FutureWatch: what's coming our way?

Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on February 26, 2008

There are two reasons to keep half an eye on the future of email.

First, the more you know, the better you can prepare for (and exploit) coming developments in your marketing efforts.

Second, you can drop little comments into meetings and sound like you have a finger pressed hard on the pulse of the online world.

Arguably, the two big challenges for email marketing are "spam and security" (hence the interest in authentication) and the growth of alternative online communication tools (like social networks and instant messaging).

Neither mean the end of email. But both are changing the way people use and manage email. And both factors drive the evolution of the surrounding technology. With inevitable repercussions for marketing.

Back when it was cool to pronounce email as beyond medical help, many argued instead that we'd see email incorporated into, even dominating, communication hubs.

The suggestion is that your email software or webmail service will morph into a multichannel communication dashboard.

Last week, for example, saw the announcement of Mozilla Messaging, the new entity charged with taking on future development of the popular Thunderbird email client.

The implication in the announcement is that this future development may take on aspects of the dashboard approach...

"As people struggle with keeping track of disparate communication channels and social networks, this nexus of control becomes a sweet spot for integration..."

This potential merging of social networks and email mirrors the thinking of Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the web. In a recent interview, he outlines a spam-free vision of email in the context of trusted communities:

"With the semantic web, we are building these trust systems so that you can find out if it comes from someone you identify and what their role is in relation to you: if you actually want to receive email from this person."

Trust already plays a key role in email marketing, but will we see new email systems that use social network concepts to give even greater control to the user?

Just last week, Ken Magill reported on a new email address service which does exactly that.

And even the military industrial complex is working on new standards for secure email.

What will all this mean for you and me? Hard to say with any degree of confidence. Except...

...everything points to the relationship between sender and receiver determining whether email is wanted and delivered.

In that sense, nothing changes. Great email marketing has always been based on building good relationship with recipients. Through strict permission practices, and targeted, valuable content and offers.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

More on strategy | Tags: email marketing, future of email, email marketing strategy

[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
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