Mobile and the Future of Email
Two years ago I attended Cheetahmail's 2008 Relevance Tour, an event hosted by Experian's email vendor for their retail clients. It was a great event with round tables and networking capped off by a wonderful comp dinner at Bacar.
As good as the conference and the wonderful socializing was, the most interesting part of the day was lingering after dinner with a half-dozen other clients to talk about the future of email with Cheetahmail President Matt Seely. There was a lot of talk about mobile and the emergence of social media, and how these relatively new channels would impact email marketing.
The feeling was perceptible that those in the email biz - not just Cheetahmail but their competitors as well - were a little concerned for the future of their business model and were looking for a way to stay in the online marketing arena should email be displaced as the marketer's most affordable promotion tool.
My take on it was that no matter what happens with online marketing to change the game in terms of delivery, both email clients and vendors will be well positioned to take advantage of their experience. The basics of a well-run email program are so grounded in solid fundamentals of advertising that they will still have significant value in another marketing prototype.
Two years on this looks more true to me than ever for many reasons. One of them is the emergence of the iPad and the inevitable flood of tablet devices we can expect to see in its wake.
I've never had a lot of love for mobile marketing because of the obvious limitations of size. Making a shopping decision based on a 320px image is kind of a non-starter for me. Despite what proponents of mobile might tell you, fumbling with a mobile phone for purchasing - even a smartphone - is not the most exciting shopping experience. And an SMS telling you about a sale is not exactly a conversion magnet.
But the iPad opens up a whole new kind of mobile marketing, and one that email marketers are already primed for. The best practices of email experts only need some fine-tuning for tablet devices. Combine the deliverability disciplines and creative development experience of the email marketer with the new tricks of barcoding and POS promotions of mobile and you've got a potentially compelling online shopping experience.
As for the vendors, I don't think a great email vendor has to limit themselves to the label of an ESP. If you know the online marketing game, it's only a matter of adaptation. And that's a game that a well-capitalized player like Cheetahmail have the resources to get into, and one that the smaller vendors, with their tiny turning circles, can change course and find niches among the big players with innovation and ability to respond to industry trends.
