Digital marketing Archives

How Email Marketing Can Empower Your Business

Written by Sheenah Lozada on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

Let’s go back to memory lane. Imagine the day when there was no email. Most of the marketers rely heavy on traditional mail for advertising. These are in the forms of flyers, catalogues, promotional letters sent via snail mail and delivered by your favorite postman.

When I was growing up and now, my mom an avid fan of Readers Digest, and we always looked forward in the mail on a monthly basis for it to arrive. She has cooking book subscriptions as well that we are eager to receive and try out some of the recipes.

The agony of waiting………

Thankfully today, it is very convenient in just few clicks you can subscribe to your favorite brands, cookbook, etc. No more waiting…

Email has tremendously transformed how many businesses can reach through their customers immediately and establish a rapport where they have the option to choose the content they want to receive.

Let’s dive in to know the History for Email Marketing

1971 – Ray Tomlinson sent the first email message which either said “Test 123” or the top row keys, “QWERTYUIOP”

1972 – Larry Roberts created an email management database that let users list, select, forward and respond to email messages.

1978 – Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corporation, sent the first email blast to 400 Arpanet advertising machines. This generated $13 million in sales.

1982 – Electronic mail message becomes the “EMAIL”.

1988 – Spam was introduced. Inspired by those who are angry receiving email blast the word spam is added to the Oxford English dictionally.

1989 – Lotus Notes 1.0, was launched as the first widely use email software service.

1991 – The internet was born. Everyone was using it.

Late 1990s – Email service was introduced. Microsoft released Internet Mail (now Outlook) and Hotmail launched in 1998. The same time HTML was introduced to add characters to emails using custom fonts, colors, graphics and formatting.

2003 – CAN-SPAM was introduced in the U.S, it was signed by President George W. Bush. This prompts businesses to reduce sending unsolicited emails and include sender details and unsubscribe link in every message.

2009 – The introduction of Responsive Emails which enables readers to use their desktop, smartphones, or tablet to access and read emails.

Today – Email marketing is an integral part of the any digital marketing strategies that marketers are using to nurture their customer communication in the most cost effective way.

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/255080/number-of-e-mail-users-worldwide/

Despite the growth and prominence of mobile messengers and chat apps, email global users amounted to 4 billion and is set to grow to 4.6 billion users in 2025.

The global emails received and sent worldwide was approximately 306 billion in 2020. It is projected to increase to over 376 billion emails on 2025. This data shows that the trend towards mobile also is true for email.

As we know that the consumers interaction is multi-event and multichannel

These are some of the marketing strategies that you can invest with.

Inbound marketing
Content marketing
Email marketing
Search Engine Optimization(SEO)
Social Media
Paid Advertising
Mobile Marketing

One thing for sure is that email for marketing isn’t going anywhere. It will continue to be a staple part of any marketing strategy for all types of businesses.

COMMON SEARCHES:

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Types of email marketing

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WHAT PEOPLE GENERALLY ASK

What is email marketing and example?

How do businesses marketing?

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WALLED GARDENS AND AD-FRAUD

Written by Aditya Satheesh for Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

Low data prices has increased Internet users in India (mobile first Internet market) while propelling the growth/reach of social media giants as well as video content watch time over the last 5 years; but digital media still isn’t the preferred vehicle of marketing for most clients and only accounts for 25-30% of the industry spends, although it is growing YOY.

The adoption of digital media has been hindered by the fragmented digital ecosystem, doubts over ad fraud and effectiveness of the medium, questions over viewability of ads, traditional mindset of brand managers and their lack of understanding of the digital ecosystem. Even until recently, I have been asked to run campaigns targeting the brands HQ or been provided with custom audience lists of senior executives in the company, to be targeted with the brand campaign so as to satisfy and address the question a lot of brand managers ask – I am not able to see my ad; as they compare it to traditional media where ads are shown in an appointment-viewing manner.

The ever-changing pandemic situation has definitely forced a digital pivot, with print and outdoor media taking a hit. Brand managers are forced to consider digital due to its targeting capabilities ensuring low spillage and cost efficiencies. And like learning the ABCs of the alphabets, all brands jump on the bandwagon of Facebook and Google with over 80% budget going to these 2 platforms. The platform scale/reach, along with cost efficiencies as well as brand credibility is definitely unbeatable in the space and hence becomes a no brainer for brands. But as the adoption of the duopoly increases, the strength and power of the walled gardens grow and so do their prices.

As marketers spend more on these platforms, they understand less about their customers as walled garden campaigns and interactions can’t be tied back to the brand’s CRM database. Brands receive a consolidated view of how their campaigns performed rather than an individualized view. There’s no way to verify impression/reach data or understand affinity target selections that work, you simply have to take it on faith. Yet marketers continue to spend more and get less.

A more equitable value exchange needs to be more about standardizing taxonomy and identifiers across all of these platforms to see and understand the customer journey. Today, even having unified unique reach in a digital campaign is next to impossible due to the fragmented ecosystem as well as walled gardens.

With the increased spends on digital, reports indicate that ad fraud rates gone up by 40% in these COVID times. Today ad verification in India is in its nascent stages and only around 10-15% invest on third party verification tools. The path for safer and more secure digital advertising effectiveness lies in third party ad verification, which ensures that brands are investing in quality media. Third party verification would ensure 4 things mainly

Brand Safety/Brand suitability – identify inflammatory/negative content and protect brand image/reputation
Ad Fraud – identifying Invalid Traffic to help evaluate efficacy of platform and calculate brands return on media investment
Viewability – helps measure effectiveness of ad delivery
In Geo – ensure ads served within intended demographics

Advertisers need to understand these underlying challenges as the adoption of digital increases at a rapid pace. Investing in third party verification tools will not only improve trust and transparency in the ecosystem, while also holding publishers accountable and thus help decreasing fraudulent traffic and increasing overall return on investment.