eMarketer was pleased to moderate a Tech-Talk Webinar featuring Validity's Tori Garcia, senior email strategist, and Jessica Hunt, email strategist, for this Tech-Talk Webinar. They discussed the fundamentals of deliverability to help marketers capitalize on email’s potential.

Inbox zero versus email advertising campaigns

Many consumers still consider email to be their preferred channel for receiving brand communications. Much of the data suggests that email has become more important, not less, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

eMarketer principal analysts at Insider Intelligence Jeremy Goldman and Nicole Perrin discuss how the pandemic changed email, what consumers want from it, and how to build a best-in-class campaign. They then talk about Nielsen's new ID graph, measuring digital video ads, and how out-of-home advertising is doing.

While email may not be changing as rapidly as some other digital disciplines, it evolves nevertheless. Gone are the days when a best-in-class marketer could rely on batch-and-blast techniques, where 100% of a brand’s email distribution list received emails that were 100% identical. Opportunities abound particularly in the realms of personalization and testing.

Having a strong understanding of an email program’s return on investment (ROI) remains a competitive advantage. It might be surprising that given how great an ROI email can provide, many brands don’t actually have a good handle on how to measure its success or lack thereof.

All too often, brands think about their desire to send out an email before they consider the recipient’s desire to receive the message. Customer-centric emails often perform the best; for marketers to win, they must align their email organizations with that manner of thinking.

But I would say that now, brands have to be more thoughtful about the emails they send. Big blast emails shouldn’t be going out as much. I recently received a quarterly statement email from one of my travel rewards programs. That quarter, I didn’t stay anywhere. I didn’t do anything. And the email was just a standard [update]. It said, “You got zero points this past quarter.”

Publishers have renewed their focus on connecting directly with consumers via email after years of intermediation on social platforms. Kerel Cooper, senior vice president of global marketing at LiveIntent, joins eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Nicole Perrin to discuss how consumers are engaging with those messages, and how publishers are monetizing them with ads.

It grabs customers’ attention: “I think of email as gentle and SMS as a little bit less gentle—a little bit more aggressive—because email piles up in your inbox,” Acoustic’s Guadagno said. “SMS, for the most part, interrupts people.” He’s correct in that consumers do check their email from mobile devices, but notifications aren’t on by default.