Making the Inbox Hit Like Instagram

By Alicia Torres, Senior Marketing Manager at Force24

Throughout 2025 I’ve been delivering a talk titled ‘Making the Inbox Hit Like Instagram’ tat The Marketing Showcase roadshow, sharing it with hundreds of brilliant marketers across the UK. For anyone who couldn’t make along the way, I’ve summarised the core ideas and takeaways into this article.

I’ve always been online. Before I ever called myself a marketer, I was coding MySpace layouts, blogging on Xanga and shouting into the internet void on Tumblr. I cut my teeth on social long before I earned a salary for it. Social taught me how to tell stories, build community and understand what stops people mid-scroll.

Before I moved into email marketing, I’ll admit I underestimated it. It felt slower, less exciting, and nowhere near as creative as social. But that was because I wasn’t using it properly. Over time, I realised two things:

• Social is designed for thumbs.
• Email is designed for action.

When you understand that these channels are not competing but working together, everything shifts. Social earns attention, email turns it into movement. Yet too often, we spend hours crafting scroll-stopping posts and treat email as an afterthought. A quick send. A box ticked. Something we hope works.

It is time to change that mindset. Email is not the boring cousin of social. It is one of the most powerful and creative channels available, if we let it be.

 

Social Gets the Hype. Email Gets the ROI.

Let’s say it how it is: social media has the buzz. We’re told to dance in Reels, post at golden hour and write captions that transcend the algorithm. Yet while posts disappear into feeds and fleeting stories, email is quietly getting opened, clicked and converting.

For every £1 invested, email still delivers an average £3–£4 return. That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because once you’re in someone’s inbox, you’re not fighting for relevance. You have their attention. And you can do something smart with it.

 

What Email Can Steal from Social

If social is built to interrupt, email is built to deepen. But the lines are blurring, and that’s where the magic lies.

Here’s where email needs to catch up:

• Hook-driven copy: Subject lines should work like captions: they need to stop you, intrigue you and get one thing right before you’ve even opened the message. While still being relevant to the content they’ll find when they click, you still need to keep their trust.
• Visual thinking: Long blocks of text? This isn’t necessary, especially if your goal is to send the viewer to a landing page or your website. However, do use hierarchy, GIFs, clever layouts, imagery. Yes, you can make an email visually exciting and fully accessible. They are not mutually exclusive.
• Story over bullet points: Even if you are limiting the text, there is still room to tell a story. Try humanising your message and write so it gets remembered.
• Built-in interactivity: Social uses polls, stickers, reactions. Email can use quizzes, countdowns, branching journeys. If people can *do* something, they’re more likely to *care*.

Ask yourself: would this email stop someone… or would it be skipped?

 

Email + Social: The Power Duo

We need to stop treating email and social as separate silos. Use social to grow your audience, then use email to deepen their engagement.

Here’s how they work best together:

1. Turn social followers into email subscribers with gated content or exclusive offers.
2. Repurpose high-performing posts into email content. If it works in a feed, it’ll often land well in an inbox.
3. Drive traffic back to socials to boost reach, poll participation and brand engagement.

Use the inbox to fuel the algorithm while social brings the reach. Email delivers the depth. And together they build momentum.

 

Email is Evolving Too

We need to stop treating email and social as separate silos. Use social to grow your audience, then use email to deepen their engagement.

Here’s how they work best together:

1. Turn social followers into email subscribers with gated content or exclusive offers.
2. Repurpose high-performing posts into email content. If it works in a feed, it’ll often land well in an inbox.
3. Drive traffic back to socials to boost reach, poll participation and brand engagement.

Use the inbox to fuel the algorithm while social brings the reach. Email delivers the depth. And together they build momentum.

 

Scroll-stopping emails

We’ve been told to treat email like a safe space. Predictable. Dependable. But the real opportunity is to treat it like social: curious, experimental, brilliantly visual, emotionally resonant. Email isn’t the past, but a channel you can reinvent. And it’s primed for creativity.

Your subscribers deserve more than another boring newsletter. Give them something to stop their thumbs for.