Anthony Capano, Regional Director, APAC at Intuit Mailchimp
Digital marketing has always been driven by reach: bigger audiences, more impressions, broader exposure.
But today, as the digital ecosystem becomes more fragmented and AI reshapes how content is surfaced and filtered, the rules of visibility are changing. Consumers are no longer passively absorbing brand messages.
They’re actively curating who and what earns their attention.
For marketing teams, this shift is forcing a rethink on how audiences are built, how success is measured, and how brands earn attention. Success now depends on relevance. Brands that earn attention consistently will outperform those that rely on volume alone.
Direct access is a strategic asset
Engagement strategies built through social and paid channels remain powerful for discovery and scale.
However, with new social channels emerging, algorithm updates influencing visibility, and paid media costs constantly shifting, brands are increasingly balancing those investments with channels they can access directly.
In fact, 69% of marketers globally agree that email is the foundation of their organisation’s marketing strategy, according to The Revenue Blueprint report, and 59% say that as search becomes less utilised, email remains a necessary channel for customer engagement.
While email remains the backbone for richer storytelling and campaigns, it now sits alongside SMS as part of a broader owned-channel strategy. SMS reaches customers in moments where timing matters most, from delivery updates to limited-time offers. Used together, these channels allow marketers to meet customers with the right message, in the right context, strengthening engagement and impact.
That said, owning your audience is not about replacing social or paid media. It is about ensuring that, as platforms inevitably evolve, brands’ ability to communicate with customers remains consistent.
But earning that permission requires more than just a well-worded pop-up.
Consumers are far more likely to subscribe at high-intent moments, such as after browsing (50%) or during checkout (39%), according to The Art of the Opt-In: Why List Building is Only the Beginning.
Yet many brands still ask for high-friction data, such as phone numbers, too early in the journey, before clearly demonstrating the value customers will receive.
By aligning opt-in timing and value with customer intent, and prioritising a direct, ongoing line of communication more broadly, brands can be better positioned to build durable relationships even as platforms and algorithms evolve.
Visibility has to be earned, not assumed
Earning permission is only the first step. Even within owned channels, visibility is no longer automatic.
More and more, email clients like Gmail are implementing AI to determine what gets surfaced, sorted into Promotions, grouped into dedicated views like Purchases, or quietly deprioritised.
At the same time, consumers are taking greater control of themselves. Around a third of Australians aim for inbox zero, and more than a quarter keep fewer than 10 emails at any one time, according to research from Intuit Mailchimp.
That changes how engagement is earned. While compliance and technical best practices like authentication still matter, what increasingly determines whether an email is seen is how people interact with it. Opens, clicks, replies, deletes and patterns of ongoing activity all signal to the inbox that a brand’s message is valuable.
In other words, engagement is no longer just a reporting metric reviewed after a campaign. It directly influences how future messages are treated.
While SMS doesn’t face the same filtering algorithms as inboxes, attention is still earned through relevance and timing. Irrelevant or excessive messaging can erode trust just as quickly in a text as it can in an inbox.
For brands looking to succeed, frequency and segmentation need to be treated as strategic levers. Instead of asking, “How often should we send?”, consider “Who is this message truly relevant for right now, and why?”
But answering that requires a clearer view of customer behaviour. When website activity, purchase history, and prior engagement are connected, marketers can use automation to respond to real intent at scale, shaping personalised campaigns around behaviour rather than a fixed calendar.
Growth depends on what you measure
In a climate of tighter budgets and higher expectations, engagement must translate into measurable commercial impact.
In the early days of digital marketing, teams had limited ways to track results. After a campaign, teams would just assume the marketing worked if they saw an increase in sales.
Today, the issue is the opposite. Marketing teams are surrounded by reporting tools and an expanding list of performance metrics. Yet attribution remains a challenge.
The problem isn’t visibility. It’s that for many teams, data still sits in disconnected systems.
When metrics like ecommerce performance and engagement data sit in separate dashboards, it becomes difficult to connect marketing activity to revenue outcomes. And when measurement is fragmented, optimisation also becomes reactive, and marketers’ spend is guided by only partial insight.
Bringing data across channels into a unified commercial view changes that dynamic. It’s why Intuit Mailchimp recently introduced enhanced reporting capabilities, including a Site Tracking Pixel to help marketers connect campaign performance directly to sales without stitching together multiple tools.
By unifying their data, teams can understand what works, refine campaigns with confidence, and allocate spend based on evidence rather than assumption.
Ultimately, digital marketing is entering a more disciplined era. The brands that succeed will not be those that shout the loudest, but those that build direct relationships across channels and prove the value of every interaction.