails are the lifelines for many businesses, and that is where the open problem is the most acute. The challenge on hand is not to improve email rates by 10% but by 10X. For this, a very different approach is needed.

Frame of Reference

Let’s focus on two problems: how to get the first open (especially from dormant and churned customers), and then how to get future successive opens to make email a habit, thus giving brands a hotline to communicate with their customers.

The mistake that email marketers have made is to think of what the promotional messages send out as “content”. In effect, these are ads. None of us goes out looking for ads. Ads are always wrapped in content. Be it a movie hall or on the Internet or in a newspaper, it is the content which engages, and ads are interspersed once our attention is captured. Because marketers have always thought of what they send out (offers, deals) as content, they have never had a wrapper of “real” content. We as customers have then voted with our clicks: we ignore 9 of 10 emails that reach our inbox. Occasionally, something about the “Subject” line captures our attention, and we click and view the content. But the default behaviour is to ignore, not engage.

Once marketers change their frame of reference and accept that what they are sending is an ad and not content, then the focus shifts to finding a solution. In physics, a frame of reference “is a set of coordinates that can be used to determine positions and velocities of objects in that frame; different frames of reference move relative to one another.” Think of the frame of reference as a specific vantage point which gives a distinctive view (or viewpoint). If a marketer believes that the email itself is content, then they will keep focusing on how to improve it to drive more engagement. However, if the frame of reference is changed to accepting that what is being sent is an ad, then a different solution emerges. The focus shifts to thinking about what the attractor can be to get recipients to consume the ad.

Once the frame of reference is shifted, then a whole set of new ideas emerges. Can the email be gamified? Can there be interesting content in the email other than the brand material to get people to open the email? If the email can be thought of as no different from a web page to which traffic needs to be attracted, then what type of content is the magnet? As one thinks further, it will be clear that there will be two magnets needed: one in the Subject line to persuade the customer to open the email, and a second in the email to ensure that the email is engaged with and acted on.

Think of the fun page in a newspaper. Even now, many newspapers have a page of puzzles, astro quotes, comics, and more. It is to create a habit that makes people pick up the paper and open it. As they do so, they see the ads. Email marketers need to think similarly. A “game” magnet is needed in the email subject and a “fun” magnet is needed in the email footer to drive engagement.

Subject Magnet

When we see an email in our inbox, we take no more than a couple seconds to determine if we should open it or not. An email may have the most exciting message, but if it is not opened, then the recipient is not seeing what’s inside. While some brands become habits in our lives and we open all their emails, for most other emails we make the decision to open an email based on two elements: the sender and the subject. The sender name helps us separate friends from brands. There is not much room to manoeuvre there. The brand has to establish identity and trust. Innovations like BIMI or green ticks are helping us identify which emails are genuine as opposed to the phishing ones. The best place to insert the magnet thus is the subject. It needs to be at the start of the subject because many inbox views can truncate long subject lines to showing just the first few words.

What can this magnet be? My answer: Atomic Rewards, a pan-brands micro-incentive for in-mail actions. I call this “Mu” (µ). Here is an overview of the idea: Atomic Rewards: The Solution to Attention Recession.

I asked a Custom GPT of my marketing writings to summarise the Mu idea:

The concept of using “Mu” in the subject of emails is part of a broader strategy known as Atomic Rewards within Email 2.0. This approach is designed to incentivise customers to engage more actively with emails, which can be particularly effective for reactivating dormant users. By including Atomic Rewards, customers are encouraged to perform specific actions such as opening emails, clicking on links, or making purchases. This not only increases their engagement but also enhances the likelihood of reactivating their interest in the brand.

These rewards can be aggregated across multiple brand engagements and redeemed at the Mu Shop. The system also supports progressive profiling by incentivizing the collection of zero-party data directly within the email, creating a “double thank you” moment. Furthermore, Atomic Rewards can be used to motivate existing customers to refer new ones, effectively transforming them into brand ambassadors. This multifaceted approach leverages the potential of email marketing by adding value both for the brand and the recipient through strategic engagement and rewards.

By prefixing µ.MuCount to the subject, a number of goals can be accomplished:

The <µ.MuCount> stands out in the inbox; it tells the recipient that this email is different
The µ tells the recipient that this is an email which has rewards for in-mail actions
The MuCount is the points tally linked to the recipient’s email ID. This prevents any random sender from just putting µ in the subject

Taken together, Mu gamifies the opening of emails. In the first email, it creates some intrigue on what could lie inside. Every open could earn 1µ, with additional incentives for maintaining a streak of opens. Mu needs to cut across brands because no single brand will be able to offer incentives big enough for recipients to open their emails.

The big question: what can Mu be used for? We will take this up in our discussion on the email footer magnet.

Footer Magnet

Once the email has been opened, the next question to answer is how to ensure that recipients do so again and again. This is where the email footer comes in. (For the purpose of the discussion here, we will keep our focus on email “opens” – and not worry about the main body of the email with the brand messaging. I will have some comments on that later.)

Email Footers today simply consist of a link to “unsubscribe”. This is because brands consider what they are sending as “content”. As I explained earlier, a change in the frame of reference will make marketers realise that what they are sending is not content to the email reader, but an ad. With that insight, it becomes obvious what an email needs: interesting content. The best place for this is the email footer. Two objectives are accomplished: there is no distraction with the brand message which comes first in the email, and by ensuring that the exciting content is in the footer there is a need to scroll the email which also ensures the brand message is seen.

I had written recently about an idea I termed “Dynamic Email Footers.” AMP provides us the mechanism to enable interactivity in emails. AMPlets can be thought of as small fragments with a specific purpose. All actions are done within the email itself, removing the worry a marketer may have that an action done in the footer will take the customer outside of the brand property. As I wrote: “What if a collection of AMPlets could go into every email in the world easily? This would be akin to how the addition of a code snippet plugs Google Analytics into any site. This adds a “dynamic” flavour to the footer – where the content can be generated when the email is opened and viewed rather than when it is sent – much like ads appearing across the Internet today… DEFs are a marketer’s dream come true; they can revolutionise not just customer engagement but also commerce. They can help reduce AdWaste by improving the efficacy of new customer acquisition. They can create new revenue opportunities for brands and rewards for customers.” In the essay, I discuss five types of AMPlets which can go in the footer: engagement, content, shopping, games, and ads.

Think of the email footer having a life of its own, with AMPlets which enable two universal wants: learn and play. Mu helps recipients unlock these AMPlets – thus addressing the Mu consumption challenge. They bring in a “fun” element in emails. They make recipients want to open the emails to experience the surprises that lie in store for them. [This essay has some additional ideas about what AMPlets can look like.]

I could unlock a quiz on a predefined topic of my interest, play a Wordle-like game, read a comic, solve a word jumble, browse a book summary, and much more. Each action is unlocked with Mu, which is earned by opening emails or providing zero-party data to the brand for a value exchange.

What the footer does is create something I find “useful” – always. For these few seconds that I engage, I get something interesting. Or it just serves as an attractive distraction in the busyness of daily life. Different strokes for different people. The key objective remains the same: no email unopened.

The magic tech that can now enable the creation of an infinite array of footer AMPlets is Gen AI.

AMPlets and Gen AI

The best way to demonstrate the power of what can be done is to show an example. So I asked ChatGPT for some puzzle ideas and to provide three examples of each. In less than a minute I had the following:

Emoji Riddles

🌧️ + 🐱 + 🐶 = ? (Answer: Raining Cats and Dogs)
🍎 + 📚 + 🚌 = ? (Answer: Back to School)
🌕 + 🐺 = ? (Answer: Werewolf)

Quick Math Puzzles

What is 5 x 3 – 4? (Answer: 11)
If you have 10 apples and give away 3, how many do you have left? (Answer: 7)
Half of 8 plus 2 is? (Answer: 6)

Word Scrambles

Scrambled Word: TEBTAR (Answer: Batter)
Scrambled Word: NOOM (Answer: Moon)
Scrambled Word: KEISOOC (Answer: Cookies)

Daily Trivia Question

What is the capital of France? (Answer: Paris)
What gas do plants absorb from the air for photosynthesis? (Answer: Carbon Dioxide)
Who wrote ‘Romeo and Juliet’? (Answer: William Shakespeare)

Spot the Difference

Two almost identical images of a landscape, but in one image, a bird is missing in the sky.
Images of a street scene, where a street sign color differs between them.
Images of a bookshelf, with one book having a different spine color.

Fill-in-the-Blanks

An apple a day keeps the _____ away. (Answer: Doctor)
Better late than _____. (Answer: Never)
A picture is worth a thousand _____. (Answer: Words)

7.. Quick Brain Teasers

I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with the wind. What am I? (Answer: Echo)
What can travel around the world while staying in a corner? (Answer: A stamp)
What has a head and a tail but no body? (Answer: A coin)

With some tweaking, it should be possible to do even more complex games, puzzles, and other interesting content. The key idea: make it worth it for the recipient to open the email again and again. Every AMPlet either provides some fun or learning.

These could even be personalized. For example, I may want a series summarising the best ideas for business books. Or I may want a multi-question quiz on Gen AI. Or I may want to learn some history. Or I may want math challenges. A year ago, these would have been hard and expensive to create or syndicate. Now, with Gen AI, the cost of doing this is infinitesimally small.

Taken together, the three ideas – Atomic Rewards, AMP, AI – can create a new wrapper around brand messages (ads), and drive emails opens – again and again.

Moreover

Here are some additional ideas which can improve email engagement.

Brand message: The poster-style images for a mass segment need to be replaced with more personalised and interactive content. Brands need to think of email as their “third place” after their website and app. AMP enables apps to be created within email. Every ecommerce brand needs to integrate search, shopping cart, recommendations, and payments inside email. The aim should be to eliminate the friction of a clickthrough for most of their customers.

Frequency: Brand emails should be sent daily at the same time. This way, they become a habit – rather than random spam. (I have termed this as microns – micro newsletters).

Action Ads: Brands can also have ads in the email footer. They can be ads promoting internal products or external non-competing brands. There are four attributes that set these ads apart: they are linked to PII (personally identifiable information) so they can very targeted, they are in “push” messages and thus don’t want for user action, all actions are in-place (and not requiring a clickthrough to a landing page), and they can support payments which means the ads could drive impulse purchases.

Mu Statement: The email footer needs to have a real-time update on the Mu points and a list of the last few transactions. This is important for email recipients to know that their action has an immediate reaction.

Pan-brand footer: The interesting thing about the email footer is that it can cut across brands. It can take on a life of its own. Along with the Mu in the subject, its sole purpose is to drive email opens – similar to what Google’s search ads. It is akin to taking the horse to the water. After that, it is what the brand does – with its messaging, offers, innovations, and interactivity.

Put all the ideas together, and we get a completely new look email program. This is what I had meant when I said, “Email 1.0 is dead. Long live Email 2.0!” Done right, email 2.0 can completely revitalise engagement, conversion, and retention on a channel that has served marketers well for the past two decades. Instead of just sending emails and hoping for single digit response rates, marketers need to set an objective of 100% email action rates, and thus eliminate the two biggest profit-killers – marketing AdWaste and funnel frictions. “No Email Unopened” must become the new mantra.

Pros, Cons, Extras

I asked ChatGPT to provide an analysis of the ideas I proposed. Here is its assessment.

Pros

Increased Engagement: By incorporating interactive elements like puzzles and quizzes, emails become more engaging, potentially increasing open and click-through rates.
Improved User Experience: Providing value beyond mere promotional content can enhance the user experience, making emails something to look forward to rather than a chore to sift through.
Habit Formation: Making email opening a habit can significantly benefit brands by ensuring consistent engagement from their audience.
Personalisation and Relevance: The use of AI and AMP for tailored content can make emails more relevant to individual recipients, thereby increasing their effectiveness.
Brand Differentiation: This approach can help brands stand out in a crowded inbox, offering unique content that goes beyond traditional marketing.
Cost-Effectiveness: If successful, this strategy could reduce reliance on more expensive advertising channels, offering a more cost-effective way to maintain customer engagement.

Cons

Implementation Complexity: Integrating advanced features like AMP and personalised AI content into emails can be technically challenging and may require significant resources.
Risk of Overcomplication: There’s a risk that adding too many elements to an email could overwhelm or confuse recipients, potentially leading to lower engagement.
Potential for Reduced Focus on Core Message: The primary purpose of the email (e.g., brand promotion, product information) might get overshadowed by the interactive elements.
Inconsistency Across Email Clients: Not all email clients support advanced features like AMP, which could lead to inconsistent experiences for users.
User Privacy Concerns: Collecting data for personalisation and AI use might raise privacy concerns among users.
Dependence on User Participation: The success of this strategy heavily relies on users engaging with the interactive elements, which may not always happen.

I then asked ChatGPT for three enhancements to the ideas I proposed:

Advanced Personalisation Techniques Using AI and Machine Learning: Utilising AI and machine learning to analyse user behaviours and preferences allows for crafting highly personalised content. This level of personalisation can significantly increase the relevance and appeal of emails to each individual recipient, thereby improving open rates. Personalised content resonates more deeply with recipients, making them feel understood and valued, which encourages them to engage more with the emails.
Interactive Content Elements: Incorporating interactive elements such as polls, surveys, and sliders directly within the email can greatly enhance user engagement. These elements not only make emails more engaging and fun but also provide valuable feedback and data for future personalisation. Interactive content breaks the monotony of traditional emails and encourages active participation from recipients, making the email experience more memorable and likely to be revisited.
Gamification Strategies: Implementing gamification in emails through point systems, leaderboards, or badges for engagement activities can significantly boost open rates. Gamification introduces an element of fun and competition, encouraging recipients to regularly open and interact with emails. It taps into the human psychological elements of reward and achievement, making the process of opening and engaging with emails more appealing and habit-forming.

Email marketers: the ball is now in your court. Take up the mission of making sure every email is opened and acted on – zero waste marketing. Done right, this can be a great leap forward in the quest to build a profipoly.

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