December 20, 2005
Email Still Matters
Posted by Kevin | Print This Article
Blogs don’t replace email– I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. One of the more interesting things that arose out of the recent TypePad meltdown is the number of bloggers complaining that TypePad didn’t bother to email its customers to keep them informed. This comment on Jeremy Pepper’s blog sums up the situation:
“They failed, again, to implement any customer base emails - on a wide scale - and although a bit better about posting to the support blog, they just dropped the ball again. Why they cannot learn from these mistakes is a mystery. Email could help. Offer an opt-in/opt-out support list for members to subscribe to for such instances. Six Apart seems to think that the customers should come to them (visit the blog) when problems occur. When the problem is Six Apart’s, they should be proactive and go to the customers. The blog isn’t enough.”
As bloggers themselves know, blogs are useful tools in a lot of ways, but they are not useful for timely, direct, targeted communications. No doubt email is getting more difficult with spam controls, but associations are going to need to get a lot smarter in understanding how to handle those firewall issues. Email, for both communications and marketing purposes, is not going to decrease in importance. It’s just going to get harder.
On a related note, I think print is making a major comeback. More on that later.
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