Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

Email is still an opportunity--the biggest opportunity to get your messages into the hands of people who want them. At 1.4 billion users (Radicati), email is still a behemoth when it comes to reach. It is also the best way to reach a captive reader.

Hogwash, you say? While articles driven by social media interactions and viral distribution have to compete with each other, email is delivered in a box with four walls, where the only competition is other email. Sure, you also have to contend with users switching screens and going to other applications. The user could leave the PC altogether to drive to a movie or talk to a friend. But when well-known tech enthusiast Chris Pirillo questioned aloud how often he checks email, he wrote, "I don't think I actually ever 'check' my email. My email program is never closed. I spend more time with my nose buried there than I likely do everywhere else, combined."

To me, that sounds like someone who is focused, willing to engage, and ready to act.

The reality is, unlike all other forms of content delivery, most of us treat our inbox as a to-do box. Wisely or unwisely, we constantly look to email for structure and direction in our busy lives. And with the continued proliferation of smart phones, email provides that structure and direction no matter where we are, night and day.

And let's not forget about the iPad. With 20 million users on the iPad by 2012 (iSuppli) and what I'm sure will be plenty of knock-offs, more users will be consuming more content in a more laid-back manner. The warm, natural design and portability of the iPad combines to transform the user, as Time recently wrote, "into a passive consumer of other people's masterpieces"--your masterpieces. Instead of sitting at a desk, on alert and ready to fire, your target audiences will be warming up to email the way we're accustomed to warming up to a book...in the living room, on an easy chair--a cup of coffee in one hand and an iPad in the other. Can a user be any more receptive than that?

For many, it will be a welcome respite. We've got content coming at us from all directions--a bombardment of information. It's chaos, really. But when it comes to email, there is order. You can only read one email at a time, scanning the list of subject headers--perhaps even skimming the first few lines of copy in the preview pane. That means whether or not your email is opened, you're still allowed an elevator pitch. It means the only person you need to wow is the user.

Meanwhile, the value and delivery of information via social media tends to be determined, not by the user, but by other users. This is especially true in the case of the Facebook "like" button. There is utility in this, but it comes at a price. It means information is further segmented into micro networks or information "cliques." There could be a wealth of information that enough users would consider valuable, but they never see it, because it's simply walled off. Remember when you thought you knew everything when you graduated from high school? And then college showed you a much larger world of people, lifestyles, and opportunities? Welcome to college.

With email, the only thing that can keep a message from getting to the user is spam detection--at the ISP, PC, and user levels. So, the only thing keeping customers from reading your email message, and with interest: You.

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About the Author: Ajay Goel is CEO of JangoMail