Juliette Aiken, Global Marketing Director at Dotdigital, looks at the future of email as it competes with social media, SMS, live chat and AI, and asks what Gary Thuerk got right all those years ago…
Email marketing has come a long way over the past 45 years. It has evolved from when Gary Thuerk, known as the “father of spam,” sent his first bulk email blast to the era of hyper-personalization. As businesses adapt to changing consumer preferences, email marketing remains a vital tool for lead generation, brand awareness, and customer retention. From Thuerk's groundbreaking approach to the latest advancements and future trends, email marketing continues to shape the digital advertising landscape.
The Last 45 Years of Email
The journey of email marketing began in 1971 when Ray Tomlinson sent the first email and in 1972 Larry Roberts developed the first email management system. However, it wasn't until 1978 that Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corporation, sent the first email to 400 Arpanet advertising machines, generating a staggering $13 million in sales.
Over time, email communication moved from “email messages” to the general term “email,” and in 1988 spam emerged, flooding inboxes with unwanted and irrelevant messages.
The introduction of Lotus Notes 1.0 in 1989, along with popular software like Outlook and Hotmail, improved the beauty and accessibility of email. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 standardized commercial email practices, and responsive email in 2009 enabled seamless content transfer across devices. Today, email marketing remains a leading digital channel, with marketers realizing its potential to generate return on investment and leveraging features like segmentation, personalized campaigns, and automated email software.
Turku Heritage
Gary Thurk gained fame as the “father of spam,” but his legacy is in pioneering targeted email marketing. As opposed to bombarding uninterested recipients with spam, email marketing focuses on delivering content to individuals who are genuinely interested in a company's products and services. Thurk's successful email blast targeted the right people and generated $13 million in sales, highlighting the importance of effectively reaching specific audiences with personalized messages, which remains a key element of email marketing today.
Personalization done well
Many marketers often resort to broadcasting their message broadly in an attempt to reach as many people as possible and maximize results. Unfortunately, this approach is of little use if you are not reaching the right people. Conversely, even if you do reach people who are interested in your product, if you are sending them the wrong message, you are unlikely to convert them into paying customers.
Personalization, if done right, has enormous benefits. It helps businesses build trust with their customers, which ultimately leads to both brand equity and customer loyalty. This helps businesses outperform competitors who roll out aggressive discount policies.
Conversely, personalization done incorrectly, or not at all, can have disastrous consequences. Dotdigital Customer Loyalty Report It turns out that 47% of customers choose to unsubscribe from a brand’s email marketing list because the content they received was irrelevant.
Email personalization can take many forms, from the context to the timing of the email sent. According to a Dotdigital study, personalizing the entire customer journey – delivering email marketing when customers are most interested in your brand through marketing automation – can produce the following results: Click-through rates increased 3.5 times Rather than non-personalized marketing, 47% increase Brands that utilize abandoned cart emails subsequently see a 4.5% increase in revenue, proving the monetary value of implementing timely, personalized email marketing.
Email Marketing in 2024 and Beyond
The email marketing landscape continues to evolve with new advancements and technologies. Brand indicators for message identification provide senders with strong email authentication, and innovations like Apple's email privacy protection and OpenAI's ChatGPT transform the email composition process. Going forward, personalization is key to success.
Consumers demand relevant and customized emails. McKinsey survey Research shows that 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions from companies, and 76% are frustrated when they don't get it. This is forcing brands to invest in personalized marketing communications. Hyper-personalization and moment-based marketing have emerged as powerful strategies to engage customers with timely and targeted content. An example of this would be a fashion retailer sending personalized product recommendations to customers who recently visited their website based on their browsing history and preferences. Or a software company sending a series of educational emails to new subscribers, guiding them through the steps of using the product and highlighting its key features.
As marketers continue to adapt to changing consumer preferences, the future of email marketing remains bright. AI enhancements to email marketing and marketing automation platforms provide brands with more opportunities to improve marketing results and connect and resonate with their audiences.
By Juliet Aiken
Global Marketing Director
Dot Digital
