Mele’s Musings

For Some Things, Good Old Email Beats Social

We know all about you, social media.  You’re the new cool kid on the block.  Everyone wants to hang out with you.  Everyone wants to be your friend.  You’re mysterious and intriguing.  Not like plain old email over there.

Poor email.  He used to be the cool kid at one time.  People used to tie up their phone lines just to be with him.  Used to go out of their way just to check in with him.  Then you came along, social, and messed everything up.  Now nobody wants email.

But wait, not so fast.  According to a study from Forrester and another by Harris, consumers are much more open to email messages from brands than they are via social.  What?  How can that be?  Isn’t social the new way to communicate?

Well, yes and no.

According to the two studies, users feel much more comfortable with email mainly due to two factors: opt-in (permission) and privacy.  It seems that consumers feel more in control of marketing messages that come via email, and therefore are more open to them.

And this makes sense.  Email is a much more private, and much less open domain than social.  While social is personal, it can be a bit too personal for brands.  Afterall, no one else sees my inbox, and via my email, it is hard to get other personal information about me.  And, recently, email has begun to feel like a much more formal and professional system.  (In fact, it will be interesting to see over time if users start to parse their social identities more to keep some things private to only the closest of friends.  I wonder if the free-form totally open days of social media are going to last long-term. But I digress.)

Social, on the other hand, is highly public.  Because of that, consumers are more sensitive about what gets exposed in their social streams.  There might be some brands or some marketing messages that I frankly do not want my friends or family or colleagues to see.  They may reveal things about me - health, lifestyle, etc. - that are not ok to share.

Which brings up a few important points for marketers:

First, marketers must be careful about taking too much liberty with users based on what they post.  Just because a person mentions a brand in their Facebook or Twitter stream does not mean that they want the brand to respond.  Marketers should always ask for permission before sending personalized messages, or messages to a specific person (whether in email or in social media).  And as for following someone on Twitter automatically because they mentioned your brand?  To me, that feels a little creepy.

Second, brands must be aware that, despite the fact that users are comfortable posting all sorts of personal information online (for reasons that sometimes boggle the mind), that does not mean that they do not still have a sense of privacy or personal space.   A brand is not a friend - a person is a friend.  Because of this, brands need to consider very carefully the information and messaging they decide to post or send in social networks.  There is no implicit reciprocal relationship with a brand like there is with a person.  Customer service lines hardly count.

This is not to say that social is out.  Another recent study noted in MediaPost indicates that people this holiday season will be seeking deals through social sites.  This will happen in two ways: on their own, people will publicly post deals they find to family and friends; and companies will do it by announcing deals through social media.  Two important pieces again, though.  If the information is personal, it is generally going to come from friends, not brands.  And, if the information does come from brands, the expectation is that it is fairly general and transactional in nature.  As I mentioned in a previous post, brands can communicate effectively in social by thinking about it as “search in reverse.”  In other words, where search captures ready demand (people have to know what they are looking for before they search for it), social can create demand.

So, email, you’re not such an outcast after all.  Turns out that, for brands, email is a great place to build relationships and send personal and direct messages to consumers.  Welcome back!

Tweet This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post