The End Of Email – Celebrating The Imminent Death
Courtesy of flippabotamatic via Flickr
Email is dying, mark my words. It will soon go the way of Morse code, the ham radio, and hand-written letters.
Whisper it to yourself: “No. More. Email.” It’s scary, but freeing at the same time. It sounds like heresy, doesn’t it?
So how can email be dying? Emarketer reports that almost a quarter of Americans check their email upon waking in the morning and more than a third check email throughout the day. But there is evidence that email will soon be a thing of the past.
Here are the reasons why you and your customers have numbered days with the ol’ email address.
- They aren’t getting your email – Email recipients simply aren’t receiving your message. Jupiter Research (now with Forrester) reports that 17% of the U.S. population changes email addresses every six months. You cannot maintain or build a relationship that way. This churn is steadily (and increasingly) chipping away at your list.
- They don’t care about your email – Email’s value is decreasing. Open rates have declined for the last three years and 60% of subscribers don’t interact with your email messages at all. (The joint M+R/NTEN study examined non-profits – I think it’s safe to say that the results for businesses would be even more dismal.)
- They opt for Facebook over email – I have seen personally and professionally a move toward communication via social network rather than email address. By self-selecting a social group, the individual avoids spam. Quantcast reports a decline in Hotmail traffic corresponding to an increase in Facebook traffic (Yahoo and Google results inconclusive). (Seb Chan has some good ideas about why this is.)
- They might like microblogging more than social networks – As astute marketer Rich Brooks says, “While there will always be the telephone and email for us ‘old folks,’ a lot of important conversations will be going on exclusively in the social media arena.” Even though email takes less than a minute, the ambient awareness offered by microblogging platforms like Twitter and Plurk allows for a lifestream rather than direct contact or lengthy carbon copy lists.
- They switched from an address to a URL – You just aren’t a good marketer if you haven’t read Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. If you have, you know that one out of six of your customers is a “creator” – someone who regularly blogs, uploads video, or keeps a website (pg. 43 and 131). With their online home changing from inbox to blog/avatar/podcast, your customers are more find-able than ever before. The dominance of search accentuates the importance of a home base website.
Your customers don’t get your email and, when they do, they likely don’t care enough to open it. They prefer their regular hangouts like Facebook and Twitter over a boring email address. And finally, who needs an email address when they have a Google-indexed, searchable contact page on their website?
Do you notice how all of these are similar? What is shared by all the nails in email’s coffin?
Customer Empowerment
The theme that connects all of these trends is that the customer is more in charge. Hence, you cannot be shocked then at the increasing prevalence of these developments.
Marketers are no longer interrupting customers’ lives with sales pitches. Instead, they (or the good ones, at least) are concerned with providing value so that the customer will want to visit their site. The push economy has replaced the pull economy.
Are you seeing similar development in your business or personal life? Is it possible we could abandon email? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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Tags: Email, Facebook, Google, Marketing, Online marketing, Plurk, Search, Social Media, Twitter, Web 2.0
Good read. You can’t argue with facts…however, it is ironic that I emailed this post for my coworkers.
I posted it to my facebook page.. your link was convenient at the bottom of the email (which is how I received it originally). Cross-over. We should reiterate the point (which I think you’ve made consistently in this blog over the months) that content, message and value are more important than delivery channel. Smart marketers are disseminating valuable content via multiple channels – twitter links, blog, facebook, good old fashioned user forums, etc.
This is so smart. I think you’re right in that email as we know it has to die … but I think the answer will be an evolution rather than an outright death.
The problem with email is that it’s TOO easy.
Sending a friend an email doesn’t show that you care the way a letter does. If you forward an email blast to hundreds of your friends… it takes you 1 second to do, so why should they read it?
In my opinion, it’s all about what are called “credible signals”. I wrote a post about this recently (link: http://www.joshklein.net/marketing-using-credible-signals-to-close-tough-customers) … but the short version:
The easier it becomes to communicate, the less convincing you can be that your message is important.
The end of e-mail is something I cannot fathom at the present time but it might be freeing as the article puts it to not have to deal with e-mail.
[...] article, this time on SocialMediaToday, originally on OnlineMarketerBlog. The author adds Microblogging's increasing popularity to the standard [...]
[...] believe the email is dead theme, popped up again, this time on SocialMediaToday, originally on OnlineMarketerBlog. I responded in detail on [...]
I still use email quite a bit. But I would say this calendar year my use of the Facebook chat application, gmail chat, Twitter and my blog have increased by orders of magnitude. Certainly some of that would have previously happened via email.
But some of it also replaced phone conversations. You smartly point out that the power is now with the consumer. He chooses how, when and with whom he will communicate.
Excellent post DJ.
The younger generations are definitely less dependent, and Facebook has extended it’s reach greatly.
It’ll be interesting to see the evolution in corporate America.
“If you enjoyed this post, consider signing up for free updates via email or RSS.”
Ah, the irony…
about a month ago I would of agreed with you and I think you have very valid points. However, e-mail will still be conducted for business for a while.
Alot of the communication will be shifted to social media (hence the word social), however just like a letter is more formal than a email, an email is more formal than a facebook message. The ethics of communications will change and many purposes of the emails will become obsolete, however email will not go away for a while because it still has a specific function right now.
Unless Facebook can make its inbox as efficient as Google, email will still be prominent in the busines world (you also need to add the resistance to change mentality of the baby boomers in the equation too).
I will take the contrary view, at least when it comes to B2B marketing.
Not with the basics about relevant content or empowering prospects and customers. That will always remain true.
However, everyone forgets that a big piece of marketing is ‘reaching out’ to those who are suspected to be interested in a product or service.
The keywords here are ‘reaching out’.
Many gurus touted the ‘death of direct mail marketing’ when email first came out. Didn’t happen, did it? Your daily snailmail at home AND at business probably contains more advertising than personal notes, bills, orders or payments.
Companies will always want to START a conversation and business people will always have email and a phone to communicate.
The secret successful email marketing is making sure your content is relevant and adds to your prospect’s everyday professional life.
I can see emails being used less for personal communication but for business and notifications/confirmations/newsletters they are indispensable.
I remember reading that while fewer emails are being sent, more are being received due to endless amounts of facebook/twitter/ad infinitum auto updates
Thanks to everyone for all the insightful comments! I really think this is an interesting conversation and appreciate your contributions.
I will admit to a bit of hyperbole about “death.” I think it’s likely that some version of email will live on. It’s the killer app from web 1.0. But, I think Josh is correct that there will be something of an evolution (and probably a big one at that).
One thing you all made me consider (which I honestly hadn’t) was the different types of emails, especially for business. When I was writing this, I was thinking about email in general – I clearly should have considered the varying venues, methods, and reasons behind types of emails.
Thanks for commenting! This is a great discussion and gives me (and hopefully all of us) a lot to think about.
DJ – What do you mean by “who needs an email address when they have a Google-indexed, searchable contact page on their website?”
Additional thoughts concurring with some of your comment posters: This discussion reminds me of the “death of.. books..Movies..Radio..TV… VCR…DVD…profitable music” discussions. The fact is that consumption of messaging, entertainment and so forth.. no matter what the delivery channel is… seems to increase as each new technology comes on board. Facebook and LinkedIn help people connect (sometimes email, sometimes text..skype, etc).. It may reduce friction between communications.. meaning people have an easier time finding others that can help them, entertain them, service them, etc.
Interesting post. I’m not certain I agree and I’ll explain
83% of US citizens are maintaining their current email address longer than 6 months (if i reverse your statistics) plus whose to say that the ones who do change their email address dont update their details. Jupiter Research didnt say one way or the other
open rates are flawed anyway I’m afraid. have a read of this interesting article by Hubspot
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4214/Email-Open-Rate-Metrics-Why-Falling-Why-Unreliable.aspx
Facebook usage might be on the increase however the messaging function is truly awful compared to any email client. I can subscribe to email newsletters I like however peopel I am “connected” to often send things that are not of interest
Just because people are connected doesn’t mean the messages are of any value…..
Most of the usage of twitter I have seen is by seasoned Marketing professionals engaged in using social media tools or people twittering about a very personal subject matter. I cant wait to see how “big business” thinks it will tap into 140 character micro blogging marketing.
Sorry but one out of 6 of your customers are not creators. It depends on your customers, your target market may have a higher or lower proportion than that. It depends what your company does.
Email itself isn’t boring, its only boring if the people who I subscribed too are unable to create compelling content that I actually look forward to receiving. If they cant do that via email I doubt very much they’ll be able to do it elsewhere either.
Email is still very much alive and kicking and will continue if Brands have something of interest to talk about.
Mike Ashworth
Marketing Coach and Consultant
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK
[...] And finally, for now, over on the Online Marketer Blog, there’s some interesting thoughts and comments on the apparent early death throes of email. [...]
Remember when RSS was supposed to take over e-mail marketing?
@Mike Ashworth, I agree with you in large part because I think that email does succeed on content. If you continue to deliver value, people will open the email.
New social media tools like Twitter and Facebook will enhance emails, if used correctly since customers will be able to interact.
Great post!