Last week, Gopal Vittal, CEO of Airtel wrote an email to me. This is his second email that has landed in my Inbox. We are not buddies. Thanks to COVID-19, Gopal has suddenly realised that communicating with customers via email is required. Besides the medium is not dead, as our great pundits thought that with the advent of social networks. Nothing dies, things evolve.
When I received his first email, I smiled. It is never late. Thanks to the virus, that has done some good. In my earlier article about finding Brand Purpose in today’s times; I shared how TRUST has become pivotal. Trust is the only behaviour that employees and customers are expecting from brands. If “Trust at work” was the key for 2019, then “Trust: Competence and Ethics” will define 2020 and the coming years say the 20th Annual Edelman Trust Barometer - an online survey done in 28 markets with 34,000+ respondents.
The Edelman Trust Barometer: states clearly that employers are putting their faith in CEOs and lead the change rather than waiting for the government to impose it.
Gopal Vittal, drafting an email(or his team doing it and he might have reviewed it) and making an effort to reach out to the customers is a rational strategy (the email overlooks the factor of personalisation and design). Customers want to hear from their brands:
Consumers also want brands to be creative problem solvers. In India, nearly nine in 10 respondents (88%) want brands to shift to producing new products that help people meet the unique challenges of life during a pandemic, with 57% saying that brands must do this to earn or keep their trust.
I have shared my thoughts in my earlier article: A consumer perspective on brand communications during COVID-19
The email sent from the CEO talks about the measures that Airtel has taken to make things effective during the COVID-19 times for the customer and has asked for feedback and suggestions. How much is implemented is another aspect but I am happy to see Airtel opening up the communication channel between its customers.
Email is the most personal medium of conversation and customers are preferring it. According to the Edelman report: After traditional mediums, Email is the second most preferred communication medium, followed by the brand website. In fact, the margin between traditional mediums and Email is quite small. India has faith in Facebook, after Traditional mediums but the faith in Email is there and it is second highest after the UK.
According to recent data from HubSpot, 44% more emails are currently being sent than before the lockdown began. Inken Kuhlmann-Rhinow, EMEA Marketing Director at HubSpot, commented on the surge:
With 44% more emails being sent than before the COVID outbreak, getting an email strategy right is essential and marketers need to be targeted, educational, and empathetic. This is a difficult time, and simply being noisier to try and maintain consumer attention won’t work in the long run – it’s about growing better, not growing at all costs.
Customers are receiving more emails than usual, but open rates have been higher, too. According to BounceX, email open rates have increased by an average of 25% week-on-week since the lockdown began, reaching 40% as of 14th April. With that said, some verticals have been struggling to convert, particularly fashion, which has seen an average 30% decrease in conversions. Overall, BounceX states that email marketing has seen a 1.5% increase in conversion and a 0.4% increase in revenue, which isn’t that much considering the high open rates.
My love for email
My love for email goes back long before I jumped into publishing unknowingly. It started with me writing love letters for my friends in schools. And in 2001, I was introduced to the world of the Internet, email, and blogging. When I started Lighthouse Insights, I used email marketing like a dumb idiot by just automating the daily blog posts. In fact, the entire world was running behind quantity from blogging to social media. Then came the Facebook’s of the world, everyone started saying that email is dead, technology is making it very difficult to reach to the customer and she is not interested in reading emails because she is busy on social media.
Bollocks! Marketers became lazy and started spamming the inboxes. We don’t believe in creating value and all we were interested in selling. It’s the same case with adblockers. Marketers and publishers have been blaming the customer for years now. But the truth is that marketers made it difficult for the customer and she had no choice but to adopt the technology.
The report, the first from PageFair in three years, says more than 527 million people globally are blocking ads on mobile, up 64 percent since 2016. Desktop, meanwhile, has fallen 16 percent to about 236 million for the same time period, the report says. Globally and in emerging markets such as India, many users are experiencing the mobile web for the first time, but without ads, according to the report.
It was in 2014, I looked at Email Marketing with keen interest when I came across an article - For Email Newsletters, a Death Greatly Exaggerated.
An email newsletter generally shows up in your inbox because you asked for it and it includes links to content you have deemed relevant. In other words, it’s important content you want in list form, which seems like a suddenly modern approach.
From 2014-2017: I pretty much tried everything with Mailchimp. From automated emails to writing personalised copies, from playing with headlines to figuring out the best time for my readers and then trying to send daily emails to weekly emails to weekend mails. I have played and tested with an email like a maniac. And the secret of Email Marketing is “Test, adapt, test, and adapt.”
One of the reasons I started writing on Substack because the platform believes in the creator(me) and consumer(you) relationship. With zero organic reach on social media, I believe that email marketing still one of the potent ways to reach my customers/readers if I add value to their time. Besides, it is a commendable effort for people to make an effort to sign up for a newsletter and read. I don’t see any other form of communication driving so much effort from a reader/customer.
Earlier during the year, Hubspot revealed that marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months(Nov-Dec 2019).
“Only the companies and brands that create human connection are going to succeed. This is extremely true with email. You might get short term benefits from very promotional content, but honest, human, and personalised content creates a following for the long term,” said Henni Roini, Marketing Manager EMEA, Hubspot.
That’s why “Message Personalization” is the prominent tactic used by email marketers to improve performance, according to the Not Another State of Marketing Report 2020.
NGOs and Email Marketing
In these challenging times of COVID-19, the consumer(66%) today has no confidence that our current leaders will be able to address the present challenge. Religious leaders and government leaders are the distrusted lot and scientists are the most trustworthy. While no institute has been seen as both competent and ethical but businesses that are generating value for owners, being the driver of innovation, and driving economic prosperity have been regarded as the most competent ones.
NGOs are ethical because they are protecting the environment, civil and human rights, and driving causes like poverty, illiteracy, and diseases. (Brand trust during COVID19 report)
COVID-19 is making NGOs work hard from making an impact on raising donations for the ongoing pandemic. While other forms of communication are playing their role, email marketing finds a strong ground not only in communication but also in driving revenues. (P.S. I work with an NGO as an independent digital consultant)
According to The State of Non-Profit Email Cultivation by Kindful and NextAfter Institute: Direct traffic is the biggest source of revenue, followed by Email when properly tracked. Email tends to be the most powerful channel for driving donations and revenue.
However, Email Marketing remains a challenge for numerous organisations.
94% of consumers reported they are annoyed by the current communications they receive from businesses, citing high communication frequency (61%), irrelevant content (56%), not remembering opting in (41%), and being contacted on the wrong communication channel (33%).
Swiggy’s Email Marketing
Swiggy is one of my favorite brands. I am a big fan of their marketing efforts. I subscribe to their emails and what a fabulous job these guys have done especially during the COVID-19 times.
In the month of April, I received an email from Swiggy Genie with a subject line: Know someone who needs a care package. Appealing enough to click? Heck YES! Subscribers could create a care package for an elderly couple and Swiggy will get it delivered. A smart way of marketing their service while making an impact.
Another mail recently had a headline: Support your local favourites. With the narrative changing to going local and Make in India during a pandemic, Swiggy also asked its subscribers to support the city’s favourite restaurant so that they could keep their local business alive.
I read almost all the emails from Swiggy because I want to see what they have to offer to me (Though I don’t order food anymore). The content still adds value in my life and it is not spammy. I don’t know what other delivery players are doing but I know what Flipkart is doing - sending me retarded emails every day. The last one told me how to get my Wardrobe organised, keep a colour code, and tidying up the drawer. Sorry, Flipkart I already have a mother and my only colour code is Black. What to do I have zero fashion sense.
I also love the personalised emails that Milaap keeps sending me from time to time. They are simple donor emails, no fancy stuff and they get my attention. They tell me how the campaign that I have contributed is doing and things related to it. Sometimes simplicity does the job when it is aligned with the business objectives.
Rest I don’t engage with any other emails from brands because most of them don’t get and are sending the bulk emails to achieve their daily target.
Email Marketing isn’t dead, these ways might be dead but overall it has evolved.