Commentary

Is Email Marketing Next For Extinction?

by Per Lofgren , February 9, 2009

The most frequent criticism I've heard about the new Apple iPhone is that it "doesn't handle email too well," as least not when compared to a BlackBerry. When you look at the iPhone home screen you get an idea why. Email is there, of course, but so is YouTube and SMS, and usually the free applications for Facebook and MySpace Mobile.

Why would Apple apparently place so little emphasis on email? The answer is simple. For the young consumer, email isn't the primary communications channel that it is in the business world. A friend of mine who is the Principal of a school in Sweden tried to email the school list but got very little response. When he asked his pupils why they hadn't replied, the most common answer was that they hadn't read his email.

Young people don't communicate that much via email anymore. They don't devote time to checking their emails and so the feedback on sent emails is slow and indirect. They prefer to communicate via faster and more direct ways such as SMS, online communities and web messaging.

There has been much hype about the web 2.0 generation, and the 16- to 19-year-olds we were watching with some curiosity a few years ago are now the next recruits into our businesses. My friend's pupils will be our employees just a few years from now.

Will they bring their own communications preferences into the workplace with them, or adopt email as we "old folks" do? My own view is that it will be the former, just as the generation before ours brought computing into the workplace and we brought the Internet and email.

It means that as managers, we have to learn to regulate, monitor and track communications within these almost anarchic, fast-moving virtual environments. That will bring its own challenges.

As direct marketers, we have to recognize that communications channels will change every few years, and that we will have to adapt our technologies or risk missing some of our key target groups. As we have already seen in the music sector, the use of online communities can potentially make marketing budgets stretch further because members of those communities pass the message to each other, as long as your offering is good enough to recommend!

We will also have to become more used to direct marketing being a two-way process. Online reviewers and commentators are ruthless in their evaluation of products and services and for the first time, have the ability to make their judgements visible to the world.

It seemed so much simpler to send out well-thought-out, now old-fashioned email and wait for the response. The Web 2.0 generation recruit in his or her first job would probably view it with the same curious detachment as a stone-age axe head. Companies must embrace the use of social media and even more instant communication and work these methods into their marketing outreach.

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5 comments about "Is Email Marketing Next For Extinction?".

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Steven Kane from LuckyLabs, February 9, 2009 at 9:50 a.m.
school kids don't carry smartphones in nearly the numbers as workplace people do, so workers will read the email
also, you can't get fired from school for not reading the memo; you can get fired from work
certainly new generayions change the workplace (duh), but in equal measure growing and entering the workplace changes new generations
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Michael Strassman from Similarweb, February 9, 2009 at 10:23 a.m.

Channels changing "every few years" is a recent phenomenon, so that's not much of an argument for throwing out email. More to the point, IM, social media, and other new apps have inherent weaknesses as mediums for business communication, mostly having to do w/ inadequate archiving and the fact that they are too immediate and discourage the sort of thought and reflection required for effective business communication. Just because 'the kids' like YouTube and video games, doesn't mean we're going to start inserting office memos in viral videos and GTA-3 so they read it. They'll learn how to use email like everyone else, until something better--not just newer and quicker--comes along.

Leeann Fleming from Spark PR Marketing, February 9, 2009 at 10:30 a.m.

When interns are fired for using MySpace and Facebook at work, the ones left figure out email fast. But, you're right. I signed up for unlimited text on my blackberry because everyone I know younger than 30 seems to prefer texting to voice or traditional email, and as I'm mentoring, I have to be able to respond. I've also started to send emails via traditional means AND copy the text to a Facebook post, to make sure it's seen. The next few years will be fascinating - and scary to those of us still irritated by texting (like me) when it seems a simple phone call would be more efficient. Meanwhile, I've got a client in her 60s who is still not comprehending the power of the Internet and insists on faxing documents.

Mike Spring from Voice Coaches, February 9, 2009 at 11:01 a.m.

It's an interesting question. My assumption is that it will start with a blending of both worlds. The younger generation will have to respect the e-mail hierarchy if that's what their employers require. But I suspect that they will quickly start to influence how things are communicated, introducing more and more integration of methods such as text messages, instant messaging, and social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook. Great commentary!

Rob Reese from McGraw-Hill Professional, February 9, 2009 at 2:19 p.m.

I would argue that the iPhone has helped email marketing more than it has hurt. As a person who markets to professionals on mobile devices much of the time, my team has struggled with delivering a text message that is visually compelling enough to keep from getting deleted quickly. iPhone has helped this by supporting HTML.

Additionally, as text and other mobile messaging formats develop more features such as embedded pictures, formatting, etc. - the line between formats begins to blur. So even if email is going away with younger audiences, they will still need to communicate and message in increasingly complex formats.