The Future Of The Inbox: Five Upcoming Changes

Flood Coming

Email marketing is one of my favorite things, because it's got incredible advantages over other formats of marketing and advertising. Instead of worrying about whether you've got share of mind due to the world of multiple screens, you've got the same direct marketing metrics that you've had for, well, decades. You also get a get out of jail free card from fraud and viewability statistics, and don't need to worry about DVR skipping, massively expensive creative costs, or rendering issues at different sizes, assuming you've managed concur responsive coding. It may be the only form of advertising and marketing, especially on the digital side, where the world has gotten better in the last five years.

But that doesn't mean that the field is immune from change, or won't have to deal with new challenges in the next few years. Here's where we see the field going.

1) Dayparting will become machine driven. If you only ever read transaction email from e-commerce outside of business hours (because you work in an open office and don't want to be unprofessional as to be reading your personal email on someone else's dime)... well, the transaction email provider, if possible, should only want to send that email to you in the evening. And if the situations were reversed, so should the dayparting. 

Some marketers will hate this, because it will be another moment of automation over a professional service, and if that kind of thing happens enough, you're out of a job. But it's just too much of an engagement rise to be anything but ubiquitous later. 

2) Responsive coding will go away, because email will project. Just this last week, email went holographic thanks to Microsoft, who debuted a virtual reality goggle set that allowed the reader to experience 3-D and video in email. But who wants to walk around with goggles, really? A far more shovel-ready product is the idea that mobile phablets will just be able to show email in screen sizes that aren't limited to the mobile screen size. This already exists in some robot phones in Japan.

3) Subject lines will become verbal. As audio-assist tech (aka, your smartphone being able to handle your voice) becomes better and better, the in-box will become a matter of conversation, more than reading, because your list will have the option to have Siri read your emails. As you might guess, this is going to hit broader e-commerce plays harder and faster.

4) Creative will match other channels from dynamic elements. If you've seen a banner and gotten a coupon code, a follow-up email will need to pull in that code... or you've given up the ghost of knowing the actual credit for which part of your marketing and advertising mix generated the actual business. It would also help to match optimal offer, and help to optimize around this point. (If you hate paying for shipping but don't trust or react well to percentage off copy, your follow up email needs to have the first offer. It's just that simple, and can only work as automated elements.

5) Metrics will evolve. Opens, clicks, bounce and unsub rate are all well and good, and fantastic compared to what other marketers have to work with... but a live eROI is far more potent, and currently way too hard to determine. Heat map tracking to determine how long your creative is being viewed and where would also be a great step forward, along with a sense of how much scrolling happens to get a sense of how deep you can go before it's just you talking to your compliance team. 

The single best thing about email marketing is that it's always been data-driven; creative has always benefited from a Darwinian model of optimal work wins, rather than succumb to noise about branding elements. As we continue to move from appointment media to always-on, from controlled platform to catch as you can, the field will adapt. It always has.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

The Virtue Of An Indirect Path

The Scenic Route

As a quasi-soft science, marketing and advertising attracts a fair number of people who come to the discipline later in their career. This isn't a field where you get a certificate to practice, or have to endure a residency or apprenticeship. It is something that many just learn by doing, with the caveat that bad marketing is frequently better than no marketing.

This means that there is, well, a lot of bad marketing out there, but also no shortage of different ideas. From a direct marketing standpoint, that's all to the good; the worst result in any test is no difference between creatives. The challenge is to fold the merits from these other backgrounds into the field.

Which is where I get to defend my own peculiar career path.

As a teenager, I was utterly convinced that I was going to be a journalist, and in particular, a sports writer. It was what I thought about all the time, from reading histories of various leagues to delving deep into statistical nerdery. Sports are how I got through math classes, because my brain well and truly hated most math classes, which might come as something of a shock to lots of people in my network. I developed the ability to prepare for the questions that I needed to ask, never lacked for the courage to ask said questions, and have a single-task focus that helped my subjects to open up, more often than not, and give me workable quotes.

So I went to a school (Syracuse) that was known for journalism, and focused on the field -- newspapers -- that held the most appeal to me. (The broadcast guys and girls were always a little too pretty for comfort, frankly.) As a hedge because there's something a little off-putting about old men asking young athletes questions about playing games, and because Syracuse insists that you try a lot of classes before you lock into your major, I developed an interest in political science, because that meant I could go from sports to politics later in life. That turned into a second major, because of good circumstances, and a desire to make my resume more impressive. I raced through school fast, doubled up on degrees, and then cast my resume to the winds, ready to work anywhere in America that needed a fresh sports writer.

Luckily, this didn't work. At all. Partly due to poor timing, partly due to poor networking, but mostly because starting salaries in journalism wouldn't have been high enough to pay for my student loans, let alone for the transportation that I'd need to do the job in the first place.

So instead of a direct path into that field, I did a lot of temp jobs. Used my speed typing and detail skills to work in law offices, which paid better than journalism and let me use public transportation, bicycles and feet. Stayed active in journalism by doing free-lance work for music magazines. Got the music bug and recorded my own stuff, then helped a friend start a trade conference, which finally led to a job in marketing for one of the event's sponsors... six years after getting my degree.

My first job in marketing taught me more than any job in the field that I've had before or since, and I owe that employer a ton... but they received terrific value as well. Political science meant that I was skilled at boiling down decisions to the legal minimums, and to hear the other side before making a case for either option. Journalism meant that I'd dig into details that others missed, and not just take things at face value. And my sports nerdery made me able to dig into numbers that other marketers would run away from, and invent my own derivatives from those, because that's kind of what sports nerds do.

Had I just gone to business school instead of journalism, maybe I have a similar or more lucrative career... but honestly, I don't think the choice would have prepared me better. By coming in through a different door, I bring other aspects to the table, and that perspective helps to create a personal brand.

Because at the end of the day, there's no single path to a career in marketing and advertising, and maybe not even a preferred one. You can learn the basics in a class or in the field, but since the nature of the work isn't set and forget, where you start is far from where you finish.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Muhammad Ali: The End Of Fear

Preach

A quick few words about the passing of one of the most important people of the past one hundred years. Not just for marketers and advertisers!

When I was a kid, not to put too fine a point on it... Muhammad Ali was widely loathed, especially in my social circle. I won't repeat the words used to describe him, but Uppity might have been the least charged among them, with all kinds of other indignities hurled his way.

The only thing that kept the haters at bay was the fact that (a) Ali kept winning, and (b) the only guys to beat him, even in his failing years, were also African-Americans. Rooting for the likes of George Foreman, Leon Spinks or Larry Holmes was all just rooting for anyone on the Not Ali ticket.

So, what was it that people hated about the guy?

It really wasn't his stand against the war in Vietnam. Working classes of every race hated that war early and often, since only their sons got chosen to serve, and the long-term "vision" of a curtailed political system was rarely a big deal. Nor was it the points for which Ali could be pilloried; his cruelty in the ring to outmatched opponents in his peak days, his occasional political missteps, his general tendency towards outrage, his defense of a sport that gave him riches, but also helped to rob him of his intellect.

Rather, this.

Before Ali, there were controversial black athletes. Sonny Liston, the man he beat to be champion the first time, was a figure of considerable distaste for White America. Besides, every pioneer tends to wind up with arrows on their back and stomach.

Ali took that controversy to an entirely different level, because he didn't believe in false humility about his opinion of his opponent's competence. So instead of keeping his head down and reciting cliches, he took public discourse into realms that were not seen before. By doing this, Ali gave the biggest possible green light to competent African-Americans of all stripes that always following someone else's rules, regardless of the merit of these rules, was for rubes.

Because of one guy, being himself, refusing to be afraid.

This, to me, is the legacy of Ali, and why he was important.

Without Ali, maybe we don't get Mandela, Prince, Obama, and so many others.

Greatness isn't just what you do. It's what you inspire.

And very few people have ever inspired more greatness than Muhammad Ali.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.