Email Marketing is SO Yesterday
By Tomer Tishgarten on Thursday, February 14th, 2008This past weekend, I attended SoCon08, an unconference on social networking. During one of the breakout sessions, we outlined the various ways that we as consumers or businesses communicate with businesses. The complete list of communication mediums is below for review.
I found it interesting that as the group shouted out suggestions, it took 4 tries for us to mention email, which is an essential means of communication. I consider email essential because I can safely predict that one of the first things that you do each day in both your work and personal life is check your inbox for new email (well, maybe it’s actually the second thing that you do after sipping your coffee).
This exercise also signaled to me a major shift in way we think about email. Obviously, social networking is leading the charge in the way we think about traditional two-way conversations. But more importantly, I think that the internet continues to play a greater part of our everyday lives and social networking is an incredibly efficient means of communicating when we’re on the internet. In other words, we’re online so social networking allows us to have an online conversation whereas using email feels more like an offline conversation during an online experience.
So am I predicting that the death of email and email marketing?
We’re clearly provided with more opportunities these days to jump on the internet. For example, Starbucks allows you to jump online for free as you sip your latté. We’re also hooked on BlackBerry and iPhone devices to stay connected with colleagues and friends. That means that we’re at the crest of the email “wave”. So in my opinion, email is becoming less relevant as a communication means — instead it is becoming a means to set up to-do lists and archiving. However, I still believe that email will continue to serve a purpose in business communication and this means that the art of crafting, delivering and measuring the response from these emails will become even more important.
Communication Mediums:
- Website (Contact Us Forms)
- Newsletters (Digital and Print)
- Phone
- Blogs
- Face time
- Instant Messages
- SMS or Text Messages
- Nonverbal
- Networking events
Some interesting thoughts… I will believe in the impending doom of email when I stop getting those pesky direct mail pieces from unsolicited credit card companies. ;O)~
Just a quick point about the list and its relationship to email.
#1 on the list is contact forms on the website. How do you typically receive a response from the company when you submit something on a contact form — email.
#2 on the list is newsletters — including digital. How do you receive digital newsletters? Email.
Perhaps you should revise the article to read — emails takes 3 of the top 4 spots for how customers interact with companies.
Just my $0.02 and a prediction that email, being the most effective marketing medium in existence (confirmed again in 2007 by the DMA) is here to stay for quite some time.
Richard — I agree with you that contact forms and newsletter either produce emails or are emails. However, the question of effectiveness if funny — while email does generate the greatest ROI, it seems that effectiveness of email is decreasing:
“However, e-mail’s ROI has dropped significantly in the last year and will continue to do so, the organization said in its annual Power of Direct Marketing economic-impact study released last week.”
http://directmag.com/disciplines/email/email_roi_diminishing/
This should come as no surprise to you. I get annoyed by the amount of email that I receive. And I don’t think that I’m the only one that feels that way. Just look at trends such a Inbox Zero where you attempt to limit the number of emails in your inbox and services like Fuser that allow you to combine email communications and social networking and you’d agree that the writing is on the wall — our lives could be better if we received less emails.
That’s why I think that we’re at or near the crest of the email wave.
Thoughts?
Zero Inbox:
http://www.43folders.com/izero
Fuser:
http://www.fuser.com/
Wanted to share additional data that shows that the email backlash will continue to grow:
According to market research company Radicati Group, the average corporate e-mail user received 126 messages a day in 2007. That was a 55% increase from 2003. And by 2009 workers are expected to spend 41% of a their time managing email.
Since [EU] workers spend 25% of their time managing email today (see link below), I expect that this increase (assume from 25% to 41%) will really push email to plateau as people looks for ways to become more efficient (and send less email) or look for alternative channels of communications.
URL:
http://www.crm2day.com/news/crm/122490.php