The New Digital Inbox – Is Your Email Program Ready?
5 tips for creating better emails now that your messages compete with tweets and posts.
5 tips for creating better emails now that your messages compete with tweets and posts.
The ways in which we access and read email – via smart phones, tablets, and social networks, for example – are evolving rapidly. Most email applications are not very forward thinking, using outdated templates and former best practices. Today, email may not be a standalone digital conduit for brands to pipe through deals, offers, and newsletters. The game-changing opportunity is at our front door. (I encourage you to watch the presentation, “The New Inbox: Email + Social + Mobile,” by my colleague Ryan Tuttle. It doesn’t sugarcoat the changes in how people are consuming messaging from their favorite brands.)
Trends in Mobile
While things like daily deals and social networks are creating a new type of inbox, mobile devices and technologies are also shaping the ways in which people digest content. Smartphone and tablet users are being conditioned to access a unified inbox for all digital messaging communication. The home screens of most smartphones are becoming the starting point for decision-making when a new message arrives. Facebook updates, tweets, email, and more are all arriving on the home screen, with little discernable difference.
Honeycomb, Google’s tablet version of Android, is pushing the centralized notification even further with its notification icon bar and enhanced widgets. Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS, is continuing to centralize the digital messaging stream as well; iOS 5 will include a notification center that goes beyond the current push notices and icons in iOS 4. This means that texts, social requests, email, and more will all be in once place, and the user may not even be aware of the distinctions. Your competitors’ tweets and SMS messages may be right next to your email campaign.
5 Tips for Creating Better Emails
In light of these trends, what do you need to know and do in order to transition and succeed?
What do you think the new inbox is going to look like, and what tips can you share with fellow marketers? Let us know in the comments section below.