While email was one of the pieces of technology that revolutionized the internet in the 1990s, providing a simple yet effective way of individuals communicating with each other, has it seen its day and ready to be thrown aside with your 56k modem and CRT monitor?
Email has been used for a huge variety of purposes, including colleagues communicating at work, businesses communicating with their clients for marketing or support purposes and even just for individuals to chat with each other; however there is now a viable alternative for pretty much every requirement.
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In The Work Place
Why send an email when you can send an instant message and get an instant response? No worrying about whether or not the recipient has received or opened the email. Shared intranets and cloud computing to share documents and files means that important documents can easily be accessed by anyone quickly, without having to send it on an email, waiting to see if it will bounce back because the attachment is too large!
Support
Email is seen as so formal. More and more companies are using Twitter and Facebook as a means to support their customers. Failing that, ticket systems have been a long favorite, providing an organized and easy method of the client communicating with you without having countless emails going back and forth.
Individuals
With fewer teenagers using email, instead opting for instant messaging, either through their computers or their mobile phones, it’s no longer the preferred method of chatting to your friends. Group chats, status updates, multiplayer games and the ability to share photos all make social networking sites much more versatile to use over emails.
Read also: 50 Funny Email Addresses That Will Make You LOL!
Emails Dead?
So, it looks pretty certain that email is going to end up going the way of the letter after all. Or does it! With the popularity of tablets and smartphones, there are developers trying to develop apps that will help you to use email with ease on these mobile gadgets. There are still so many benefits to using email. For example, marketing by email is so easy and cost effective, something none of the other methods have been able to recreate…so far.
Emails can also easily be sorted, stored and archived, unlike instant messaging or social networks. While you may be able to access the data from those sites as you need to, its near on impossible to export the data for backup purposes or to be able to apply any sort of filter to them. Again, this is something that may come in time.
Read also: Email Upgrades- Why Your Business Need Them
The other problem with instant messaging and social media, is also one of their biggest selling points, they are informal. While this may be perfect for telling your customers about a new pushchair you have started selling, it’s not the sort of image professionals want to be portraying. Could you imagine a lawyer, doctor or banker sending you a message on Twitter or Facebook?
Read also: How to Check Your Email Faster
I use email all the time. For newsletters, and blogs, and communication to my teachers, and resumes…
Guess email still stand yeah Brad? 🙂
I completely agree with your counterpoints that email might not be quite dead yet. I use both IM and email at my job and there are many times when Instant Messages are just too tough to use when trying to get a complicated concept across.
Also, most businesses would consider it inappropriate to use a facebook message for work purposes for a few reasons. First, like you said, it is informal and second, you are counting on facebook/twitter to make sure they keep any confidential info in that message secure. Most organizations don’t want to count on other companies security when they can count on their own security.
You’ve brought up a very good point there regarding security. Thanks for sharing your thoughts Dominic.
Why not? I switch most of my statement to ebilling, such as credit card statements and phone bill all send by email in pdf format. Not to mention, web hosting invoice also in pdf format, which also send by email. Email will not dead in ecommerce world.
Looks like email is here to stay yeah Tan? But do you think it’s just a matter of time before it is “dead” ?
email will still attached with eCommerce. You just imagine when you place your order at a shopping website, it will send you confirmation by email, right? Different story, if in the future all online shops move in to facebook. I am strongly believe email still has it own position.
i totally agree with you, instant messaging and social media are quite informal. They may be fast and have wider audience but not good for formal business transactions. Email is still commonly used nowadays especially in the workplace.
It’s undeniable that email is still commonly use, but for how long? Although quite informal, but there are in fact many companies are starting to use FB to send business proposals. At least I’m sure FB is doing all their businesses via FB itself. What do you think now Bhing?
Social networking sites may be a good platform for business proposals and all, but what of its security? Still, there are several companies that use email. In my office, we are not allowed to open social networking services to communicate with clients.
Yeah I understand what you mean Bhing, security is indeed a concern here if we were to use FB/Twitter for business purposes. I guess there’s always a place for email and that it’s still the preferred choice for most people.
For me, email still has a place when it comes to modern computing and I am sure many will be agreeing with me. With the information that you have said here, I am sure many will be able to relate with what you have here.
There goes one more vote in favor of email. Thanks for commenting Liane.
Ofcourse emails still have the value and widely used. yes these days people started sending business offers and attachment via facebook messages too but still emails are not gone.
But will it soon be Reetika?
I can’t say But I don’t think that email will be gone forever. emailing is still working in corporate world. yes For personal use guys started using chat, fb msg etc.
Alright, thanks for commenting Reetika 🙂
I really don’t think that email will ever die off, it’s a great way to stay in touch with a large group of people if you have them in your database and want to send out a newsletter for example. You may not have the funds to carry out a direct mail campaign, where email makes it possible. Also some messages just don’t lend themselves well to transmission over SMS for example. Finally, email is great for sending small attachments as well. Cant really to that with a txt message!
You’ve got some very good points there regarding emails Mike. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.