http://www.facebook.com/vizzmedia

http://www.facebook.com/vizzmedia
http://twitter.com/vizzmedia

http://www.facebook.com/vizzmedia
http://twitter.com/vizzmedia

Just like a large crowd at a political gathering does not necessarily ensure massive votes, the number of people supporting an issue on social media may also not be a ‘winning’ decider in elections.

Social media’s risk falling in the ‘email’ zone too in the long run as people will be tired of its impact on day to day life.

I have to agree that social media, RSS, blogs, etc are still a ways off from completely replacing email marketing and clearly as annoying as it is, it does still work just like direct mail and telemarketing still work.

Frankly I wrote the blog to challenge peoples thinking and get them to consider more creative solutions. I mentioned on the LinkedIn discussion that I have really been enjoying unsubscribing from ALL of my email newsletters and replacing them with RSS feeds. It blew me away at the difference it has made to my inbox and the info is sitting there on a My Yahoo tab waiting for me when I feel like looking at it.

As far as segmentation goes, it doesn’t get much better than Fan pages – eg Mega brands have Pages for each product, people may “like” Coke but not sprite, or “like” one P&G brand and not another. The other ultra cool thing about social media vs email marketing is that it is 2 way. The will tell you when they love you and tell you when they are pissed, which is a great thing. Starbucks, Skittles, Coke, etc all have amazing social media campaigns, and all have taken heat from their fans along the way. What makes them great at it is that they listened and responded. Email is a one way outbound Web 1.0 technology that is essentially an annoying billboard in your inbox.

Lastly, there is no data to support it, but I am sure few people read most email newsletters or blasts, except the ones with exceptionally rich content. Just like almost all direct mail is tossed in the trash and a fraction of a fraction of 1% of spam gets clicked on, as someone else pointed out, if you send enough out it can work.

Great comments, thanks again,
All the best
Bill Grunau @own_your_future

It’s true that many functions of email are being replaced by social media. What I don’t believe is that email is ineffective. The numbers don’t lie and people are still making money with email. This is what separates email from true dinosaurs like the yellow pages. The yellow pages doesn’t make money anymore – it’s a dead medium. You might not like email, but it’s still bringing in sales (and not just from naive users).

Email will be dead when people stop buying because of email. Until then it will just annoy people.

You’re probably on target when it comes to communications like newsletters. But let’s face it, an e-commerce site with a well groomed list and some intelligent segmentation can ring up some serious sales.

How would you replicate email segmentation with a Facebook page or a Twitter account? I’m up for being convinced, I just haven’t seen the evidence yet. At least not on a regular basis for the average business without a dedicated IM/SM manager.

Note that newspaper advertising, direct mail and telemarketing are still used even though most would agree these are archaic marketing methods. The strategy with all of these, including email marketing, devolves to the brute force method – if we put enough money into it and throw enough out there something will stick.

So yes, of course email marketing will never entirely die, just like newspaper and direct mail will always be around, but its prime is loooong gone.
all the best,
Bill Grunau, @own_your_future