In 2008, I managed the email marketing relationships of several high profile eCommerce sites. At that time, email was king; It was an incredibly powerful marketing channel that few companies could go without.
As the first iPhones spurred the rise of the mobile industry, sentiments about the future of email quickly shifted. Mobile was now our future, and this led many to believe that email would not survive. I can’t tell you how many times I heard, “Email is dead. It’s all about push notifications,” or “No one will use email in 5 years.” Even Mark Zuckerberg declared email’s demise.
At the time, I tested numerous types of push and SMS campaigns. Notifications were successful for simple, straightforward messages that you knew the recipient wanted to immediately receive. When campaigns strayed from that recipe, the KPIs tanked. Email, on the other hand, continued to dominate offering marketers an entire canvas to convey their message and allowing users to open and consume on their own time.
