I’m a first-gear type of person. I only go about 10 mph over the speed limit, you know to keep with the flow of traffic but not risk harm or ticketing. I hate being rushed. And I generally prefer to live in a calm state. For those reasons alone, I’m so LUCKY I landed in the business of email, the anchor in the chaos of the sea we call digital marketing.
I’ve been fortunate to build my marketing career on what has been dubbed ‘the cockroach of the internet’ because of its inability to be killed despite the constant introduction of new platforms and technologies. (Yes, it’s a gross comparison, but talk about stability for all my enneagram 6s out there. *chef’s kiss*). Here, I’ve listed a few reasons why email is the best, but also a few cautionary tales for healthy skepticism on what could possibly rock the stability of this medium in the future.
Re:💌 To My Dearest Email
Email is the social security number of the internet
To make a purchase online, create a website, or see what you look like as a Barbie on TikTok, one must have an email account to access the tools to do so. (To be completely fair you can also likely use your Meta account to create some of these things, but you need an email to have Meta, and well… the risks for tying everything to your Meta profile is a different blog post for a different time). Basically, new technologies and platforms require the use of an email address, ensuring that this legacy tool is future-proof or decade-proof at least. And sure, just like your social security number, Gen Z might question its relevance. But email is lucky in that it has something even better than relevance: necessity.
Email is personal/individualized
We say this a lot about email as marketers, which is somewhat ironic since you still don’t know your email contacts individually. However, the medium offers a lot more opportunities to send individualized messaging or details than a social media post or landing page can offer. In the email marketing space, if you’ve attended an event or entered a certain giveaway, we may be lucky enough to know your postal code or age, which opens up all types of opportunities for how and when we send messaging. Did you attend a yoga event? Great, we’ll send you our top yoga studio articles in your next newsletter. You don’t live in a neighborhood near our latest advertising promotion? Perfect, we’ll exclude you from that send, preserving our brand-to-consumer relationship. And my personal favorite way that email is more personal? Sending your communication from someone’s actual email address so you can respond to your customers’ comments directly whether they are good, bad, or indifferent.
Email complements new trending technologies
Whereas other channels like content media and SEO are having an identity crisis with the introduction of AI, email is sitting back calmly, unbothered because of the security it has within the market (see social security reference above). And knowing AI will strengthen the already existing benefits of email. For example, the real personalization frontier for all ESPs to conquer is personalized send times. Some may do this now or offer a tool to aid in this ability, but with the support of AI, this may soon be a native feature on all platforms. AI will also help alleviate time spent on boilerplate marketing copy, and by providing that more easily marketers can focus on larger strategic operations and changes. Plus, I’m very much looking forward to AI that will offer up a proven better subject line variation, enabling all of our emails to be more engaging.
Email drives the most significant % of conversions
This is the best part of it all. Email drives the majority of conversions, and it can prove it, point blank period. While social media marketers (sorry friends) have to fumble and create flowcharts/whiteboard sessions and dioramas just to prove the value of their social media posts, email has built-in objective success metrics. So as a marketer, it’s easier to prove out your testing concepts. It also just plain works (66% of conversions come from email).
Email is a mutually agreed-upon relationship
Wait, this is actually my favorite part of email. The channel has always been built upon the idea that a user has consented to the relationship (whether businesses have honored that idea is again a different story). But it’s a mutually agreed-upon relationship 🤝. I, the consumer, asked for your content, and you're delivering upon that promise with each send. So while other mediums and tools (see third-party cookies) are scrambling to catch up to the consent game, it’s built-in and at the very foundation of the channel.
FWD: ⚡The Threats
Bad Senders
The reality of living in a shared society means just like anything else, people can ruin it for others. While the foundation of email is built upon a consent model, senders who care very little for their user’s privacy, time or attention are souring email for the rest of us. I’m sure we’ve all at some point gotten an email and asked, ‘How am I on this list?’ My very own pet peeve is the ‘shame senders’ as I call them: ‘We’ve emailed you three times and I guess you don’t care about children’ (insert slight exaggeration); alienating us all from the very platform that serves us best. Pro tip: don’t be these people. Get consent, avoid shame as a tool, and watch your send frequency.
Big Tech
While I would put legislation as a threat, the reality is we all know Big Tech is deciding the rules of the Internet and that’s a threat to any of us marketers. Just like the introduction of Mail Protection Privacy (MPP), or the iOS update, you may see other email providers follow Apple’s lead and determine their own rules/regulations of what you can do on their platform. This will change email from a very unified channel and formerly device-agnostic medium to a muddied and disparate mess. *no don’t do this to me*
See anything I missed? Want to talk about your inbox? Let’s chat more. You can find me and the TFD team discussing all things email on Linkedin.