The death of email? Not so fast

Loren McDonald, vice president of industry relations at Silverpop, explains why “email is not dead, dying or even falling sleep“ and why its relevance to the marketing community will never simply drop off the radar…

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg ruffled more than a few feathers recently with the comment that email is “probably going away”.  Her theory that the younger teenage generation are shifting away from email towards text and social networking posts has caused widespread debate around the future of email as a communications channel.

First things first. Email is not dead, dying or even falling sleep. Used correctly, as a targeted, efficient and personal link between brands and their consumers, email’s relevance to the marketing community will never simply drop off the radar.

This is not to say that Sandberg’s statement doesn’t have some truth – in many ways Facebook, Skype and text messaging fits with current teenage communication habits more comfortably than email, and it’s true that many teenagers would prefer to be contacted in this way. However, the crucial point that Sandberg failed to address is that teenage behaviour doesn’t necessarily translate into adult behaviour. Teenagers have very specific habits and preferences, often driven by a crowd mentality, which may be totally different to the way they will behave ten or twenty years later as consumers, and as working professionals.

When I raised the debate on Twitter recently, under the hashtag #emailisdeadanalogy, I confirmed I’m not the only one who thinks that predicting the death of anything simply because it doesn’t engage teenagers is far from logical.

Teenagers don’t, in general, drink red wine, play a lot of golf or dabble in the stock market for example.  I think I can safely say that neither red wine nor golf are going anywhere, and last time I checked, the stock market was still standing.

It is a common misconception that the emergence of new methods of communication, such as social networking, automatically heralds the decline and eventual death of more established mediums. In essence, just because SMS and Facebook are becoming more popular, this does not mean that email is any less relevant than it was five years ago. Recent research from Hotmail suggests that not only do consumers still want to receive marketing messages via email, but interest is actually growing.

Technologies and marketing mediums are in a constant state of flux, and have a remarkable ability to adapt to the changing world around them. In the same way that real-time TV viewing is shifting to deferred viewing on DVRs, on-demand and online video, so too are other mediums evolving to fit with current consumer demand. Email is no exception. Once merely a form of electronic letter writing, email has evolved into a key channel for receiving commercial messages and other communications from trusted sources such as financial institutions, favourite retailers and news sources. The majority of these interactions have been initiated by the consumer, who has chosen which brands and institutions they wish to interact with.

So what will happen when the Facebook generation grow up? While it’s impossible to say for sure, my prediction would be that, while they might use it differently, email will still be very much a part of their adult lives. Many of these developments will be positive ones, replacing unnecessary email use with newer forms of communication. An example of this would be IM and Twitter direct messages for short messaging with co-workers, replacing some of those seemingly annoying back-and-forth emails that clutter our inboxes. And, younger generations may rely less on email as a personal method of correspondence, replacing it with Facebook, chat and text messaging – habits built up during their teenage years that are hard to break.

However, I believe the Facebook generation have learned, or will learn, the value of opting in to email programmes to establish and maintain dialogues with their favourite brands, and will continue to do so.

Ultimately however, email’s continued strength relies on the marketers who use it. Keeping this technology-savvy generation engaged may seem challenging, but with the right content and relevant messaging email will still hold a strong place in the centre of the marketing mix. The greatest threat to email’s position comes not from a new generation, but from poorly executed email programmes that fail to leverage the channel’s capabilities and deliver messages that fail to speak to its recipients. As marketers, if we step up to the challenge, delivering valuable content and enticing offers to our subscribers and customers, then the channel will likely remain vibrant for decades to come.