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Where once was the carrier pigeon, now there’s email. Smoke signals have become Snapchats, telegraphs are now texts, so on and so forth. The way we communicate with each other is constantly evolving, especially when it comes to digital messaging. Technology advances, what used to be brand new quickly becomes obsolete and marketers have to scramble to keep up.

Sometimes, the most exciting projects are — surprisingly — the easiest. At least, that was the case for our most recent endeavor here on the Nebo email team: creating email accessibility standards.

Wait, that can’t be right! you say. Accessibility means more code, more thought about design and copy, more time spent considering what it’d be like to need accessible email. How could all of that be easy? The answer: most of what ended up in our accessibility standards was stuff we were already doing.

That’s because accessibility isn’t some strange new frontier. It’s a continuation of making content that puts people first by ensuring they can access it in the best way possible.

A little while ago, I found a great brand via a sponsored Instagram post — they had a perfect slideshow of their products, clearly tailored to follow Instagram’s format. The copy quickly drove me to their site, and they’re clearly a cool, web-savvy brand that knows how to hit all the marks. Knowing I might not come across this brand again or soon forget about it, I signed up for their emails so I could get sale or new-customer announcements. So far, so good.

Then the email comes. It’s one single image. It has at least one CAN-SPAM violation. The language is spam-filter bait.

Not so savvy after all.

As an email marketer, it makes me wonder: why do brands treat email like it’s less important than their social media? Why doesn’t it matter to them to do email right? Why do so many brands make this mistake, and what are they missing out on when they do?