Is Email Dead?
May 1st, 2008, by Michael StelznerDearly beloved… We gather here today to honor a once critical communication conduit that has passed away…
Is email dead???
I rely on email to communicate with my peers, let folks know when new posts go up on this blog and of course receive updates from the many newsletters I receive.
However, I have a big concern.
These days I have gotten to only opening my email application once or twice a day.
The reason: I find email so darn disruptive.
Worse, I find that many of my peers NO LONGER respond over email.
I find myself calling them on the phone, sending them Facebook messages or asking my assistant to try and track them down.
It didn’t used to be like this.
So my question to you: Is email dead or dying? Is it on it’s way out, to be replaced by other more effective communication channels?
If you're new here, be sure to signup for my newsletter and join 20,000 others. Thanks for visiting!
Receive email updates when new articles are posted.>> Related Articles on This Blog
May 1st, 2008 at 6:28 am
Maybe it depends on the individual, but I still get lots of e-mail from friends and colleagues on a daily basis. But then, that could be because I’m deaf and that’s their substitute for calling me.
You can file and search e-mail. You can also save IM files, but searching is a bigger pain as each person you converse with has his/her own file.
I also use e-mail as stickies — they’re in my drafts folder.
A team I’m working with — we discuss the design and changes by e-mail. We conference call won’t do (the deaf thing, we’re in different locations, and our schedules rarely jive). The email waits for us and we respond when we can.
We could do this in a forum, but forums don’t come to us (unless we’re subscribed). A project application works for this, too, and we use it sometimes.
Twitter — fast flowing conversation that focuses on NOW. Not good for much else.
Conclusion: E-mail ain’t dead or dyin’.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:16 am
Not dead.
I saw a similar conversation a couple of weeks ago. My take on the whole situation is that as we increase the number of ways we communicate, we reduce our reliance on any one way.
For example, two hundred years ago, you could talk face-to-face or send a letter. A hundred years ago, you could also send a telegraph. Twenty years ago, you could telephone the person. Ten years ago, you could email. And today, you can do all of the above plus text message, IM using one of ten different services, write on someone’s Facebook wall, comment on a blog post, send a Twitter message…
The problem is that everyone has their preferred method. “Email me,” someone with say. “Call me on my cell, not my work phone, if it is an emergency,” says someone else. “Why aren’t you on Twitter yet?” says some Twit-ter.
Ironically, as the number of ways of communicating increases, the likelihood of actually being able to communicate with any given person at any given time decreases. This, I believe, should be the First Law of Communications.
(Email me if you’d like to discuss this further, or leave a message on my MySpace page…)
~Graham
May 1st, 2008 at 10:17 am
There’s also a distinction to be may between “communicating” and “contacting”. I agree with Graham - email isn’t dead, it’s just that our available means of reaching out have expanded. Whether we’re actually communicating with each other has less to do with form than with content and connection.
I do think we’ll see a world soon, however, in which email is akin to the answering machine or voicemail. And most of us still have those.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:41 am
God, I hope it’s not dead. I HATE the phone. I’d much rather tell someone to just email me the pertinent info/attachment and avoid that human contact:). And while I’ve joined several online networking groups, all of which give the option of messaging someone from that application - puhleese. I always set the option to send me the message through my email account. So maybe the evolution of email is to act as the central repository for all our other messaging services.
As for Twitter, while I’m enjoying it heartily, I’d never use it as a private communication board. As you can see, I have trouble sticking to 140 spaces.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:59 am
Interesting you should write this article. Our law firm has just completed a test of a “email newsletter” with our past, current and prospective clients. While we have been asked about it and the people on our list all verbally asked to be on the list very few actually opened the emails.
Their responses were usually that they didn’t have time. When we probed further they usually responded that they didn’t have time to figure if it was an email from us or just spam. Apparently lots of user just delete all their emails every couple days (or mark as read an ignore).
Currently we are getting ready to test using RSS feeds instead. I believe that email, for marketing and customer contact efforts, is dead.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:10 pm
The question is not is email dead, the question should be who is in charge? Do you control email or does it control you? We need to keep in mind that our time is the most important asset we manage each and every day. 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, or 86,400 seconds is ALL we get each and every day. The battle is to get the most out of the time we chose to work and defend the time we spend with family and friends. If we can control email and get more done then email will never die, it will just be a useful tool. FaceBook, Twitter, and My Space are jsut tools for us to use. We have a choice to control them or let these tools control us - the choice is ours.
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:41 am
I find that there is just sooooo much stuff pouring into the inbox, that things sometimes get neglected or worse, forgotten. Am also tired of spam, spam, spam and sometimes legit emails get derailed into the junk folder.
Have partly countered this by having various email accounts, some that only a select few know and use, and other more general ones. Thunderbird handles this quite well for me.
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:19 am
I hope email is going the way of the tribal drums, smoke signals, and the telegraph as a means of serious communication. Email is absolutely the worst way to communicate. It conveys either no emotion or worse, the wrong emotion. It is an inefficient way to carry on a dialog because it is half duplex communication. And with having a huge lag time between responses it will literally burn through the otherwise productive hours of the day. It draws people into trying to grandstand for all the “cc” on the thread, many of whom should not even be participating.
And then there is spam…. enough said there.
Just pick up the phone, or bring your topic to the web conference, or maybe just hold back on the urge to send the email and see if your “urgent problem” that required spamming the entire department doesn’t just take care of itself.
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:54 am
Personally, I use my blackberry so much more than my tethered desktop box. The freedom to text or email on the go is more the future (at least for me) than being tied to a desk.
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:12 am
E-mail is not dead. It is exhausted and beaten down from over-work. However, because email is so over-used (mainly because the cost is so low), other avenues have grown in importance.
Does anyone ever send a carefully hand-written note via postal mail anymore?
If an executive gets such a carefully and painstakingly created note, I guarantee she will read it carefully from top to bottom and you will get a return call.
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:59 am
I still like email. Much more organized than going to ten different places (Facebook, MySpace, twitter, etc.) to contact different people. If all of these avenues can be merged into one, that would be ideal (i.e. Outlook connects directly to Facebook and any other communication app).
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:27 am
The beauty of e-mail is that I can communicate with others while they are “off the air”.
If it is a friendly “chat” e-mail, the recipient can sit with a hot cuppa at his/her leisure later and read my comminques during a time of “r and r”.
If it is a business e-mail, I can continue a dialogue with a colleague, client, prospect, supplier, vendor, etc. when they have long since closed their brick and mortar office.
Many of my clients are international and Hong Kong/Tokyo/London/Dubai/Mumbai time zones make it nearly impossible to have “real time” discussions. E-mail is internationally well-known and well-used … not so much Facebook, MySpace, etc.
I, too, use e-mail as an ongoing to-do list. I also file them in lieu of paper so that they become my working client files.
LONG LIVE E-MAIL!
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:51 pm
There was a panel of teens at an Online News Assn. conference about 18 months ago. They were asked how they communicate online in general and get their news. All of them regarded e-mail as antiquated — something old people (like their parents) used. So there may be a generational preference when it comes to e-mail.
May 2nd, 2008 at 5:31 pm
I agree, Rick, but there is also another factor differentiating preference … the purpose of the intended communication. Teens use technology (cell phones, SecondLife, texting, IM, etc.) for entertainment, casual passing chat with their peers, brief contact with their parents and such.
iznt that gr8? (see what I mean?)
Texting and other currently available means aren’t practical for intense or long-term business uses - whatever the age of the businessperson.
I’m not sure even teens would want to describe complex costing and deadline considerations via texting or IM. I do know a few super-entrepreneur teens who enthusiastically use e-mail.
Also, I (like Toddie above) intensely dislike the phone - cell or land line. I often spend literally days playing voice mail phone tag, accomplishing absolutely nothing except a lot of frustration. With an e-mail exchange, a lot could have been accomplished with the same effort (not to mention being able to conveniently archive and re-refer to our elongated multifaceted discussions).
On another note, I and my friends frequently send 3+ full-page e-mails to each other as the replacement for the long friendly snail mail letters everyone used to send.
These e-mails can either be read during a quiet time on the computer of printed and read while cozied in bed. They can also re-read to one’s heart’s content (it’s comforting, somehow to re-read these types of communications).
None of the existing available technologies allow this.
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:39 pm
I’m still highly counting to my email. Besides lower cost, email also enable us to have neat documentation. Phone would be my third alternative after short message service. I’m surprise to know that you start thinking that email is dying…
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:32 am
As illustrated by these comments, everyone has their favourite way to communicate, which certainly leads to the problem. For me, email is mostly the way to go — it can be disposable, printable, and archivable, and it allows you to document conversations with clients, etc.
What a seemingly innocuous topic Mike, but what an outpour!
~Graham
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:21 am
Read the book “BIT LITERACY”!!!!!
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Email has gotten so full of junk mail that the social media sites are a better way to stay in touch with your friends.
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Social media sites are useful only if the messages are super-abbreviated comments (such as “See you tonight at 6:30 at the cafe”, ” Way to go on that new job!”. “I miss you. When are you coming back to LA?”, or “I can’t make the party after all. What a bummer!”, etc., etc,. etc.
When it comes to quality “staying in touch with your friends” — as in several pages of text to be savored and responded to in kind — e-mail is the ticket.
I don’t have any problem with junk mail and I don’t use any kind of spam filters. I simply spend about 10 minutes per day flushing the spam myself and it’s done. It doesn’t take any longer than brushing my teeth in the morning.
If someone can show me a social media site that allows you to read several pages of text with pics, respond in kind, conveniently archive the communication (including pics), and that is non-real time (so that the recipient isn’t disturbed in an “off” moment), I’m all ears …
May 4th, 2008 at 5:20 am
I would have to agree with Kelly (post above) for a lot of social media sites. However, in the business world, the proper application of the concept behind social media should reduce email dramatically. Email is too inefficient for collaboration. Too much information ends up being repeated in separate threads. Too often the audience is not inclusive of the entire affected group.
May 4th, 2008 at 5:56 am
Threads? I didn’t know there was such a thing as threads in email; I thought forums would be the format within which you find threads. Perhaps I’m ill-informed on the terminology.
Anyway … If you require a group communique, a blog (the format we are currently using) could be effective. You’ll notice that my input into this blog is rather immediate and we are all collaborating on an opinion poll that discusses the pros and cons of email in a similar fashion that a group may discuss the pros and cons of a business decision.
Video conferencing is another option if the collaborators are in a similar time zone and input is required from the many collaborators in real time.
I find that when the collaborators involved are in time zones that span 18+ hours’ difference and when there are 2 (or so) people involved in a decision - such as whether or not to proceed in a particular direction - email accommodates the process quite well.
You’d be surprised at how many CEOs and management staff are in just this position. Dubai and Mumbai, in particular, are shaking the rafters when it comes to international co-ventures and things are heating up in other areas of the globe, as well.
As for social media used in business applications, I’m not sure what you mean, Bill, by “the proper application of the concept behind social media”. As far as I knew, it’s called social media because it was originally designed as a venue for an exclusively social application (and to be entertaining to the participants while they are socially connecting). Even so, it seems to me to be only applicable for tiny snippets of information transmission (such as I mentioned above).
I’d be willing but changing the ingrained habits of those in other countries may not be so easy. Such business people many times already have a language barrier and have been accustomed to using email for years. Asking them to use MySpace or Facebook (or something similar) would be a hindrance, not a help, in expediting the collaborative process.
I’m always open to new options but, so far, email has won the day with those like me in the international business arena.
Any thoughts from anyone?
May 4th, 2008 at 6:05 am
I have been involved in may emails that grew in to threads with people being added to the cc list and then providing input. I dont think that is a new concept.
Social media and Web 2.0 as they relate to business, involves more than a facebook page or a twitter to let their followers know they are headed to dinner. When you take the power of a having a social environment and apply “behind the firewall” you get collaborative efforts and engaging online meetings. Blogging, as you mentioned, is a great tool as part of a project or a departmental communication. Social bookmarking behind the firewall helps employees to benefit from other’s search efforts.
And all of this occurs without the benefit of email.
May 4th, 2008 at 6:39 am
Thanks, Bill, for a further definition of “threads”.
I haven’t actually ever had a situation where numerous people were being cc’d in an email. I and the others with whom I communicate cc sparingly and then only when it’s absolutely essential that someone else be included in the loop. I noticed that our management team in Australia wasn’t familiar with the cc feature at all. Perhaps it’s an American organizational tendency.
In the academic environment in which I have been involved for many years, I find that “behind the firewall” as you mentioned is indeed a wondrous tool. The scientists and labs can share recent developments and insights as the experiments proceed with input from all parties. I second your motion that these are helpful applications of options other than email.
My comment above was in reference to a sweeping negation of all things email. It truly is an effective communication method for many and the suggestion to expunge it rattled my rafters a bit.
May 5th, 2008 at 2:32 am
This thread has spawned some really intelligent observations and conversations. Have to agree to it definitely partly being a generational thing, as the youngsters are leaning towards mobile portability. Now one can expect this trend to reflect as they age and become more professional users of more conventional systems like good old email.
The long term trend is towards mobile, saw an awesome tech post the other day where a concept cellphone / pda type device was described that actually molds itself to the arm of the user. Expect more and more integration on a personal level.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:59 am
I would not be able to live without my email, There just needs to be a more exclusive channel for emails with permissions.
lrmguru.blogspot.com
May 11th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Email is as dead as push marketing is dead. Or as TV is dead. It will not die. It will become less important as we find new ways to communicate and share.
People have choices and RSS is one of the examples. With RSS I decided to be pushed when I want to be pushed. But when you send me an email then I have no choice. And I can decide to ignore it as I ignore TV ads.
Therefore communication is becoming free: a choice.
Johan
May 11th, 2008 at 11:55 am
There are differences in levels of relationship:
- Email is generic business related: people knwo each other hardly.
- “Social enterprise” websites (like Linkedin): business “relationships” - you know these people, but not so well, thus you want to stay in contact through a bypass system.
- IM is at best between business people who have a long standing business relation or within the same company/corporation.
- Texting (SMS) is bewteen collegues or when on travel with business partners.
Is email death?
Maybe for lead generation as this is push marketing (like Johan says May 11th, 2008 at 8:37 am).
Now the era of pull marketing is emerging/starting: Pull people onto your website by content and links. These people are interested.
Problem: you need to identify these website visitors, as only 2% to 3% will ever register on a webform, you need another method or service.
Google “Website visitor identifcation” for finding such systems.
Still white papers are top, as they bring interested leads with contact details.
May 13th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I’ve found that gmail helps in getting through the hundreds of spam emails that I received on my other account every day.
there were so many that I didn’t even want to open, (and expose my computer to) that I was really happy to find the gmail system.
although some of the spam still gets through, most of it is gone now.
May 15th, 2008 at 10:01 am
RainToday recently did a newsletter article about where it sees e-mail falling in the communication mix.
The article, titled “The Death of the Business Phone Call,” can be found at:
http://www.raintoday.com/pages/3660_the_death_of_the_business_phone_call.cfm?broadcastID=1105&linkID=19686&ID=62288
May 15th, 2008 at 10:18 am
I would add another level to Alan’s comment above. Social sites such as LinkedIn are great, but Social sites and tools behind the firewall promote efficiencies that far surpass email. Social sites on the intranet promote increased collective knowledge and lend themselves more easily to collaboration.
Email may never die, but the reliance upon it for so much of the “communication pei” as most people do today will decline. People sent telegrams long after the telephone was invented, but the medium eventually died off.
bc
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:24 pm
I think with our lifestyle.We can’t live without email.
June 12th, 2008 at 5:15 am
I am receiving emails daily and hope keeping its usage. It’s quite convenient for me.