I’m sure by now you’ve heard that email is dead. Most of the time when people talk about the death of email, it’s not about the death of email as a tool for interpersonal communications. We all still use email everyday to communicate with coworkers, friends, family and it works great.
The problem relates to communicating impersonal messages en masse. I’m not talking about spam. I’m talking about receiving notices about product recalls or getting the latest information about my cell phone coverage or being notified about coupons from my favorite restaurants. The problem with email is that my desire to participate in mass emails from relevant sources decreases over time.
For example, I used to drive a Toyota. Back then I wanted to know about Toyota-specific product recalls, service options, etc. Now I drive a Nissan. I no longer care about the Toyota emails. Same thing with home warranties, insurance, software products, book clubs, political movements, etc. We move, buy new products, switch carriers, change our opinions or just lose interest. But the email keeps coming. And sometimes opting out is more difficult than just marking the sender as spam and letting the email tool do its job.
Opt-in email isn’t the solution, but opt-in is
Opt-in email never felt right to me. Opt-in is so easy, but opt-out is not. I understand. Companies don’t want to lose you. The problem is that they already lost you; they just don’t know it. Everybody loses.
The new opt-in solutions have been available for long enough to mature, they’re just not as ubiquitous as email … yet. The first two opt-in solutions you should be using for your business are RSS and Twitter.
RSS
If you have a traditional web site, you can still produce RSS feeds. You should. If you have a blog, you most likely produce RSS automatically, but are you really using it? Are you making it easy for your readers to subscribe? Have you explained the benefits? Have you pointed them to basic instructions about how to get the most out of RSS? If not, why not?
Twitter has been called microblogging and I think that’s a great term. You can use Twitter without a blog or you can combine Twitter with your blog. In any case, if you haven’t started using Twitter, it’s time to get on board. Twitter is two-way communications like email, chat or blogging with comments. Here are some great articles to get up to speed with Twitter in general:
Twitter introductory video
An example
I recently had lunch at Chevy’s in Mesa. While we were there, the waiter provided me with their new opt-in email form and explained that by filling out the form, I’ll get one free appetizer, birthday coupons and general email coupons. Yay for free stuff!
The first thing I said to my wife after the waiter walked away is “this is the perfect example of how a company should be using Twitter.” In the form/email scenario, there are so many problems:
- The company has to print a form
- Someone has to fill out a form
- Someone else has to enter the form contents into a computer
- The recipient must ensure that desired emails don’t go into the spam bucket
- The company has to deal with the hassles of mass emailings (this is huge)
The above list doesn’t cover what happens when I decide I don’t want the mailings anymore, or what to do if I change email addresses or email programs or spam settings. It also doesn’t address the huge problems that the company will deal with by managing a large email database.
With Twitter the scenario goes like this:
- The company either prints small business cards or has a single large banner made that says “Follow us on Twitter: @whatever”
That’s it. If Chevy’s used Twitter like this, I would be able to follow them for as long as I’m interested and unfollow as soon as it’s not relevant for me anymore. Chevy’s gets to alert me (and all followers) whenever there’s a product launch or when they have a promotion. They can still send my free appetizer for following them because they get notified when new followers arrive. The upside is everywhere: no data entry or data management, no email hassles, no customer problems related to spam reports, easy opt-in and opt-out and the flexibility to message as frequently as needed.
What did I miss?
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