Unraveling Youth Interaction with E-mail Marketing in Elevating Consumer Engagement

In its role as a brand's direct marketing communication, email marketing must be optimized to increase brand awareness, brand loyalty, and consumer trust, including young people. This research aims to understand how young consumers interact with e-mail marketing to increase consumer engagement. Qualitative studies based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) was used in this research to gain a deeper understanding of the actions and motivations of young consumers toward e-mail marketing. The results show that there are five motivations for young consumers to keep interacting with email marketing, namely autonomy, competence, relatedness, instrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. The results show that there are several things that brands need to consider in managing e-mail marketing to increase consumer engagement, especially young people, namely: (1) content relevance to the target audience including the community offered; (2) technical matters such as simple information, subject lines, or opt-in/opt-out features to provide choices to consumers; (3) responsive design and frequency of e-mail delivery; and (4) external factors that might attract consumers to engage in brand e-mail marketing such as coupons or discounts offered. The findings of this study can be an alternative strategy for brands to optimize their e-mail marketing management.