A recent Litmus study revealed that in the next 10 years, email marketing would continue to be the most relevant marketing channel. Research also shows that email as a channel remains a top growth generator for businesses, with a whopping 89% of marketers identifying email as their primary lead-generation strategy.
So, if you’re still doubtful about the relevance of emails in 2023, there’s your answer.
The power of email marketing to drive two-way conversations and increase lead generation remains unaffected.
At Netcore, we are staunch believers in analysis, so we went deeper. Our webinar with YourStory brought together industry experts who analyzed emails as an enhanced format of two-way communication to empower marketing and drive profitability.
Rajesh Jain (founder and managing director at Netcore), Bhuvaneshwaran Velusamy (director of revenue and growth at Myntra), and Priyang Agarwal (director of marketing and growth at 1MG) combined their decades of industry experience and expertise to break down “The top email trend for 2023 – Bringing two-way conversations into Emails”.
This article summarizes the main points outlined by each speaker in the webinar. If you’re interested in the full version, you can access a recording of the webinar here.
“You have been a pioneer of the email industry and have witnessed all the highs and lows of email evolution over the past decades. What does the future of email look like?”
Rajesh Jain (founder and managing director at Netcore): Email has been around for a long time, and for the last 10 years, there have been rumors of its impending death. The reality is that email continues to grow from strength to strength as a channel.
One of the innovations that will take emails to new heights in 2023 and beyond is AMP, a Google technology that can make emails interactive. It’s been around for a few years but not used as much.
AMP delivers very impactful emails that let you convert prospects. With AMP emails, complete user interaction happens right inside the email. No need for click-throughs, no need for landing pages, and no need for redirects. What can these AMP emails do for you? Pretty much everything.
Think of these as micro websites or mini-apps. So, if you want to collect zero-party data – very important for doing any sort of personalization – you want to get feedback and rating, do surveys, improve lead generation, add payment calculators. You can do ALL of that within an email. Users wouldn’t need to go from their inbox to your site to take the desired action.
Think of the email itself as the destination site, as a property equivalent to the website or the app. AMP can bring app-like, web-like experiences right within the mailbox. A few more examples of what AMP can do:
You can have accordions, which give more information in a swipeable format.
You can have games right inside the email, or forms that let you collect data.
Users can purchase items from within their email.
Users can search for items from within their email.
Over the last few months, across the hundred-plus campaigns we’ve worked on, we have seen a phenomenal uplift in email actions – upwards of 300% in many cases, a 1500% increase in actions being taken right inside the mail.
The biggest trend of 2023, according to me, is the idea of interactive emails – bringing interactivity to what really has been a one-way channel so far. And this is very important because one of the biggest challenges that most brands face today is that new customer acquisition costs are rising by almost 40-50% year on year.
And a lot of that is happening because there are difficulties in accurately representing the brand face and building deep relationships with existing customers.
So, what AMP can really do is solve the twin problems of attention recession and data poverty. It can drive a 300-1000% increase in actions inside of the email, as well as help collect a lot of zero-party data, which can help do omnichannel personalization.
We’ve also been hearing a lot about the demise of cookies for some time. Cookie depreciation now seems real, with Google declaring that they will freeze cookies from Chrome in a year or so.
These third-party cookies have been the primary mechanism for building and measuring digital ad campaigns. And with them going away, there is going to be a shift in the critical balance between ad tech on the one hand and MarTech on the other. Bhuvaneshwaran, in the ecommerce world, how do you see the value of email as a primary identifier?
Bhuvaneshwaran Velusamy (Director of revenue and growth at Myntra):
Taking from what Rajesh was talking about, I think traditionally we’ve seen email marketing as a one-way communication. For example, I’ve looked at email marketing as a channel – it’s a slow bond. You send a message, you build perspectives and perceptions about the brand over a period of time, and only then do you drive engagement. Then how do I get maximum returns out of this channel?
That’s been the big question mark. And all of it starts from being able to create excitement around this communication in this channel with the customer.
So, with that shift, I think emails will definitely rise back in popularity again. That is one part of it; the second thing is whatever Rajesh spoke about on AMP. The Netcore team had taken me through some of them earlier in the year. It’s very exciting.
It’s very exciting to know that brands can actually reach out to me at a place and time when I’ll be comfortable interacting with them, via a medium that adds and delivers more value than a simple notification.
For example, a brand or platform like Myntra today is looking at using emails to groom customers over a period of time. How do we do that? I have codes for customers.
There are certain customers who are deeply engaged with Myntra as a platform. There are customers who require a lot of information to be delivered to them even before they start browsing catalogs on Myntra.
And all of this cannot be sent on a push notification or be put on a banner ad in digital marketing. So, we use email as a predominant medium to kickstart the top of the funnel where the delivery of information needs to be more detailed. The change in perception that I expect from a customer is far deeper than what can be accomplished with one text message. This is where email comes in.
With email, the barrier has always been in terms of what can be done to excite and engage the customer. That barrier is being broken as Rajesh has demonstrated here. I can clearly see that this enables marketers to transport large parts of the lower ends of the funnel directly into email.
Today, I would like to let the customer perform a variety of actions on my app to understand more about them. I think email is a more naturally conducive platform where the customer is in their own element and I can actually seek more information.
It helps me deliver a lot more personalized, customized value to the customer in the future. Having these abilities and capabilities opens up a new world of possibilities for marketers.
How we use that, balancing it, obviously with the fact that attention recession is here to stay and customers will still want maximum value delivered for the time spent on any particular marketing channel – that I think will define how this will add value to marketers like us.
Priyang, adapting to the changing consumer needs and priorities… What do you think would be the paradigm shifts in email marketing with reference to the marketing domain?
Priyang Agarwal, (director of marketing and growth at 1MG): I think both Rajesh and Bhuvaneshwaran have set the ground and have given us very good insights into email marketing. See, we have been seeing email marketing for multiple years, right? And when you open your email box, it is flooded with promotional messages that are obviously just trying to make a sale.
What we have seen is that customers are not very much aligned with this kind of bombarding. Brands have to change their email strategy, and one of the most effective new strategies is the integration of smart content within emails.
AMP is a beautiful thing that brands are slowly and gradually picking up.. Combining AMP emails with smart content adds real value to the customer’s lives.
Let me give you an example. If I say, “Hey, buy this particular Chyawanprash at a 20% discount”, you might not open the mail, right?
But if I say, this Chyawanprash has these many effects on your body, I will educate the customer on the Chyawanprash in the email itself.
Then I say, “Hey, if you want to buy Chyawanprash, please buy this particular one”, then I think we are adding value to the consumer.
The second thing that we are seeing is the level of personalization inside all the communication channels and marketing. Email marketing is not an exception. You should understand the behavior of the customer and their past behavior, and then if you can predict future behavior, then only the cohorts should be made. Then, those particular cohorts should be targeted.
Emails should be sent to those particular cohorts differently. Each cohort should be treated in a differentiated manner.
Third and last, but not least, is automation and artificial intelligence – the addition of AI-driven innovation in email marketing.
Based on the above, you can target the customer in a better manner at the right time, at the right place. This will definitely give you better ROI and a better hold on the customer.
The Final Word on Email Marketing
Email is always evolving, like every other part of our technology-driven world. At Netcore, we obsessively keep up with every little evolutionary change and bring about innovations so that our clients never have to deal with losses from using outdated strategies and tools in their marketing ecosystem.
We have the top experts in the industry and their teams consistently working on AI-powered optimization strategies and innovations of our own, so that we (and our clients) are always one step ahead of competitors and market forces.
We are leaders in email deliverability and transactional email space and the world’s most recommended ESP as per G2.com. For the second year in a row, Netcore received the highest overall customer rating as a customers’ choice in the 2022 Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’ Report. We were also recognized as “Ahead of the curve at applying AI to marketer workflow” as per The Forrester Wave™: Email Marketing Service Providers Report 2022.
50+ top-notch brands, such as YourStory, Axis Securities, and CaratLane, across industries, partner with the Netcore AI-powered email platform to roll out AMP emails and boost their ROI. We have sent more than a billion AMP emails across 200+ highly successful campaigns. It’s safe to say we know what we are doing.
Connect with us to understand how you can benefit from our expertise and experience – we send over 20 billion emails a month on behalf of 6500+ businesses across 40 countries.
