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The communications era is upon us, no we’ve always been in it right? “Buy now”, “” or “Vote for Pedro”. So what is new? Social media tools have increased the speed at which we can now send and receive messages, but does it have an impact on traditional communications? I don’t know about you but I have unsubscribed from some of the newsletters that I read for RSS feeds as it is just faster to scan the content. One of the feeds that I subscribe to is Jeremiah Owyang who works over at PodTech, and his post entitled “I only use email to communicate with old people” where he shares about younger relatives use of email which triggered me to dig a little deeper on what impact social media is having on email marketing.

Who better to help answer the question but two people who live and breath email marketing - Kelly Rusk, Communications Manager, cardcommunications and Stefan Eyram, Business Development Manager, ExactTarget

Q - With social media’s increasing popularity and the adoption of site like MySpace and FaceBook to share messages back and forth are you seeing it impact email usage?

Kelly - With so many factors affecting email, I’m not sure it’s possible to breakdown how social networks specifically impact email usage. For example, open rates have been decreasing over the last few years, and many attribute this to the increase in image-blocking settings in email clients. It makes sense, but perhaps social networks have affected these numbers as well? I’m not sure that is measurable.

The biggest impact I’ve seen is all talk - it’s becoming harder and harder to find articles and opinions about email marketing, aside from the pessimistic “email is dying” toned articles (like the above mentioned actually!). While there are tons of great blogs and online sites dedicated solely to email, the broader publications are publishing less and less informative articles about email marketing. Email is no longer the new kid in town - in fact, the way things move quickly on the internet, email has been around for ever. However, that doesn’t mean email is less effective - afterall 94% of companies include email in their marketing programs (according to a recent report from Forrester)

Stefan - The exaltation that email is dead in the marketing trenches is far from the truth. In fact, there is actually growth in the number of emails sent by marketers as more marketers keep adding email to the mix. The recent Jupiter Research http://www.forrester.com/rb/ report titled “Email Marketing Comes of Age” (paid download) http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,40748,00.html indicates 97% of consumers use email and 94% of marketers utilize it in their marketing. Email and email marketing are pretty much ubiquitous.

Q - When it comes to target demographics for email, many email marketers still don’t track or segment based on age. Conventional wisdom suggests the younger age groups such as 18-24 are not as engaged with email. However, the Forrester report indicates a third of online consumers that set up a separate email address for promotions and offers fit into the 18-34 category.

My experience is that most of my consumer marketing clients are starting to track more detail when it comes to their online audiences and email recipients. They are dong this for many reasons, mostly so they can get away from “batch and blast” emails and use their data for segmenting and targeting. Maybe we will have better insight into this in a year.

Q - There have been many reports that suggest a shift with youth moving away from using email and towards tools various social media site - are you seeing this same type of shift? Are you also seeing it with any other age groups?

Kelly - The great thing about MySpace and Facebook and many other social media tools is they rely a lot on email - you need an email address to create an account, and by default, most of them update you by email when something has changed on your page. I would also argue, while the 18 -24 demographic may not communicate with each other via email, they still make good use of the medium.

My hunch is this demographic checks email as much, if not more, than others. The only difference is the way they use email. While they may not login to email to make plans for Friday night, I do believe they are using email and reading relevant, targeted emails from companies they trust.

Stefan - I believe there is some truth to the suggestions that youth are moving towards tolls and media sites but I also believe they are consumers of more media and more channels than their older counterparts. The younger age groups are definitely using social media sites and SMS (texting) but they are also using email. The older groups are dabbling in the social media experience but email is a big part of their life, especially as it us a key component in the business world and part of their day-to-day activities. As Forrester reports, 97% of consumers are using email.

Q - I’ve noticed that a few email vendors and consultants have added a blog as part of their corporate marketing efforts, why isn’t there better integration tools with email.

Kelly - It will come with time - Social media is still a ‘new’ thing… Yes, it’s been around for a while, and it’s popular - but is it a fad that will fade away? Certainly all the hundreds of social media sites out there will not all survive,

I have been seeing more and more companies integrating blogs/RSS and marketing with their email, and I think it’s just a matter of time before vendors make it easier/better to integrate.

Stefan - That’s a great question. Blogs have become the next-generation websites and search optimization tools. Many of the blogging solutions are focused on being easy to use and free so some functionality and integration is missing. But that is changing. ExactTarget’s integration tools are being used by many companies to “syndicate” content such as blogs for use in emails. Many of these emails are actually automated to send out the content, info or blog posts to subscribers who have indicated an interest. Furthermore, one of ExactTarget’s co-founders, Chris Baggott has recently founded a new company based on optimizing the tools for bloggers, including how they integrate to email and websites. You can read more in a recent article. What I am seeing more of these days is that marketers, and companies in general, are starting to look at more and deeper integration between their data platforms. This includes marketing, CRM, websites, web analytics and email. For example, of ExactTarget’s 5,500 + clients over 1,700 use our API (Application Programming Interface) for some level of integration, whether it’s to post a web form on their site to their email database, keep their email and marketing databases synchronized or triggering transactional messages based on activities such as an abandoned shopping cart, lack of purchases over a specific period of time or any other logic. This will continue as more companies move from tactical use of email to strategic email marketing.

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