Email - The End or a New Beginning

At a Nielson conference held last month, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg raised eyebrows by declaring the impending demise of email as the primary messaging platform. Her reasoning was based on a published Pew report, which stated that only 11% of teens utilize email every day.  Those numbers certainly suggest that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are the platform of choice for that segment of the population. They are indeed growing in popularity across all age groups but to outright declare that the end of email is near is a bit short-sighted, especially with regard to corporate communications.

A case can be made that email is the original social media network. Before Facebook and Twitter came along, email was driving targeted messaging results. It remains a pivotal component to any business marketing strategy. It shouldn't be thrown to the scrap heap in favor of Facebook or Twitter. It should be incorporated into your social networking platform. Email should be used for engagement across the entire social consumer landscape. By incorporating Facebook and Twitter into your messaging campaign, you can extend your reach to users likely to disregard promotional emails by including such offers on your social networking pages. Once the social user is engaged, subsequent emails will sustain and grow interest maximizing spend and driving ROI.

A continuously improving email program, one that implements social networking, will most assuredly make those questioning the life span of email rethink their position. By combining it with social media, email will not be facing its end but a new beginning.