How do you *intend* to use email today?
If you’re like most people, you intend to send and receive messages with people you know (or know of), and to get information you’ve opted in to receive.
Now think of what actually happens. According to the anti-virus/anti-spyware software company Symantec, spam now accounts for nearly 90% of all worldwide email traffic. As spammers get more sophisticated, and junk mail filters struggle to keep up, you spend most of your time weeding through the trash that made it past the filter, and digging through the trash for emails that should have made it past the filter but didn’t.
There’s an old saw about the railroads going defunct in the early 20th century. The barons thought they were in the railroad industry. Turned out, they were in the transportation industry, and cars ran them off the rails.
It’s the same idea with email. We’re not talking about an email industry. We’re talking about the communications industry. Specifically for businesses, we’re talking about the permission-based marketing industry. And though email may be alive today, in reality it’s a dead man walking and doesn’t know it yet.
The Brief and Possibly Over-Simplified History of Permission-Based Marketing
Do you still get automated telemarketing calls, even though your phone number is on the Do Not Call list? There are only so many phone numbers, and so very many automated ways to dial them.
Think of “Do Not Call” as Permission Marketing Version 0.5. It’s an opt-out that only stops the honest people. (Heck, you have to pay the phone company to keep your phone number out of their hard copy and online directories. Clearly, permission marketing needed to get better than that.)
Now, look at email. You can’t guess at email addresses en masse the same way you can guess at phone numbers. But once your email address is “out there,” there’s no pulling it back. The FTC’s CAN-SPAM law is Permission Marketing Version 1.0. You can opt in and opt out, but again, it only stops the people who obey the law. And as you can tell from your inbox, so very many people aren’t bothering with the law.
Social sites like Facebook and Twitter take permission-based marketing to a new level – Permission Marketing Version 2.0. Whereas CAN-SPAM and Do Not Call only stop the scrupulous actors, Facebook and Twitter stops the unscrupulous actors, too. Someone spamming you? Un-like them, de-friend them, unfollow them, block them, report them if need be. Problem solved.
Really. It’s really that simple. The control is in your court.
To See the Future, Go Back to School
What are high-school kids doing today? Are they using email? Or is an email address just a disposable key to get access to social sites?
That’s what the inestimable John Herman has discovered. (I’ve had the pleasure of working with John while he filmed me getting pegged in the head with a dodgeball for a client’s video, and chatted briefly with him after seeing him speak at Social Media Breakfast NH. Based on those interactions, and the word of mouth he has in this state, I respect and admire him way more than I should openly say at this stage of our relationship, or lack thereof.)
John teaches media literacy at a local high school, and in the process has also become something of a social anthropologist. He sees these consumers and future business people interacting via social networks – and texting, of course, which brings up the whole shift-to-mobile conversation that we’ll have to have in another post – and completely ignoring traditional email accounts.
Do any of us adults in business treat our email addresses so dismissively? Certainly the majority don’t. But we’ll be going the way of the dodo soon enough. And so will email.
Another way to look at it: Mashable has a subscription box on their site that says, “Join more than 2.8 million people following Mashable,” and has five prominent options – Google Buzz, Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and email. What proportion of that is email? As of 10/5/10, here’s the breakdown they provided:
« Twitter: 2,090,468
« RSS: 515,376
« Facebook: 206,034
« Buzz: 26,066
Doing the math, that’s 2,837,944 right there. There’s a good chance Mashable would celebrate publicly when they cross the 3 million mark, so odds are there are fewer than 162,000 email subscribers. No small number, but that means email isn’t in the top three channels for connecting with their audience.
You may say that it’s because Mashable appeals to social media types who are already predisposed to choose those options over email. I say that’s exactly the point – it’s how the population is evolving.
Constant Contact, the email marketing service provider for hundreds of thousands of small businesses and non-profits, has seen the writing on the wall. In the last year alone, they’ve heavily ramped up their social media marketing efforts and support. Eric Groves, their SVP of Global Market Development, is leading that charge publicly on their Constant Commentary Blog. The company has free downloadable guides on social media topics, a partnership with the social media platform management tool HootSuite, and even acquired Nutshell Mail, a free social media monitoring tool that sends info about your social channels to your inbox.
[UPDATE: Another email marketing company, Blue Sky Factory, recently hired new media luminary and PodCamp co-founder Chris Penn as their VP of Strategy and Innovation. We're sensing a trend here...]
It’s safe to say the only reason email is alive right now is because of habit and because of corporations. At this point, no Fortune-100-sized company is going to trade in email for a company-wide intranet social network.
Oh…wait. Earlier this year Walmart launched myWalmart, a custom intranet-based social network, with about 90% employee adoption. Hmmm. What’s next – a similar partner-and-supplier network? In that case, would there be any need for employees to have @Walmart.com email addresses anymore?
If you’re trying to get a hold of someone electronically, you’re bound to have a better shot getting the attention of people to whom you’re not connected by sending a personally-targeted FB message or Twitter @reply, or Twitter direct message. Those aren’t accidentally getting forwarded into junk folders, or lost in a sea of spam that the junk filter missed.
That said, email marketing is still happening for now, and support on that topic is still necessary because it’s still relevant…today.
But those todays are numbered.
That’s what Jimi Hendrix asked the world back in 1967, when *groovy* things appeared to be happening in science, culture, art, technology, human connectivity, and the bold exploration of frontiers of space and cerebrum.
Just a few years ago, it was acceptable and fine to have a nice-looking, well-behaving site that showcased your business, products, and services, shared a bit about your company or organization, and provided an easy way to connect via phone and email. Some of the hip sites streamed news feeds and press releases, and the really cutting-edge sites had a link to their blog in a decently prominent location.
1) The GENIUS and functionality of thriving social media platforms
Your Power Core has a distinct voice and personality all of its own. It is home to and generator of your brand energy. No matter what you think your industry expects or your judges insist, your Power Core is conversational, inviting, human. Old-school communication – stiff, official, unfriendly – is out. Please, don’t let anyone tell you differently. It will cost you, big time.
BOTTOM LINE: Your Power Core needs to radiate the virtues of integration, compatibility, and hassle-free content consumption. VERSATILE content is king – content conceived, designed, and even ALLOWED to shoot effortlessly across these ever-spoking media channels, meeting discerning eyeballs wherever they choose to blink.
* Visibility and reach (blogging, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are now part of their overall marketing ecosystem)
So, if you’re a designer or programmer who has your own recommendations on how this next generation of content hubs and online power centers should be conceived and crafted, please, share your perspective! Leave a comment on our “A-Ha!” Blog at 
She noted how there’s a lot of training and information out there for professionals just starting out on Facebook, but not so much for experienced users looking for that next-level kind of support. The “Facebook Marketing: Customization, Fan-building, and Advertising” presentation was designed to address that need.
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