“Experts” have pronounced email DOA on at least three occasions, yet it continues to slog away, informing people and making money — even as damming ROI questions are raised about email’s flashier social networking cousins.
That’s because there’s something very un-digital about a good email program, which is meaty and substantive — a pot roast in a marketing universe overrun with social media saltines.
A good email takes time to build and a great one retains a hint of old-world craftsmanship, yet email programs hum along pretty easily once they’re properly crafted.
Their modus operandi is also pleasantly old fashioned; an email isn’t part of a 24/7 social media stream, but instead just sits patiently in that inbox until — by god — someone reads it or deletes it.
That’s the kind of black & white, red meat certainty I can understand.
It also seems as if the public still understands email; the old saw that “social media gets the hype, email gets the order” seems true, and my small biz clients’ email programs consistently pull the kind of revenues their social media programs can’t even dream about.
Apparently, I’m not immune to the charms of social media, but I’m a bigger fan of clients making money so they can pay my invoices.
Like any survivor, email is adapting to a changing world; turns out it integrates beautifully with blogs and social networks, and in fact, for most of my clients, doing one without the other defies common sense.
More than a decade ago I ran my own email program, but gave it up because I wanted a lot less work, not more. The same happened to a client, who called me while only halfway to their email list growth goal.
They said the email program was putting their business over its capacity, and that we needed to immediately stop growing their email list before things got seriously out of hand.
I have yet to hear anyone say such things about Twitter.
Email is dead (again). Long live email.
Keep writing, Tom Chandler.
