Email is Dead? Long Live Email

First there were rumblings that direct mail was dying. Then TechCrunch said Web2.0 was dying. Yea right! What medium is the next victim? Email, according to a recent article by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Email is not king anymore because Web 2.0 platforms like Twitter and Facebook are the new king in town, said the WSJ. Could email really be fading away? Let’s take a look at the facts.

Email grew 21% between 2008-2009.

In August 2009, 276.9 million people used email in the US and abroad as compared to 229.2 million people in August of 2008 according to the Nielsen Company.

Social network demographics can be skewed. What percentage are really “active users” and communicate via social networks daily?

Between 2008 and 2009 the number of users on social-networking and other community sites jumped 31% to 301.5 million people. While this stat is technically true, many people who sign up for social networks are not on them as much as they are on email. In a recent study by First Monday: Peer Reviewed Journal on the Internet - of 309,740 twitter users, 211,024 posted 2x or more in 206 days. Oddly they describe this audience as "active users". A study by Harvard stated that 10% of active users account for 90% of all tweets. Industry expert and strategist, Jeremiah Owyang blogged a few months ago that “the actual active conversion rate will often range from 10-40% of actual users sticking around and using the social network, so don’t be fooled by puffed numbers.”

PDA’s drive email use.

Many email users are connected to their email for a large part of the day whether they are at the office, using a PDA, etc. According to a study by Exact Target, “43% of Blackberry users and 42% of iPhone users report using email more often over the past six months, compared to fewer than 3% who are using email less often.” Currently there are approximately 139 million mobile email users, according to a study by the Radicati Group. That figure is expected to increase to over 1 billion mailboxes by 2013. 

Leveraging email and social networks is a good engagement strategy for reinforcing the message.

While email still remains one of the more popular channels that nonprofits use to communicate with supporters, reaching them via multi-channels is critical to growing a nonprofit’s list and expanding its outreach. Messages should also be tweaked for each channel’s audience. For example, a 140 character fundraising pitch via Twitter would be framed much differently then a 300-word heart-felt email fundraising appeal filled with compelling photos or graphics. Also, different fundraising goals should be set because they are very different mediums. At the end of the day, nonprofits are still raising much more money via email fundraising appeals then they are through social networking.

So no, email is not dying. But if your nonprofit isn’t take advantage of leveraging multi-channel marketing to reach current supporters and recruit new members, then yes your nonprofit could be left in the dark.

Receive monthly updates

Comments

[Alison Heittman]

Email isn't dying - but how it is used is definitely changing. For example, once upon a time a topic such as this might have been discussed on an email list like DC Web Women. Today, it's a blog post & our discussion is happening here, in the comments. =)

American businesses used to rely only on mail and newspaper advertising. At this point, most of them have a website, and a percentage are starting to utilize mailing lists. Most businesses are not early adopters when it comes to technology, so it's a pretty safe bet that email numbers will continue to grow as more of them test the waters of email marketing. Hopefully it won't take them as long to find and make use of Twitter....

I love how these "death of technology" articles never take into account how long conservative markets take to even consider using the thing that is being proclaimed as dead!

[jon]

It's not that email is dying out. It's just that it's no longer the single dominant online communication mechanism. Chat/IM and SMS got to email-like levels several years ago. Social network sites are now up there as well.

From an advocacy side, as Allyson says, you need a multi-channel approach. One of the things I notice, though, is that the attention and resources applied to email frequently far outweigh those going to other media. With the recent Patriot Act activism, I saw "email your Senator" campaigns from ACLU, EFF, CREDO Action and Democrats.com, DownsizeDC, the American Library Association, the Arab American Institute, BORDC, and True Majority.

By contrast, as far as I know, Get FISA Right was the only group trying to use social network sites to contact legislators.*

More balanced investment in a multi-channel campaign would lead to substantially better results -- especially, especially, especially with Milliennials. Social network activism and the Patriot Act (DRAFT) at http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=1089 has more discussion of this specifically focused on civil liberties activism, but the general dynamics are true more broadly.

jon

PS: As for the Marketing Sherpa results ... Considering that it's drawn from their "SPAM Complainers survey", and appears on a page with prominent ads for their email marketing benchmark report, their email summit, and their email best practices group, I wonder whether they've potentially got some biases in their sample set or methodology.

* although CREDO Action did a great job with the viral "share this" for their email campaign.

[Jo Lee]

Hi Allyson:

As someone that runs a free email advocacy service - CitizenSpeak.org - I totally appreciate this post.

However, I wonder how much of that email growth between 08 and 09 was due to emails from FB, Twitter.. about message updates?

Thanks for the great blog!

Jo