Pratik is CEO of North America at Netcore and Netcore Unbxd.
In the past two decades, the average human attention span has reduced to eight seconds. Today we live in an age of “attention recession.” This reduced attention span makes it harder for brands to engage, convert and retain shoppers.
Typically, a consumer makes a purchase decision after interacting with a brand over 20 times. These are 20 points of friction where the shopper can get distracted away from the product consideration. The modern shopper’s choices are endless, and they are fickle. Brands have to make an immediate impact in the consideration moment—eliminate the friction points from the shopper experience or be eliminated as a choice.
How can brands do this? By building personalized and engaging experiences in the shopper’s preferred channel at that specific moment. Maintaining channel continuity keeps shoppers from getting distracted, eliminates friction and forges an in-channel conversion funnel.
This is where the frictionless shopper experience era of “inbox commerce” comes into play.
Understanding Inbox Commerce
Once the undisputed digital marketing workhorse, over the past decade email marketing has faced a period of stagnant innovation. While email often drives as much as 30% of overall e-commerce revenue, it’s been relegated to being a cash cow with little to no marketing innovation focus.
A transformative shift is now on the horizon, poised to revolutionize email marketing. Its potential impact can be likened to the game-changing introduction of the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) in 1992, which allowed multimedia files to be embedded within emails.
Inbox commerce, powered by Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) for Email, radically enhances the email experience for shoppers and retailers. Inbox commerce enables brands to build interactive experiences that foster two-way communication with consumers while removing the need for redirects and landing pages, reducing friction for the shopper and shortening the email conversion funnel.
“Interactive experience” is a phrase used liberally by marketers, but with inbox commerce, that is precisely what you get. Have you searched in an email? Have you ever played Wordle in an email? Have you ever spoken to customer support in the email itself? Inbox commerce enables all of this and more.
Inbox commerce combines the interactive elements of AMP for Email with predicted next-best shopper actions derived from shopper behavior and enriched product catalog data to convert your email into an email shop. Shoppers can now search, browse, add-to-cart, add-to-wish-list and perform a wide variety of product discovery, consideration, conversion and other commerce actions, all within the email.
Why Retail Brands Should Embrace Inbox Commerce
The primary reason to consider inbox commerce is to enhance conversions and reduce friction. By deploying inbox commerce, brands can significantly shorten the customer journey and allow all interactions to occur within their inbox. Within email, inbox commerce allows brands to offer interactive product carousels, cart recovery, search, gamification, zero-party data collection and feedback collection.
Implementing Inbox Commerce
Inbox commerce comes at little to no additional cost for retail brands. The cost of sending an inbox commerce email is the same as a standard email. All that must be ensured is that their marketing automation and email service provider (ESP) supports sending AMP for Email. The process is so simple that any brand can incorporate inbox commerce into their email programs within four to six weeks.
Four Steps To Create Your First Inbox Commerce Campaign
1. Implement the following email authentication mechanisms:
• Sender Policy Framework (SPF).
• DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM).
• Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC).
2. Build an AMP template that meets your requirements.
3. Register your sender ID with Google. The registration guidelines are publicly available, and Google generally completes the verification in two to four weeks.
• To register your sender ID, you must send a real-production-ready inbox commerce email you intend to use in a campaign.
• You can even test your inbox commerce emails on this email playground.
4. Test your inbox commerce emails with some test accounts. If you are happy with the results, you are good to launch your first AMP campaign.
Email: The Next Hot Conversion Funnel
Consumers have never had more choices of where to buy and whom to buy from, and competition for their consideration and attention is at an all-time high. “Attention recession” is only getting worse and causing acquisition costs to skyrocket, which will only rise further, forcing brands to shift resources to retain and grow existing customers.
Given the current economic scenario, brands shouldn’t abandon email; it remains the most cost-effective marketing channel to communicate with shoppers. With the onset of inbox commerce and the removal of friction from the shopping experience, the possibilities for retail and e-commerce brands are limitless. Retail businesses can now bring any web or app shopping experience within an email to drive a shopper further down the conversion funnel.
Using the simple steps outlined above, any retail or consumer-facing business can reap the benefits of inbox commerce.
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