Email is the Internet's Killer App. Use it well.
To many, email communications seems like "yesterday's news." Even though we here at GovDelivery have been working with federal, state, and local government on improving email communication with the public since 1999, we still get excited about email! As our marketing director, I want to share how we're helping clients leverage email to promote blogs, support Twitter, and utilize other social media. I want to brag about what our clients are doing in the area of collaboration and Web 2.0.
When we step back and think about how we can best help government communicate with the public effectively, email rises above every other opportunity for two reasons. First, it is ubiquitous. Our clients care about reaching people and email is the number one use of the Internet by a landslide. Second, there is still a lot of room for improvement.
One stat from Jupiter suggests that citizens spend over 80% of online time using email. It has become such a part of daily life that its dominance simply doesn't make headline news.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a new report on daily Internet activity. Although the focus of the report was the growth of daily search activity by Americans, the report showed an astounding 60% of Americans use email every day. Search has grown to 49 percent, from about a third in 2002. But the author calls email "arguably the Internet's all time killer app:"
And just last month eMarketer released survey data showing the digital channels preferred by various age groups. Email is used by almost 53% of Americans to share information about a new product or service with others, second only to face to face communication and ahead of phone calls. Email is also the preferred digital channel for all purposes in every age group with the exception of young teenagers, who prefer text messaging where social communication is the priority.
So if email is the channel of choice of the majority of Americans, the question becomes "how well does your organization "do email?" If you're wondering how you're doing, read through this document that was shared at the Federal Consulting Group's Proactive Communication Roundtable earlier this year: http://tinyurl.com/govd1 .
Consider this:
Do you do a good job of offering and promoting all important topics by email? Are you offering subscribers many choices? Are you promoting your new types of content (blogs, videos, social media content) by email (http://tinyurl.com/govd13)? Are you treating your email subscription links like "add to cart" links and promoting them on your site? Are you following the lead of NASA, EPA, and others by allowing citizens to signup for emails directly on your website (http://tinyurl.com/gddirectsignup).
Newer applications like text messaging and social networks like Twitter get far more attention. But for final measure, let's compare some stats.
Washington State Department of Transportation
Twitter followers: 2,411
Email subscribers: >28,000
Mayor of Minneapolis
Twitter followers: 984
Email subscribers: 7,498 (with >43,000 subscribed to all City information)
EPA
Twitter followers: <2,000
Email subscribers: >77,000 with 5,000-7,500 new signing up monthly
To top it off, it is much easier to track results and learn about your subscriber base with email than with many Web 2.0 channels.
RSS and wireless alerts are also very powerful, but when launched side by side with email, citizens prefer email at a 10-20 to 1 ratio over these other channels.
In fact, I'd bet that the Obama campaign and others found that email delivered the most tangible results in their campaigns for fundraising and mobilization. They used other channels, but their most critical and reliable outreach seemed to be by email.
All of this is not to say that Twitter, Facebook, Texting, RSS, etc. do not have value. They are amazing channels that build community, allow for direct conversations, and give citizens flexibility in how they will interact with government. See how we use Twitter (www.twitter.com/govdelivery ).
However, the power of email for driving better communication with the public is unrivaled, and there are still many opportunities to use email better. I suggest you treat email like the foundation of your digital communication house and treat other channels as nice additions that you can focus on when your foundation is strong. If you focus too much on using new channels, you may fail to leverage the most powerful channel for public communication in history... plain old email.
