The future of email?

Published May 30, 2008 by Mathew Patterson

It's easy when reading about people overwhelmed by email, the rise of spam and systems like Inbox Zero to see a bleak future for email.

There's no doubt that some of the email we get should not be in our inbox - some of it would be better off as an RSS feed, or on a website. However, email continues to grow year on year, so it's certainly not going anywhere fast.

At Webstock this year we heard that 90%+ of people had never heard of RSS at all! Over at Adventures in Email Marketing Anna Banane has a thoughtful post on this topic, forcusing particularly on the idea that social networks like Facebook will replace email.

Social networks *need* email. Like a drug. How do you register for them? Email. How do you get little notifications all day? Email. It’s the intermediary step between getting acquainted and total obsession with a social network: email.

She's right! Rather than replacing email, we are seeing applications linking in to email more than ever before. You can now reply directly to your Basecamp messages from your inbox, and see it show up in your account.

You can email people through Facebook without them having to have a Facebook account at all. Email is becoming a vital hub in our electronic lives.

At Campaign Monitor we're obviously biased, but we certainly don't see a huge drop off in email coming any time soon. What we do see is a need to ensure that the emails you send are as valuable as possible.

That could mean figuring out what your subscribers are interested in, and using segmenting to split them into smaller and smaller groups.

How have you seen your use of email change? Where do you see email going in the future?

3 Comments

Posted in: Observations & Answers

3 Comments

Justin D
May 31, 2008 6:43pm

Wow!!! Where is email going? I think that is a loaded questions, but a good one. I see email continuing to grow as a mechanism for transactional, and 1-to-1 messaging. I can also see email becoming behavioral based, and more integrated with SMS and other mobile messaging platforms.

With analytics, 4D modeling, advanced segmentation, dynamic web pages, and applications becoming smarter, email can be a powerful mechanism for communication more and more targeted messages to consumers or other businesses. With technologies becoming more advanced and easier to use. Email can hold its position in the internet marketing space. After all compared to other forms of communication email is still a baby. As email matures, businesses and organizations will begin to use email in more and more powerful ways.

Like I said it’s a loaded question, and I’m sure many people have their opinions. That’s just my two clicks.
Ben Prendergast
May 31, 2008 8:43pm

It always amazes me that the blogosphere thinks RSS is pervasive. It just isn’t.
Zach
June 3, 2008 12:08pm

In the future, I see email evolving beyond basic basic html & css. Applications that we currently view separately will begin to converge. For example, I think we’ll eventually see applications such as Outlook converged or built-into other applications such as Word or Excel. Both of which I think will have native support for displaying their own documents within email.

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