…and will continue to live a long and prosperous life.
I was quite surprised to realize that I haven’t done an “Email marketing is not dead”-post yet. 2010 seems to have been the year for those. Every other email marketing-related blog or publication certainly has debated the matter. I think I just assumed you knew: Email is alive and kicking (kicking the proverbial behind at that).
So let’s look at a few things that rocked the email boat during 2010:
Priority Inbox
Gmail marked a shift in the way ESPs cater to user interaction by automatically prioritizing emails within the inbox. Hotmail released a similar intuitive inbox.
These ESPs rank emails in the inbox according to how the user interacts with the sender’s emails. For instance, if you always open every email you receive from your mother, often reply to her and sometimes even forward it to your sister, the emails you receive from her will always appear at the top section of your inbox. However, if you repeatedly ignore or delete her emails, well, then they’ll appear closer to the bottom.
Inboxes that automatically shove your newsletter down the list of unopened emails? That had email marketers in a panic.
How email bounced back:
Now I actually think this was a good thing – a challenge set for us by ESPs called “How the hell do I get my email to the top of the inbox?”
It highlighted a movement that’s become increasingly apparent in all forms of digital marketing: The importance of relevance and engagement. If your emails deliver relevant content, your recipients will open and read them, ensuring that your emails achieve top priority. Yes, an impressively designed email, website, mobisite or campaign is still eye-catching, but at the end of the day it’s the message – what you’re saying and how you’re saying it - that will keep people hooked.
Social media
2010 was marked by the advent of social and caused much speculation about whether or not it will have the power to render email (or email marketing) obsolete. Social media’s popularity among web users has made it an ideal viral and branding tool – it’s online word-of-mouth and has the ability to expand your audience drastically.
How email bounced back:
Email builds and maintains relationships with existing customers. It’s informative, direct and targeted, rather than just a generic message directed at the masses. It’s more personal than social media.
Clicking on a “like” or a “follow” button is something we all do quite easily. It takes no more than a second and you don’t really have to think about it. In fact, if I had to ask you how regularly you actually check the pages of all the things you “like” on Facebook, I’m pretty sure you’ll reply with a “never” or at most an “um…”. Signing up to an email, however, indicates a definite interest from the subscriber. Not only do you have to fill in your email address and additional details, you also have to go to your inbox, open an email and click on a verification link. It’s a process that requires more thought and engagement than a simple click. All in all, email interaction requires more effort (both from you and the subscriber), but it’s more prolific than social interaction.
When combined as part of an integrated digital marketing strategy, email and social need not be competing against each other at all. They’re complementing marketing, branding and communication strategies and have proven to work very well when each is used to enhance the other.
@facebook.com
Facebook’s launch of their messaging system caused quite the stir. As so many people already check and use Facebook on a daily basis, and most of their personal contacts are already interconnected through this social platform, it seemed very likely to offer email some tough competition.
How email bounced back:
At the end of the day, Facebook is a social platform – one with some serious privacy issues. So yes, their messaging system will be a wonderful tool for social communications, but it’s very doubtful whether it’s a tool we’ll adopt for professional or confidential communications (for instance contracts or communication emails from your bank, or even payment confirmations of online transactions). Email is simply more private (and also better suited to business communications in particular). Then there’s also the question of whether you truly want to rely on a single platform to hold all your communications.
The rise of mobile
SMS has long been a strong basis of our communication – and in principle it’s very similar to email, but with many more limitations. And then smart phones took over the world.
With more and more people checking emails on their mobile, the fear was that email marketing emails would be ignored – who has time to read the latest update on… well, anything while you’re rushing to your meeting/dropping the kids off at school/doing last-minute holiday shopping?
How email bounced back:
If your email is relevant and valuable to the subscriber they will open and read it; if not immediately, then at a later stage. (Spotting another focus on relevance right there, hey?)
More and more you’ll find email marketers including a link to a mobile version of their newsletter in the header of the email. When opening email marketing emails on a smart phone, users can then simply click on a link to view the mobile version. Mobile email newsletters generally follow a simpler design, and are designed on a smaller scale to eliminate me having to scroll through an email designed to fit 1024 pixels on a screen which fits a design of 380 pixels. That’s a whole lotta scrolling to the right to read an elephant-sized email on a mouse-sized screen. (Please note that measurements vary depending on your PC, laptop or mobile of choice.)
So email retaliated by optimizing for mobile devices.
Email marketing emails can also be optimized to render well within Facebook’s messaging system, so you will reach those subscribers who sign up to your mailing list with an @facebook.com email address.
Why will email survive?
Email remains a low cost, far-reaching and engaging direct marketing tool. While social communications like Twitter and Facebook are very effective, they’re all modeled on email, yet none of them offer the full functionality of an email. Email can cater to a range of communications – personal, professional, one-to-one, one-to-many, automated, etc. – and can integrate a variety of mediums. It’s versatile and accessible.
Is it immortal?
Probably not. But I think it’ll stick around for a while.
