Email marketing is the original form of digital marketing. In an industry that goes back barely 20 years, email marketing is ancient. As often happens with age, it has largely fallen by the wayside as brands favour big, sexy, in-your-face social media marketing. But it’s stayed the course and continues to benefit those who use it properly.

Those who’ve ignored it – scorned it – might soon have to change their tune if Google finds that incorporating Gmail in SERPs delivers better results.

According to Marcela De Vivo (Search Engine Journal) Google is already testing Gmail as a resource when it comes to delivering search results. It’s all part of its greater plan to make search truly universal and relevant to each and every user.

It’s an ambitious aim and one which baffles many people who surf the net for accurate and current information.

Is email relevant?

Say that one day, you randomly mention to a friend that you burnt your toast again and are thinking about getting a new toaster and your friend replies that her new BrandX toaster makes perfect golden toast.

Six months of burnt toast down the line and you finally type those magic words into the search box: ‘new toaster’. Your friend’s email pops up in the results. Does it help you? Sure. You might not remember her endorsement. Now you have a handy reminder of a potentially good product. If she was less than enthusiastic about her new toaster, you’d know what to avoid.

But how does this affect email marketing?

According to De Vivo, it means that marketers have to pay even more attention to keywords, titles and headers and have to be more meticulous in regularly sending out updated newsletters and promotional material. This is because Google, currently, looks for exact match in Gmail results. So you can’t just talk about new toasters, you have to talk about two-slice and four-slice toasters, you have to talk about variable heat, defrosting and reheating and all of the things that people are likely to search. Keyword research becomes essential.

De Vivo also says recency comes into play. So if you had toasters on special three months ago, you’ll probably miss out.

Previously, email marketers only really had to worry about copy enticing enough to get consumers to open newsletters and actually read the content rather than automatically sending them to trash. Now email marketers have to think like SEOs and start applying SEO principles to the design and content of their newsletters. And SEOs have to start making an effort to become familiar with email marketing techniques.

If extending your skill set is not an option (for whatever reason) the time has come to start courting agencies that will help you round out your services. It’s time SEOs and email marketers started joining hands, or risk losing out to those who are truly Jacks of all trades.

This guest post was written on behalf of Mediatorr by Sandy Cosser. Mediatorr is a digital marketing agency that offers a range of services, including SEO, PPC, web development and social media.