Web3 email marketing - why you should be using email and how to get the most from it
I've been in the marketing game for a while now. Around 10 years.
Throughout that period, email has time and time again been the highest return on investment channel. I've worked through more than a few "email is dead" announcements and, still, I find it to be the best method for making sales.
And that holds true even in Web3.
I've spoken to completely decentralized brands who can trace the highest engagement and sales back to email.
And yet, most Web3 brands are sleeping on the insane power of email.
Which is why I'm putting this guide together to explain just how amazing email can be (even in Web3) and what you'll need to get the most out of it.
This piece is dedicated to the foundations of email marketing and how we can adapt them to Web3. Let's get into it.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is using email messages, an incredibly direct channel, to educate your audience and get them to take actions that help increase sales.
You can use it to boost the visibility of an available project or offer, and it can also be integrated into other automated marketing efforts (more on this later).
The wonderful thing about email marketing is you can use it to entertain, educate, promote, or simply say hi. It's very flexible and can fit a lot of different business goals.
By creating different kinds of emails such as newsletters, survey responses, transactional messages, welcome emails, special promotions availability notifications and more - you're able to stay top-of-mind with your customers while potentially gaining insights around what the customer wants more of.
Email continues to remain one of the most cost-effective ways for businesses to connect with potential and existing customers alike.
Why email marketing is needed in Web3
A lot of brands default to Discord and Telegram for their community comms.
These platforms are fine. But they're far from perfect.
The problem is that they both put too many requirements on the user.
Imagine you're sending an update about your project that's key for users and will affect their user experience.
If sent through Telegram, the user has to be present and available at the time of sending to really understand it.
If they miss the original message, it risks getting buried above all of the responses making it hard for the user to find and understand what you're trying to send them.
Discord is similar. It's such a busy space for most projects that, even if you're using a "notifications" channel, there's a risk of it getting lost in the noise.
The user has to navigate to your Discord, then to the notifications tab, and hope only the latest one is relevant for them.
If you run a busty server, there's a chance the user won't see it because they'll be suffering from notification overload.
These channels are great for real-time conversations. But for important messages, email is a better as it sits in the user's email inbox until they're ready to read it.
The chance of them missing it is less (but not zero).
I'm not saying you should ditch Community channels for email, I'm saying you should use them all together. Cover more bases and you'll increase the chances that your key messages will be received.
Why not use Web3 messaging services?
You could, and should, use Web3 messaging services if your audience interacts with your brand through a crypto wallet.
We have a great list of the best Web3 messaging services right here.
If you're not aware, these services allow you to send messages directly to user's wallets. They kind of mimic email functionality but on a wallet-to-wallet basis.
They're great and, likely, the future of comms in Web3.
But there's a problem. And it's all to do with the number of users.
Web3 wallets have a relatively low user uptake.
Email, on the other hand is used by nearly everyone who uses the internet. There's a huge opportunty for Web3 brands to reach a wider audience simply by leveraging email communications.
Not only is this going to give you more opportunities to get more customers, but it's the obvious method to onboard Web 2.0 people to the world of Web3.
I did a little research and, at the time of writing, the difference in the number of email addresses vs crypto wallets is massive.
There are currently...
Even if you're fully invested in Web3 and think that email is outdated and due for retirement, you cannot ignore these numbers.
Email gives you access to a much larger audience base and, as a result, offers far more sales opportunities for you to pursue. It might not always be this way, but for the time being, email is going to be one of the key methods to getting more users into your dApp and actively buying into your brand and vision.
Let's quickly assess the pros and cons of email marketing in Web3.
Pros of email marketing in Web3
- Gives the user more time to read and consume the message you're sending
- Less noise that a busy Discord server
- Simply an addition to help you increase the chance key messages are received
- Great segmentation for more personalized messaging at scale
- Great for onboarding the next batch of Web3 adopters as they're familiar with email
Cons of email marketing in Web3
- Average 25% open rates
- An extra cost and channel to manage
- Not exactly "Web3 native"
Overall, I think the pros outweigh the cons and brands in the space should be at the very least experimenting with email.
With that being said, let's look at a couple of the absolute basic, foundational steps you should be taking in Web3 email marketing.
The absolute basics of Web3 email marketing
Ok, there's a lot that can be done with email marketing. From long-term nurture campaigns, to simple newsletters, and even short-cycle sales promos.
This is not the piece to go into each of these elements in detail.
What I am going to do is outline a couple of the key actions with email you should be considering and offer a few tips. You'll also find links within each section where I go into more detail in follow-on articles.
Newsletters
Newsletters have seen a huge increase in use over the last few years. Mainly due to the success of Morning Brew and The Hustle.
Back in the day, newsletters were dry things that simply listed the latest information from a company.
They read like boring press releases.
"Brand X is pleased to announce Y" type things. Which offer no help or benefits to anyone.
Nowadays, thankfully, there's a tonne that can be done with newsletters.
Generally, they tend to fall into one of two categories.
- Edutainment leads with links to the original article (generally used by content-heavy brands who want to get you on their site - example from BIC)
2. Opinion pieces where individuals offer their take on recent news and developments (generally used by individuals and influencers in a space - example from TPan)
These are, obviously, two umbrella categories.
It basically comes down to the newsletter being the channel itself for your content or using it to drive traffic to a different location.
There are dozens of variables within these archetypes that you can adapt to your brand's needs.
Generally speaking though, the first is great for brands, the latter better for individuals or consultants.
Welcome email sequences
These things are absolute gold and also well-needed in Web3.
When someone signs up for your project, their intent to learn more and get involved is at it's highest.
You need to capitalize on that. And a good welcome sequence is one of the best ways to do it.
I always aim to achieve the below with a welcome sequence...
- Get them excited about your project and vision
- Explain the best ways for them to get updates (basically get them to follow on social, join communities etc)
- Explain anything they might not understand yet
- Tease them with something they can get and lead them onto the next step
The next step will be the onboarding email sequence which I'll cover in a minute.
Generally speaking, you can have a welcome email sequence that is in fact 1 email.
I received one recently from the Jericho.gg team that was super short and sweet but did the task of letting me know where to go to engage with the community.
It's one email. But it does the job of helping me know what to do.
The welcome email sequence is a given and a must for any brand. If you're a content based brand, you can simply extend this to explain more about what you do and get the user's engagement up.
If you're an dApp or project that doesn't rely on content, then you'll also want to build an onboarding sequence.
Onboarding email sequences
Onboarding sequences are key to getting better user engagement and retention.
I once helped a B2B financial company reduce churn by around 40% simply by using a better onboarding sequence. Here's a little overview of what I did and what I'd recommend you do with yours.
The basic goal of an onboarding sequence is to get someone fully up and running within your project.
By the end of it, you want them to have actioned all of the key steps, activated the features that provide the best UX or ROI, and basically know exactly how to get the most out of your offer.
What I'd recommend here is you analyse your audience to find your best users and understand d what features or elements of your offer they can't live without.
You could do this by analysing their engagement through an analytics tool, or (my preferred method) get some of those best customers on the phone to talk it out and understand what they like the most.
When you've found the highest impact elements of your offer, build an onboarding sequence that gets new users into those elements and features as quickly as possible and in a way that helps them get the best results.
Run it and track how it works before adapting or improving.
It really is as simple as that.
Sales email sequences
Sales are the lifeblood of any brand.
More sales = more profit = more money for you to reinvest in your business for better UX and growth.
Today's Web3 users are far more discerning than they were at the height of the craze through 2021-2022.
Now, people are less likely to jump on a new project that promises massive gains. Instead, they want to see that a brand is really doing something that will benefit the user and has a longer-term plan to continue providing a great service.
For that, you have to nurture the user over time and spread your sales promotion over a few weeks. Spamming your Discord with "get a 200% APY with this by buying today" isn't going to work for legit brands.
There's a really well-established system for doing this in email. A method that helps you sell more of your offer by leveraging long-established psychological approaches to selling.
In short, you sell to your best users and make sure that they know they're going to benefit from this. Build in some legitimate FOMO and lean on the benefits.
The basic system I use when writing these email sequences is...
- Segment - Start by segmenting your best users as they have the highest chance of buying. Selling to non-interested people leads to more headaches down the road and an increased number of unsubscribes before you've had a chance to nurture them.
- Tease - Send a few emails about what you're working on. Include links that, if clicked, are almost a hand raise from that user to say "I'm interested in this".
- Pre-sale - Take a few days to offer some in-depth information about the upcoming offer. Explain the benefits of what it is and build some hype around it.
- Sale - Open the cart and tell users they have X days, hours etc before the sale ends or the cart closes.
- Close - End the sale with a few notifications about the deal going away soon to get those on the fence to take some action.
Generally speaking, you'll see an increase in sales at the open of the cart and the close of the cart. But by building up to the sale you're more likely to have a few rabid fans who cannot wait to get involved.
For a more detailed explanation of this, check out the full piece on sales sequences here.
What are the best email service providers for Web3 brands?
Sadly there aren't any email services I know of that have fully embraced Web3 as the core of their business.
There are some great Web3 messaging tools that allow you to send messages to user wallets (and I think this might be the future of this kind of communication).
But we're still going to need emails as there are a lot of Web 2.0 people who we need to onboard.
The best option you have is to use an established Web 2.0 email service linked with a great Web3 CRM and a messaging service.
It's a bloated tech stack for now, but it's the best way to cover all of your bases.
If you want to see what tools we recommend, there's a list of the best ESPs for use with Web3 here.
The information provided on DecentReviews does not constitute investment advice, financial advice, trading advice, or any other sort of advice. Do not treat any of the websites content as such. DecentReviews does not recommend that any cryptocurrency or blockchain asset should be bought, sold, or held by you. Conduct your own due diligence and consult your financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
