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Email turned 55 this month. Despite its age, the messaging technology remains vital for ecommerce. It\u2019s one of the few owned media channels a store has.<\/p>\n
1971 was a notable year in technology. Intel introduced the first microprocessor. Bell Labs released the Unix operating system. IBM created the floppy disk.<\/p>\n
And Ray Tomlinson<\/a>, an American software engineer, invented email that year while working at BBN Technologies. He chose the now-familiar \u201c@\u201d symbol for addresses and sent the first message on April 23.<\/p>\n Fast forward to 2026, and email offers a direct connection between a business and its audience of customers.<\/p>\n That direct connection is especially important in an AI world. Many of the online channels sellers use to reach their prospects are changing. Ecommerce product discovery is shifting<\/a> toward AI-driven search, AI recommendations, and agentic shopping<\/a>.<\/p>\n At its most basic, \u201cemail is a way to connect party A to party B,\u201d said Adam Rosen, CEO of the Email Outreach Company<\/a>.<\/p>\n Advertising is a relationship by proxy. Algorithms decide visibility on social platforms and organic search results. Email lists, by contrast, are owned, providing control, consistency, and a reliable way to reach customers.<\/p>\n Rosen described the email newsletters his company operates as \u201cdirect\u201d marketing, though it owns the subscribers. Nonetheless, email newsletters can attract an audience, keep it engaged, and convert it into sales.<\/p>\n The idea is to focus on a topic related to the products a store sells.<\/p>\n Ecommerce marketers have three primary ways to build a newsletter audience.<\/p>\nOwned Media<\/h3>\n
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