The Future of Email Communication

So if that’s the state of email marketing today, what will the future look like? Let’s take a step back and look at marketing in general for a second.

The marketing industry has always been awash with buzzwords. Just the last few years ”big data”, “internet of things”, “omni channel”, “content marketing”, “social CRM”, “mobile marketing” and a long list of other semi specific terms have popped into existence, demanding time, money and intellectual resources from already over worked and under staffed marketing and CRM departments.

“Customer experience” is one of these, but there’s one little detail that separates it from the pack. Suddenly we have a buzzword who’s raison d’etre isn’t technology, platform or software, but rather the reason we’re all in our jobs to begin with; The customer.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s just as much a buzzword as the others and it’s arguably even more superficial than most, but finally we are talking about the core of what matters; tailoring all the touch points we have with the customer throughout the lifetime to create the best possible experience.

Think about how you interact with a company, be it an airline, car dealer or sporting goods store. What makes a good or bad interaction? It usually boils down to one thing; information, or lack thereof. Information about how to fix things, buy things, expert advice, security, service, decision support, confirmation and so on. Nearly every imaginable reason to be happy or unhappy throughout a customer lifecycle has to do with the ease, quality and timing of the information you get.

And this is where email and SMS fit in perfectly.

They aren’t the sexy, cool or flashy new channels. There will be no award for best SMS or email in 2015. They’re like it the slightly dull workhorses that we really don’t love as much as they deserve, but I think that’s about to change.

For all their dullness, faults, shortcomings and limitations they are fantastic modes of communication. There are no other real time, asynchronous, platform and device independent content bearing communication tools available. In other words: it’s not perfect, but they’re by far the best ways we have for delivering most of the time sensitive information our customers wants and needs.

When we automate the communication throughout the customer lifecycle, tailoring it to each individual customers needs, effectively predicting behaviors, preferences, service issues and questions we dramatically raise the customer experience in a very cost effective way.

I fully expect my inbox to be filled with “news”-letters I’ll continue to mostly ignore for the foreseeable future, but there’s no question I’ll be buying from the one that knows what I want, and I’ll stay loyal to the one that predicts and solves my grievances before they become real problems.

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Håvard Kvinnesland is a Concept Developer at Bring Dialog, and also a keynote speaker on email marketing.