What Email Marketing Can Learn From Dating Apps

Swiping is built for today’s customers. Today’s audience wants to focus on one idea at a time and being an audience with a short attention span, spend on average only 11 seconds on an email. Dating apps have grown in number and popularity not only because they evolve with the online dating industry, but because their products are hyper-focused on the habits of the modern consumer.

Email, unlike dating apps, has been around for decades, and it can learn a thing or two from its younger digital counterpart. Inboxes are overloaded with promotional messages that ask for too much, treat everyone the same, and serve selfish company goals. Dating apps show the email marketing world that brief, personalized, and user-focused experiences drive engagement.

Brevity

Opening a dating app, a user is prompted with one option at a time with a clear call to action, yes or no. The customer can easily process the information in front of them and understand the actions they can take. Opening an email, on the other hand, a subscriber may be overwhelmed with information and images and confused by what action they should take next. ‘Shop Now’ and ‘Learn More’ fill up emails with too many directions while some messages provide no direction at all.

What’s an email marketer to do? Keep the message short. Keep the message focused on one goal at a time with one call to action. Remember,  you only have the reader’s attention for a few seconds, so ensure they have all the information they need in a glance.

Personalization

As one dating app promises in their app store description, “You’ll only be introduced to the best people for you.” Dating apps are only as successful as the connections they make, which isn’t so different for brands and their customers. If a dating app doesn’t personalize the experience, they risk losing users after four or five swipes with no matches. How great would it be to interact with a company that promised you’d only be introduced to the best products for you? Email messages are responding to this need by honing in on subscriber preferences and behavior, but the medium still has room to grow.

For email, the first step is paying attention and responding to explicitly stated preferences and implicit behaviors. The goal is now to get to know your customers well enough so that you can anticipate their needs and actions. To dive deeper into personalization today, either add in product or content recommendations to a new campaign or update your recommendation decision rules.

User-Driven Focus

Mutual interest. Designed to be deleted. Standards for respectful behavior. The most popular dating apps are rooted in what’s important to the user. These apps consider user values as well as the overall journey when they map the experience. Often in email, customer needs and the customer journey are vanquished by company or business goals. A shopper might be far in the purchase process for one item, while the brand has a priority to push another item, and the customer doesn’t receive the information they need at the right moment.

The email experience improves immensely when it is built with the end-to-end customer experience in mind. Think of the most common customer journeys, and consider the information that will help the customer and when they should receive it. Before sending a message, reference customer values, and ensure the message fills their needs.

Email has served as a powerful tool to build relationships and connections for decades for business and customers alike, and it’s not stopping anytime soon. By applying practices from newer technologies, the longevity and ROI of the channel only increases. At Salesforce we continue to innovate to ensure customers have what they need to deliver on these trends and beyond.

Learn how Email Studio allows brands to send personalized, customer-focused messages powered by AI and helps companies match with their subscribers.