Email is Dead: A Curious Marketing Mystery

Email is Dead: A Curious Marketing Mystery

An investigation into this oft-repeated claim this Halloween 🎃

Case Number: EM-2023-1810

Case report: The ongoing investigation into the alleged death of email marketing

Date of report: October 18, 2023

This report serves to provide an overview of the ongoing investigation into the state of email marketing. Some folks report now and then that email is dead. Experts have been looking into this case to unveil the truth. 

The question at hand is whether email, once considered a stalwart of digital marketing, is now dead or if it has transformed into a new, more robust form.

Case introduction

Email has been the cornerstone of digital marketing since its inception in the early 1970s. However, the landscape of digital marketing has changed significantly in the past decade, raising concerns about the future of email marketing.

Report #1: Autopsy analysis to determine the cause of "Death"

To understand the cause of “death,” we must first understand how email was in its prime and how it came to be. 

Before the dawn of email, marketers had relied solely on traditional marketing forms like flyers, catalogs, and advertisements on TV or billboards.

Then, with the introduction of email marketing, it quickly became the most convenient and low-cost way to advertise valuable content to potentially hundreds of thousands of current and potential customers.

Companies were able to save money on advertising and get the most return on their investment (ROI). However, soon, emails started to crowd people’s inboxes with unsolicited content. Email marketing faced a crisis in the mid-2000s when it became synonymous with spam.

The New York Times even cautioned people in 1998, “most people should put only a moderate amount of trust in the Email system.”

But email soon recovered from that defamation due to the rise of protective measures against it like spam filters. While this didn’t completely eradicate spam, it did bring it to a manageable amount.

After its recovery, many email services were launched, like Internet Mail (or modern-day Outlook) and Hotmail. This was also the time when HTML was introduced, which allowed marketers to create beautiful emails with custom fonts, graphics, colors, and formats.

And as time went on, email’s arch-nemesis spam still lingered around. So, multiple countries introduced several acts and laws like CAN-SPAM, CCPA, GDPR, etc., to help tackle the issue of spam.

However, soon a new arch-nemesis of email reared its head in the horizon: social media.

Report #2: Investigating the murder suspect: social media 

While the early stages of social media were no match for email, soon, they grew to be a worthy competitor. This is where rumors started to emerge that the bad blood between email and social media ended up causing the death of email.

However, upon further inspection, email experts found that email was, in fact, not dead. They observed email has an average conversion rate of 6%, but social media only has an average of 1.9% conversions.

Moreover, DMA found that over 90% of consumers believe email is the best channel to receive promotional messages from a company. And they prefer it almost twice as much as compared to any other channel: 48% for phone calls,  52% for posts, and 59% for face-to-face.

And 60% of consumers state that they have made a purchase as the result of a marketing message they received by email. Only 12.5% even consider a buy button as a purchase driver on social media.

Report #3: Results from analysis of the state of email 

Email is not dead or even dying. In fact, it has surpassed all the challenges it faced and remains a reliable marketing channel. 

And, despite being pretty great already, it has also been focusing on improvement and growth. So, it is now possible to optimize email for multiple devices like mobile to provide a better experience to the users. 

And, it also allows marketers to target people and personalize the message for them, making it more relevant. Additionally, it can be automated and also incorporates AI to help marketers simplify and optimize their work. 

But most important of all, it became interactive. To allow people reading it to have a good time by including GIFs, interactive games, polls, forms, etc., inside the email. Like this 👇🏼

Final results of the investigation

The investigation into the vitality of email marketing has revealed that it is far from deceased; instead, it has been reborn as a more potent, adaptable tool in the arsenal of digital communication. 

While newer platforms, like instant messaging and social media, have gained prominence, email continues to be a versatile, reliable channel.

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🗞️ Things you might find interesting

• MoEngage has created comprehensive email benchmark reports for different regions like Europe, India, Southeast Asia, etc.

• Gmail has updated its sender guidelines, which will be implemented from February 2024. It contains prerequisites that all senders should abide by to strengthen deliverability.

• Learn how to simplify email automation in our recent session of the Email Edge.

• If you want to skip the session and start automating emails easily, check out these email automation templates called “Prebuilt journey.”

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