Setting up a mailing list, creating a newsletter or sending an automated email to your readers or clients has never been so easy, all that because of a pioneering company in email marketing called MailChimp. They’re a one-stop shop for anything mass-email related. With its simple and customizable interface and the ability to brand your emails, MailChimp’s aesthetics and user experience really level up your corporate emails. Email marketing helps you to connect with your audience to promote your brand and even increase your sales. You can do a lot with sending out emails, you can sell products, share some news or even share a story or other content.

That’s unfortunately ancient history for the world of ICOs. After the recent Facebook, Twitter and Google ban, next up in line is the popular email automation company, which has now decided to prohibit emails promoting cryptocurrencies. Your worst nightmare as a marketing director, might be coming true, if you think that there are no alternatives to email marketing. The recency of the actual ban - the new policy was set into place 30 April - provides room for thought, will other platforms follow and is there really no better ways to do marketing than through emails?

As a marketing agency for ICOs, we have quite some experience in being agile when it comes to the different channels banning the cryptocurrency industry from promoting anything. We have encountered many situations with our clients, where we had to look for alternatives, because of bans. We quite early on decided not to focus on email marketing and MailChimp, because our industry is wrapped around more direct contact, which we have found an alternative for. This solution will make you wonder why you were ever worried about MailChimp’s ban. We will provide you with all the necessary answers during this article.

Alternative technologies make way for email marketing

The most logical thing to do as a marketing director for an ICO, is to let your marketing be handled by an agency. The standard solution for a marketing agency, is to look for an alternative way to do email marketing. Sure, even though MailChimp is the most popular email automation company, there is also others in the run. But aside from an agency choosing just a different email marketing program, there is also a lot of other issues to take into account. There is also agencies out there looking for alternatives to email marketing. You may wonder why there is a necessity to find these alternatives. Well, simple. It has been showed that only 10-20% of the users your email was sent to, will open the email and convert. The conversion rate of email marketing is thus quite low and therefore it doesn’t really guarantee a most successful result. Email marketing is unpredictable and certainly not one of the cool kids in class anymore.

One could argue that email marketing still is a personal way of approaching individuals. Not everyone, however opens every email they get and because of certain algorithms, some emails immediately go to the spam folder, which is the last place you would like your newsletter to land in. An email doesn’t provide the direct contact that the often impatient customers nowadays need. They want responses fast and they want them now. Think about how nowadays there is many chat function integrated on customer service websites, this means that people should be more open towards alternative technologies that could possibly gain more popularity over email marketing.

Both email marketing and social media marketing have become a challenge to overcome while promoting your ICO. Social networks are currently banning the promotion of cryptocurrencies. This is an obvious downside to social media marketing. However, out of the 70 million different companies that eg. Facebook has, it is hard to stand out between all the presences online. This creates a huge amount of information that struggles to find its way to the right targets. It becomes harder and harder to generate organic reach

Luckily, there is a way around it. The sudden popularity of messengers, have made it so that it now seems like the ultimate channel to do marketing on. Emails were personal, but direct messaging creates a bond with your community. The kind of emotional connection that you need in your ICO.

The benefits of messenger marketing

Now that you ended at this point in the article, you’re perhaps wondering why you should go to messenger marketing as an alternative for MailChimp. Well that’s easy! Messenger marketing is the new kid on the block and it still allows you to get benefits from the first-mover advantage. Messengers are mobile. That means that they’re everywhere where your community members go. They usually open most of the messages they get in their inbox, even if it’s only a message requests.

Content is really easy to access and view. Messengers are mobile friendly, visually pleasing, easy-to-navigate and very accessible from any preferred device your community might be using.

Messaging apps can be used in several ways that will offer benefits for your ICO, such as offering support services, using chatbots to process simple requests and push out regular updates. The best thing about messenger marketing is that almost everyone uses messengers, it will be a lot easier for you - and more likely - to reach the right target group with messaging for your ICO.

Those who use messengers, are very accessible, mostly because messengers are a channel for someone’s private communication. This is why it translates in such good results. 90% of your community is likely to open your message. The conversion results are therefore a lot higher than in email marketing.

Another benefit is that there is no such thing as an algorithm to send your message to every email’s worst nightmare: the spam folder, because that after all is the last place where you would like your content to end up. The content thus reaches the right user, because they have chosen to sign up for your channel, leading into more engagements.

Moreover, using messenger marketing over email marketing definitely is the ability to integrate chatbots as a way to help you out in your communications. Chatbots are an intelligent step towards automated messaging. These small programs who make use of AI messaging and keywords, will be able to tackle most of the questions your community might have concerning your project. Moreover, they are able to send out push notifications with as many updates as possible so that your community always stays up-to-date with the most relevant developments of your ICO. Chatbots are not only innovative, they also are a good way to maintain and nurture your community, which is something you want in your ICO campaign.

Last, messenger marketing has better conversion rates, which will generate you more engagement and leads. Ultimately, this will translate in increasing your token sale and the ability to convert more of your community members into token holders.

Final Thoughts

So you thought it is impossible to go around the recent MailChimp ban? Well think again. MailChimp banning cryptocurrency related content from their email automation, definitely is the least of your worries.

By using alternative technologies and innovative alternatives such as messenger marketing, you will be able to not only go around the ban, but you will also generate more leads and increase your conversion rate, because messengers have a higher success rate over email marketing. This is a logical step because the cryptocurrency and blockchain community is mostly based within these messengers eg. Telegram. Agencies need to respond to this new trend strategically and adjust their communication activities to the requirements of messaging apps. By rethinking their marketing strategy and implementing messenger marketing as a way-to-go, your ICO will definitely be in good hands.

Would you like to get more insight on how to do cost-efficient ICO? We have the perfect guidebook for you! Download the guidebook below.