If you have noticed Facebook’s move to combine their instant message and private message functions into one, then you are likely aware of the recent wave of people proclaiming that email, as a medium, is obsolete and that interactivity is the new norm.
But is it really true? Do we really need to say goodbye to email and start adopting other mediums of online communication? The answer is no – or at the very least, not entirely. Here are a few of the reasons why.
We Value the Choice to Not Respond
With instant messengers, there is always a pressure to respond immediately, or else you will be seen as rude or unprofessional, in the case of professional services. With email, people on both ends do not expect an immediate response. In fact, when it comes to unwanted mail, you have the freedom to completely ignore or block a person without them even knowing.
Email Is Needed for Most (If Not All) Registrations and Sign-Ups
If you try to look for anything on the Internet that lets you sign up for an account without providing an email, you will probably search in vain. Some do allow the use of social networks for quick registration, but those social networks require an email account when a user signs up for them.
Email Serves a Different Purpose Than Instant Messengers
Can you imagine reading a 500-word long instant message? Most IM apps will not even let users send messages exceeding 500 characters without truncating the message. IMs are meant for short and quick correspondence, while email permits sending long articles, multi-page reports, and other long forms of correspondence without annoying the person on the other end.
People Want to Separate Instant Messaging from Email Apps
Chat apps are seen more as a social tool, and emails are seen for private and professional uses. In fact, this distinction is so apparent that conventional email apps for Android are still some of the most downloaded apps. Some examples are Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and even alternative but still conventional email apps like myMail. Email apps that try to be instant messengers like Hop, Wave, or MailTime, on the other hand, are not that popular.
Some of the Biggest Tech Companies Have a Stake in Email
Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have something in common: they all have their own email services, and they all have a financial stake in keeping the medium alive. So what can we expect when some of the biggest organizations, with the largest pool of resources, need to keep a medium alive? The medium will stay, of course.
It may evolve a little bit and come up with new features or new functionalities, but it will not go away. Email will be here to stay if the biggest and most influential organizations in the world have their say (and they surely will)
Email Is Still the Most Effective Marketing Tool
Social media is all the rage these days, but what everybody who is not checking out statistics does not know is that email conversion rates are roughly 40 times bigger than those of Facebook and Twitter. This is easily one of the biggest signs that the future of email is bright and, as long as it facilitates commerce, it will be around.