• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, November 17, 2017

Are you one of those email specialists who barely knows what the person in the next office is doing? Don’t be a prisoner of your silo — reach out. A new study by Braze shows that firms that rely only on email are leaving money on the table. 

Braze, formerly Appboy, studied "the number of app sessions, campaigns received, campaigns opened (push and email), campaigns clicked (email and in-app messaging) associated with more than 300 million user profiles with a first session occurring in July of 2017," according to a spokesperson.  

First, the most obvious finding: that consumers who receive an email display a 45% greater rate of engagement than those who get no messages at all.  

Not that this is small change: Braze notes that “sending an email or a push or an in-app message could be the difference between a lapsing user who’s visiting your app a couple times a month and an active customer who’s engaging weekly.”

But people who are served both email and in-app messages display a 315% increase in engagement. And those who get email, push and in-app messages engage at a 543% greater rate.

Braze argues that “finding ways to work effectively across teams to maximize the impact of your email strategy could be the difference between the success and failure of your overall engagement efforts.”

Granted, channels work differently from each other. And even siloed efforts are better than nothing: As Braze notes, “sending an email or a push or an in-app message could be the difference between a lapsing user who is visiting your app a couple times a month and an active customer who is engaging weekly.

In a broader way, persons who received single-channel messaging in general showed a 179% greater propensity to engage. Those targeted with cross-channel campaigns display a 646% increase in engagement. And the best channel combinations drive an 844% rise in engagement.

“That’s not just a nice boost — that’s transformative,” Braze notes.  

Well, you can quibble with the methodology, and doubt the findings. The study is sort of limited, given the emphasis on apps. But it has the ring of truth to it.

Emails can be used in tandem with social media, apps and even direct mail. The challenge is to create a uniform brand experience across all these channels, to get the timing in sync, and to use data to provide relevant messaging.

Braze concludes that it’s easy for separate teams to “calcify into silos. But those silos could potentially undermine the impact of your email marketing efforts.”