How to Think About Email Marketing in Web3

Owned Media is the paradox every Web3 Brand needs to understand, Including You.

There's no doubt, we've mastered the art of trustless transactions as an industry, but we are failing at the most fundamental part of community building, capturing and owning audience attention.

Btw, this has nothing to do with Mindshare. Let’s instead create a scenario together that you know too well:

Web3 brands invest thousands (in resources) into community building and user acquisition. Optimising for metrics of audiences they do not own across accounts on platforms and channels they also do not own. You know the platforms, right? like X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Discord, Telegram, and channels like Influencer Accounts, Podcasts, etc.

Web3 is built on the very ethos of decentralization. Your most valuable asset in marketing should be the one thing you own as a brand or creator, and that is your email list.

That list with a bunch of audience data is your platform, where you create your rules of engagement, build your brand experience. Remember,

You think about it: If you can't systematically communicate with your users and audience outside of the echo chamber of platforms/channels you do not own, and across the TAM of Crypto Twitter.

Don't you think you're essentially renting attention from landlords (the platforms and channels) who can change the rules and prices? Like banning your accounts for a start, and you having little to nothing to do about it?.

Email marketing in web3 remains the one channel where you control the entire experience from inbox to building a personal relationship to conversion. !

Okay, now you're interested. Here's Why You Should Care

In the past 1 year, thanks to my role at @surgence_io I have overseen hundreds of successful email marketing campaigns, and I can easily say to you:

There's more to email marketing than sending or blasting emails/newsletters.

It's more about building an owned media audience, outside of the echo chamber of centralised platforms, like the one you're reading this on.

But here's where it gets interesting: Web3 itself presents unique challenges and opportunities that traditional email marketing frameworks simply weren't designed to handle;

• Crypto audiences think, behave, and require different trust-building mechanisms.

• Add in complex compliance requirements, and the challenges grow the more

• There's the subtle but nerve-wracking need to integrate with blockchain data,

• And the reality that your audience might be a pseudonymous holder who you have their email (which could be a burner), makes it harder.

When you stack these issues up, you've got a marketing puzzle that requires a completely new way to think about email marketing.

And that is why this shift in thinking determines how you build sustainable experiences outside the cocoon of vanity metrics.

Starting with brands (and you too), understanding why email marketing is a coordination layer rather than a Remington 870 shotgun used to blast our emails.

The Coordination Layer Framework

Many web3 brands that even bother with email marketing treat email marketing like a blast gun or another broadcast channel instead of understanding its real use case in web3. Let's break it down. I like to think of it like a conductor ... with a role to lead the orchestra.

Email Marketing with a good list acquisition funnel can coordinate scattered audience touchpoints into coherent experiences. This means if done well, you could have your most active audience on X and Discord on your list, in one place;

• Instead of hoping a % of your community sees your comms on X,

• Then another % finds your Discord announcement,

• Then another % sees it on a KOL post or a Founders Post

Email ensures everyone in your core audience receives your comms (inbox) and can get redirected to the other posts, X, Blog post, or Discord post, with CTA buttons.

I really believe having your core audience on your list is a big flex brands should be obsessed with. Having your comms seen by users who asked to see them. I think that is mindshare, but even better when you can;

• Segment based on Behaviours to speak with your active users

• Optimise for Opens and CTRs if and when you need to do that

• Each comms is a Compliance-First Content

• Adopt a value-first communication principle. You mustn't shill every time.

When you think about email as a coordination layer. You start optimizing for community coherence. You stop broadcasting updates.

Because when platforms change algorithms and communities fragment across channels, the brands with the strongest direct relationships with their users compound their advantages. Your email list is the only audience you can verify that you own. The question isn't whether we need email marketing in Web3.

The question is whether brands are ready to stop renting audience, attention and start owning audiences and building direct relationships with them.

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