Tech Blog Podcast: Why Email is the Future of Digital Advertising

LiveIntent’s SVP of Global Marketing, Kerel Cooper, recently joined Neil Hughes for his popular podcast The Tech Blog Writer. During their chat, the two discussed how publishers and brands can retake control of their customers by harnessing the power of email, as well as what it takes to be a people-based marketing technology company. Read on for more of what they covered.

Email is the future

“The email address is the future of digital advertising,” Cooper explained. “[A user’s email address] is your gateway or your passport to the internet. You use it to log in to socials, you use it to sign up and opt in, and it’s yours. It’s personal. You don’t share it with anyone else.”

For most publishers and brands, email represents their most engaged audience. It’s an opt-in universe of consumers who’ve raised their hands to say they want to hear from your brand. And, unlike consumers who are only engaging on social networks, brands can own the relationship with their email database. There’s no third-party controlling the relationship or dictating how – or how often – the brand can communicate with those fans.

Hughes pointed out that many brands have learned this lesson hard way. “Publishers have given much of that inventory over to companies such as Facebook,” he said, because they can’t control distribution or engagement in those models, which has led to a “renaissance of email marketing.”

“We really feel like we sit at the intersection between advertising and marketing technology,” Cooper said. “For publishers and for brands to survive moving forward, they have to understand more and more about their audience.” Unfortunately, many publishers have handed that information over to companies like Facebook, Google, and others for a number of years.

Privacy laws continue to change and tighten around the world. Cookies are going to eventually disappear, Cooper predicted, meaning brands relying solely on external audience data will no longer be able to glean any information about the audience they’re trying to reach.

Audience vs. traffic

Although some use the terms interchangeably, audience and traffic are two very different things. “Traffic is important, but traffic comes and goes,” Cooper explained. “Your audience is your most engaged users. It’s core to every business.” The best way to interact with and grow your audience? Email. Cooper shared results behind some of LiveIntent’s more than 2,500 publisher clients who are leveraging their audience, including one who increased their eCPM by 27% and their YOY revenue by 40%. (Fast-forward to the 12:30 mark to hear this case study.)

Using technology to help everyone win

LiveIntent’s company mission is to help brands connect with people, because relationships matter. “The better you understand your audience, the more effectively you’ll be able to engage with them,” Cooper said. It’s a win-win formula that benefits not only the brand, but also the customer.

Consumers are constantly becoming more engaged with technology. That creates a responsibility for brands to use technology to communicate more effectively and more efficiently with customers, Cooper explained.

Listen to Episode #852 of The Tech Blog Writer Podcast for more great insights.