3 Reasons Why Hashed Emails are Your Greatest Digital Asset

Once upon a time, there was a king named Email and, for several years, it reigned supreme over the digital marketing landscape. People checked email with fervor, valiantly slashing spam and filing important messages – jockeying for the coveted Inbox Zero. Then, something happened. Suddenly, people began to doubt Email. They fawned over a newcomer by the name of Social Media.

After a while, though, marketers discovered that although Social Media offered plenty of great opportunities, it still left them hungry for data. They thirsted for something that would track consumer behavior across multiple channels and multiple devices.

“I’ve got this covered,” said Email, and reclaimed its throne.

The Age of the Hashed Email

It’s OK if you briefly doubted the future of email – you weren’t alone. But now it’s time to acknowledge the facts: Email is here to stay and it’s more powerful than ever. In our data-hungry, personalization-crazed world, your email database is your most valuable asset.

That’s because you can leverage hashed emails (emails that have been encrypted to protect the owner’s privacy) to learn a tremendous amount of information about your subscribers.

Still on the fence? Here are a few things that might change your mind:

1. (Almost) everyone has email.

   Radicati estimates that by the end of 2015, there will be 4.1 billion email addresses worldwide. That equates to about one email for every two humans on Earth. In other words, email is about as close as you can get to a ubiquitous data point.

   While many people use social media, email still remains the stickiest data available. Which leads us to our next point.

2. Email is the passport of the Internet.

   If you want to see how your friends are doing, you log into Facebook. Want to get in touch with an old colleague? Hop on LinkedIn. From Zillow to Mint, shopping to fantasy football, everything you do online requires a login. And what do you and the more than 3 billion other Internet users use to log in? Email, of course.

   Now imagine all the data attached to every active email address. It’s unfathomable.

3. Email lasts a long time.

   How often have you switched personal email addresses in the last decade? If you’re like most of us, you haven’t. Unless it’s updating your Gmail account from JoeLuvz2Party2003 to something more professional, you probably didn’t bother – and neither did your customers.

   When your email address is attached to everything you do online, there’s no need to switch it up. And doing so would be cumbersome. Because personal email addresses don’t often change, you can obtain months’ and years’ worth of data through your hashed emails alone.

If the above three reasons weren’t enough, here’s the kicker: Getting data from hashed emails is a piece of cake. That’s because you’re leveraging data you already have to get data you need through a simple append process.

Long story short: Email is far from dead. In fact, thanks to the astronomical growth of data, email is going to continue living happily ever after.

Ready to begin leveraging hashed email to power personalization and engage with more customers than ever before? Get your free email append match test today!