animation
November 13, 2019

The future of email is Onboard.

I’ve worked in email marketing for a long time.

My first business was seasonal and driven by a 9-month stretch where my only goal was to gather as many emails as possible. So was my first big side project.

Now I work for a company that helps hotels and resorts with data-driven email.

And it’s the lessons I’ve learned along the way that makes me a huge fan of what a new startup – Onboard – is doing and the direction they’re taking this channel.

Reason #1) Purpose Based
The beauty of their platform is in the way everything is built around a specific goal and specific number. The crunch your Stripe data, tell you where you stand, and give you something to do that can fix it.

onboard1

Once you stop laughing at my low numbers (I took this screenshot when most of my side project revenue was still on Gumroad), notice the simplicity of this flow.

  • Your goal is to make more money.
  • Here’s a problem we found that’s impacting that.
  • Here’s a way to fix it.

Again, it’s goal-driven. Purpose-driven.

Reason #2) Fill in the Blanks
Now that they’ve shown you a specific thing you can do that will leave to a specific result, they don’t give you a platform to accomplish that, they give you a solution.

This is massive. Tweak a few words to fit your app and this step is finished.

onboard2

The steps that follow are just as easy. Select the plans you want to apply that email to, confirm timing, choose a FROM address, and you’re done. All defaulted to best practices so you can launch a highly effective campaign without changing a thing.

onboard3

No creative to touch, to copy to write, no strategy to implement.

Reason #3) Before/After Built In
Even better is that the results of these emails are gathered, crunched, and clearly spelled out for you (these are screens taken from their site).

onboard4

after

All of this is built into a simple, no-training-required interface that kept me from ever asking, “okay, so…now what do I do?”

The Future
This, in my opinion, is the future of email. Solutions will outperform platforms because they’ll be built around common campaigns sent by similar businesses.

Launching a new product? There will be an Onboard-like system that guides you through the process. Trying to reengage your list? Convert leads to clients? Upsell? Same story. Instead of putting the burden on the marketer to have all the best practices and creative and skill to know how to do it right, these solutions will start with something that works and only require the marketer to tweak if they want to.

Onboard is already there and they’ve done a beautiful job.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the email marketing industry will soon head down a very similar path.

More Thoughts & Such

How to Subscribe to Blogs / RSS Feeds via Email
February 16, 2024   Read this post →

A Little of Both
January 3, 2024   Read this post →

Put it On Paper
November 3, 2023   Read this post →

An Ode to Awe
October 16, 2023   Read this post →

Change Has to Be Sold
September 27, 2023   Read this post →

Knowing When to Stop
July 21, 2023   Read this post →

The Language of Uncertainty
July 21, 2023   Read this post →

Solving…Problems
July 7, 2023   Read this post →

Who am I? Who do I want to be?
June 29, 2023   Read this post →

Somewhere Between Don & Steve
June 28, 2023   Read this post →

Hi, I'm Gregg.

I'm a SaaS marketer and maker.

       

Never heard of me? All good, these days I don't chase influence as much as I do balance. By day I run marketing for Inntopia and evenings see me building SendView, but my happy place is playing in the mountains with my family.