Do you remember sending your first email? It was a pretty cool feeling. I am sure you remember receiving your first email as well, an even better feeling. Emails were one of the keys to the success of the internet I would say. Some providers tried to charge their customers for every email sent but in the end it became completely free and it's heavily reduced our reliance on sending post (or snail mail if you will). So far so good, for a while (well 10 years or so) email marketing was the future of the web and building an email list of subscribers was a top priority for savvy online operators.
Then social came along
A few years later we started using social media channels to communicate. It started with blogs (and comments), moved on to social bookmarking and finally social networks like Facebook and thousands of others. Marketeers jumped on the bandwaggon and we now have branded Pages, feeds, profiles and what have you. I must admit that Facebook have done very well in terms of driving traffic, activity and repeat visitors to their social network. They seem to be faring well on social. But what about the others…?
Google Plus (or was it Gmail)
Have you signed up for Google Plus yet? If not, I'm sure you have received numerous emails about it. Do you have a Gmail account? You are probably bombarded with Google Plus messages from your contacts and Google themselves. The big G's whole business model here is built around pimping their email service, and then emailing everyone ad nauseum about it. You could ask whether this is social media or email media. Hopefully Google Plus will grow in to something with a life of its own and not having to rely on 20 year old technology (emails) to promote a cutting edge social network.
One of the big challenges for LinkedIn is to drive engagement amongst its members. The stats say that the average user only logs into LinkedIn 2.9 times per month – the site is not exactly addictive in other words. So what does the LinkedIn Corporation do to keep you coming back to the site? Yes you guessed it, they send us plenty of emails. Whether it's a daily or weekly network digest, group updates, regular messages being forwarded to your email inbox or anything you commented on somewhere – emails are the driving force here. The demographic on LinkedIn are probably slightly more prone to emailing, many have BlackBerrys instead of iPhones so I can see how this works. Having said that, if there is one complaint people that I train have with LinkedIn, it's the number of emails they receieve (I then show them how to turn these off).
Groupon, LastMinute.com, Blogs
What is the business model of Groupon? Daily emails to a huge database. How do LastMinute.com get me to check London West End theatre tickets every week? Emails.
I have also noticed that bloggers who are very savvy on social media are pushing their email newsletters instead. Recently, Chris Brogan who is probably the world's most successful one-man blogging band has launched a new email initiative which I've subscribed to. He is trying to put the social back into emails by saying he actually replies to any questions and wants a conversation going. I haven't replied so don't know but I believe he woudl. Dan Schawbel and his personal branding blog is another example where he started pushing a newsletter recently, although the blog is very popular in itself and on social networks.
What's the appeal of emails?
Don't know about you, but I still trust an email more than I do a message on social somewhere. That 'somewhere' is just the point, I feel like social is sometimes a full on hurricane and switch from one network to another, whereas I only have one email inbox and it feels like a safe haven. If that's the case for others, surely marketeers will want to get email subscribers before followers on social.
That's two kronor on the power of emails, please let me know what you think?
And whilst we're on the topic, check out How To Declutter Your Emails with Gmail.
Image credit Tim Morgan
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