• by Cynthia Edwards , July 13, 2009

Imagine you are George or Jane Jetson, living in a skypad some time in the far future. There you are, laboriously pressing buttons to run the factory or do the housework, and suddenly you hear a voice: "You've got mail!"

 

Use your imagination and picture what that email looks like. How was it delivered? What does it contain? How will you respond?

I asked my colleagues on the eCRM team at Razorfish to come up with some blue-sky ideas about email in the distant beyond, and here are some of our hopes and fears for the future.

I'm into gadgets, so my first thoughts were all about devices. I'd like Rosie the Robot to assimilate and filter my email, so I could ask her questions like, "Any good deals on shoes today?" "Did my boss send anything?" How's Mom today?" Rosie would have the intelligence to give simple or full answers, according to my whim, recall my favorite queries, alert me when something urgent comes in -- and tell a good joke.

In "The Jetsons," streaming video devices pop up whenever a communication is initiated, and I like that too. I'd really love an interactive holographic display for email that could be invoked anywhere, taking up no desk space and gathering no dust between uses.

Our strategists were curious to know how much more advanced targeting could get in the future. Teresa Caro, CRM strategy director, dreams of running a marketing empire with real-time decisioning solutions to drive real-time content and offers to George and Jane Jetson. She can see data, sales, behavioral activity, attitudinal and other key data points feeding a propensity modeling technology. Customers would be moved into appropriate communication streams automatically (retention, win-back, etc.) and rewarded or incented based on their value. Of course, in Teresa's dream, the data would integrate all media sources and output optimal email frequency and cadence based on other communications. And, it would allow for real-time testing and optimization.

On his way to push buttons at Spacely Space Sprockets, strategy director Richard Rushing would like video email to come up on the Heads Up Display in his Chrysler Italia Space Runabout, so he can see his email while driving and respond to it with verbal commands. (Let's hope he's on auto-pilot while navigating the busy space-lanes.)

Whitney Hutchinson, group director of strategy and account services, also wants to ditch the dust-collecting devices and receive all her email and other communications through a unified interface on "a little keychain-like doodad" -- accessed using fingerprint security. Whitney also wants all her shopping history accessible via this device, such as products purchased, prices, account balances, and so on.

Not surprisingly, CRM manager Erik Bigelow, who codes all our client emails, wants email to stay "simple and direct." (Give the presentation layer guy a break with coding for all these new devices!) He does see, in the future, the usefulness of adding a holographic popup for coupons. But for now, he'd be happy if video email would just get out of beta.

Project manager Jason Brian is envisioning smart phones that would empower the people to make government decisions via email voting, with voting registration by SIM card. However, he foresees a dark side: high tech voter fraud (hanging chads in the SIM card?) and "robo-emails" with doctored video of politicians to sway the undecided voters. (I think we've left the Jetsons and wandered into Get Smart territory - imagine if KAOS had email!)

Leave it to our creative director, Jaime Senior, to want location-based, mind-reading emails that will keep him from taking the moving slidewalk out of Mars-Megastore when no salesman is available. As he turns to go, an email arrives on his mobile doodad offering him an extra 15% off the Inviso-screen television he came in to buy. Jaime would have opted in to get these messages when he signed up for his Mars-Megastore Rewards Card.

Although we have varying visions of the future, our whole team agreed that flawless relevance, timeliness, and personalization were the ultimate dream for the future of email. And on that distant day, customers and marketers will finally be in total harmony.