Commentary
Social Media Vs. Email: The Debate Continues
- by Elie Ashery , April 8, 2009
Email was not built for socializing. The basics of email are still the same as they were when the medium was first put to use with DARPA net. Very little has changed over the past 40 years, with the exception of HTML rendering and a few other nuances. As a result of email's efficiency and cost, it had an easy win for displacing the U.S. Postal Service for social correspondences. However, as an incumbent against social media networks, email will sorely lose ground in the coming years because of its inability to evolve as a medium and the corruption of the medium by spam. Social media networks build on the email experience, enhancing its basic features with true interactive tools and providing a far superior experience.
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Who cares If social media relies on email? In defense of email in this debate, many ESPs and email marketers argue that email is the backbone of social media, providing the timely alerts that prompt users to respond to one another. Based on this fact, they argue that social media and email exist symbiotically, feeding off one another's strengths and coexisting in a harmonious marketing world. I strongly disagree with this sentiment. Social media dilutes email's luster, as it diverts activity away from the medium to a closed network. This is not a symbiotic coexistence. This is one medium displacing another while reducing it to a cheap pager.
Stop thinking you can integrate email with social media. A lot of email marketers have come up with the thought process of, "if we can't send email to social networks, we should try to integrate the two." I have my sincere doubts that it's possible to integrate email with social media for every industry. Despite social media's infancy, people are already annoyed that their so called "friends" are constantly trying to pitch cosmetics, insurance, mortgages and other products and services, intruding on their "social" experience. Now email marketers are giddy about the prospects of someone receiving an email and posting it to Facebook or MySpace. Please! I don't doubt that this happens -- but thinking it will occur on such a scale that it will increase ROI using the same crappy content is ridiculous. If you want to create buzz, give them something real and unique to talk about. Just using a social media link doesn't cut it. It didn't with "forward to a friend" and it won't for social media. either.
Your inbox will soon look like your metal mailbox. When was the last time you received a personal letter in that useless hunk of metal crap sitting on your front lawn? In fact, when have you found anything of value in there lately? Your inbox will soon be reminiscent of your mailbox, as social correspondence shifts from email to social media. Once you remove "social" email from your inbox, what's left? Junk, commercial email (some people will categorize commercial email as the former) and bill reminders. How social are those? Real fun! Something I really want to share with my friends and family. Face it. The inbox is changing and will be marginalized for social use.
The last holdout of hope for email to retain its crown -- From what I can see, there is one last hope for email to remain a superior marketing channel for the long run. If social media networks become the next inbox providers by opening their intra email systems, only then can email's luster be restored. I have been predicting this for the past couple of years and have been wrong... so far. My argument is that social media networks will need to continue to find ways to keep people glued to their screens for longer periods of time so that they can sell more ads or command higher prices from their existing advertisers. Since email is a major consumer of time, it's a natural fit for social media networks. While this scenario has not yet come to pass, I'm still standing strong by my prediction.
Email will not die -- just be marginalized. Just as direct mail isn't completely dead, email isn't going anywhere, either. It's still the most cost-effective marketing medium and delivers the biggest bang for the buck. However, email's effectiveness over time will become marginalized for consumer marketers as social interaction over the Internet shifts from email to social networks.
Since I'm the CEO of an email service provider, some critics might think I'm crazy for spreading the idea that email will soon become marginalized. To them my answer is, it was crazier for railroad barons to think they were in the railroad business when they saw their first airplane in the sky.
You're pretty far off base here.
I'd argue that email was indeed built for socializing, and the many 8-10 email back and forth chains I have sitting in my inbox are evidence.
Email also have the distinct advantage of being 1:1. As a marketer, I can (and should) hyper-target messaging to each subscriber to increase relevance. As an individual, I very much like the fact that I can email someone (personal or business context) without the contents showing up on somebody's wall.
You're right that F2F doesn't generate a ton of measurable actions in many cases, but that doesn't mean that quality email offers don't get forwarded. They do, just not in the mechanism that's trackable. The same may happen with Share to Social via ESPs, but maybe we should actually roll it out and test it before you pronounce it a failure?
I agree that your real "friends" (whatever that distinction is worth at this point) may opt to communicate with you via social messaging. But business communication and commercial offers will continue to arrive in the inbox. You sound as if you believe nobody will want to see relevant, commercial offers they have asked to receive. I still get catalogs that I want to receive in my physical mailbox, and I read them - because I'm shopping.
I believe you're right about the eventual hybrid inbox model where tools like Facebook Connect will automatically tell you which of your friends have clicked on an email offer from within the email. Social context will be incorporated into the body of email messages. As Charlene Li says, eventually social data will be "in the air" and ubiquitous.
There is actually a lot of talk about MySpace likely beginning to offer e-mail service. Their employees recently had their addresses changed from @myspace.com to @myspacecorp.com.
Seems that prediction of yours may just be starting to come to pass...
For my part, of course, I'll stick to Gmail.
What will prevent Twitter from being overwhelmed by Spam just as email has been?
Added to some of the above comments: If you are my friend and I want to communicate with you, I will email YOU. When you want to communicate with ME, you will email me. Most of us, too, are not interested in what you have to say to other people nor have the time to be bothered. And far as my regular mail box, we still do get a lot of important stuff in there, including a birthday card, a real card that shows you cared enough to take 60 seconds to do something for someone else. Get off your tuchas and thumbs and do something.
Like Jason, I disagree that email isn't social. It's inherently social. I actually think your arguments strengthened the case for email's dominant role. That's not to say it won't evolve over the years, but so will "social media." I even think there will be a role for newspapers. Call me crazy!
I never said email doesn't work or won't work in the future. It obviously does otherwise I wouldn't be in the business. All I'm saying is that it's going to be marginalized by choices and a dominant choice is going to be social media.
Paula - I still get birthday cards too! Once a year! What does your mailbox look like the other 364 days of the year? If you are my age (34) or older, I promise your kids and grand kids will be too freakin' lazy to buy and mail you a birthday card. Look at the modern conveniences these kids have with instant gratification. You tell me the trends?
Craig - The trend is your friend! Don't ignore it! Embrace it! Keep in mind this isn't an article but a blog post. I never stated any facts just thoughts. Also, I don't have dreams because my infant son keeps me up all night... wanna babysit? Lighten up a little!
Jason - I never said putting social media links in email won't work... I said it wasn't practical to do so with the same crappy email content. However, I'm in total agreement with the 1:1 factor of email... not that many marketers take advantage of it.
Also, if you're one of those dorks that likes to tell your friends on FaceBook about the cool new white paper your company released... YOU AREN'T COOL AND DON'T FRIEND ME! Save it for LinkedIn. I work 14 hour days too but I don't care about your white paper, business blog, case study or survey when I'm trying to find out what my drinking buddies are doing or the latest neighborhood gossip. Get a life!
@Elie - I've been in the email space since about the time that you hit legal drinking age and have been hearing this same dribble in one form or another ever since.
Everything WANTS to be as SUCCESSFUL as email. If not, then why the perpetual comparison to email as its next replacement.
Email has been successful since before Graphic User Interface hit the Web. You can't say the same about ANY other online medium.
With over 150 ESPs in the market today, what will be marginalized are the small under-the-radar ESPs that have a hard time gaining market share that in turn may blame that lack of market share on Social Media and what it's doing rather than what they're not doing.
@Jason, spot on as usual!
@Devin makes a good point that if email were on it's way to marginalization, why is MySpace adding email to their mix?
I dissagree with almost all the points above also. I think many of us are biased though, but so is Elie to a certain extent. There will be a shakeup in the near future, but every medium will find it's own purpose. I still remember this same arguement about RSS killing email. It didn't, and neither with social media. If you want to talk about the party you went to last night with your new girlfriend, Facebook is great for that. If you want to know about the latest news in whatever area you are interested in, I think email still has a distinct advantage in many ways...unless you like getting 80 tweets with tiny urls.
Elie,
No written long hand with grammar and spelling in tact thank you notes = no more gifts. A friend's kids at 14 still send notes. Ignorant parents breed ignorant kids.
John - I've been in the email space before I drinking age and I agree email is still the Internet's killer app. However, I'm not going to bury my head in the sand and pretend that Social Media isn't taking major market share away from email.
BTW: My tiny, non-venture backed, profitable ESP that flies under the radar continues to grow adding hundreds of middle market clients annually. We are hiring people in this terrible economy and everyone is well compensated. I thank email marketing every day for my success!
@Elie - "If you are my age (34)" makes you about 21 in 1996 when I started in the email space, so if you were old enough to legally drink, it hadn't been for long.
Your "tiny, non-venture backed, profitable ESP" that "continues to grow adding hundreds of middle market clients annually" belies your position that "social media is rapidly overtaking email for these same correspondences" and is "taking major market share away from email".
You can't have it both ways.
John,
Please read my blog post in its entirety. I never said email is dead or will die. Email works and will continue to work otherwise I wouldn't have mortgaged my house five years ago to fund Gold Lasso. Just as direct mail continues to work 150 years later for some industries, so too will email in 20 years. My blog is about trends and how it's important for email marketers to understand the social media trend. It seems as though many ESPs already get this hence SilverPop branding themselves as a customer engagement company and ExactTarget as a marketing messaging company. This kind of market positioning uses email but doesn't rely on it exclusively for continued future growth. Why? Because other channels such as social media are a preferred channel for younger generations. This is what marketers call a growing trend. Unlike RSS which didn't and still doesn't have real market adoption, FaceBook with 200M users is a different story. If you can't get this than you're not as smart as your LinkedIn profile makes you out to be. I'm not having it both ways... I'm trend spotting. Please stop trying to twist my words for the people who are too lazy to ready the whole blog post and only read comments. And as far as my age goes, I started a venture backed dot com when I was 21 that completely relied on search and email marketing. The company was purchased by MarketResarch.com. So yes, I do have just a little bit of experience.
I forgot to address one last thing...
Greg, I humbly disagree with you that FaceBook is only good for all inclusive socializing. There's definitely a private aspect to the service and the intra email features pretty much mimic any other email service that's out there. People ARE communicating very private things via FaceBook.
@Elie - I'd forgotten all about this until Morgan's post today....
Thanks for letting me know what marketers call things.... what a relief that I don't have to worry about that anymore....
I still stand by my original premise; "Everything WANTS to be as SUCCESSFUL as email. If not, then why the perpetual comparison to email as its next replacement."
I really don't care what trend it is, that doesn't automatically assume that I don't see trends as well. Maybe it's just that we have a different perception.
Comments like, "Email will not die -- just be marginalized", suggest that you believe that social media will cut email down a few pegs. That's pretty much what I took away from your article, and from the looks of the other comments I'm not the only one.