Applying technology to provide easy access for societal dialog has the promise of peer-to-peer co-creation of knowledge and rapid consensus solution-building. Today's technology holds the promise of quickly connecting problem solvers with problems, converting actionable knowledge into value that transforms the world.
Back in October 1971 (long after we graduated from a small high school in Upstate New York during the late 1950s), an engineer named Ray Tomlinson chose the '@' symbol for email addresses and wrote software to send the first network email. At the time, it must not have seemed very important because Ray didn't bother to save that first message or even record the exact date. Ray Tomlinson has been called the father of email because he invented the software that allowed messages to be sent between computers. Ray made it possible to swap messages between machines in different locations; between universities, across continents, and oceans. At the time, he was working for Boston-based Bolt, Beranek and Newman, which was helping to develop Arpanet, the forerunner of the modern Internet.
Now, almost 40 years later, email messages are a large part of our lives in today's network society and I bet you can't remember the first email message you ever sent either? Recently at his 50-year high school reunion, I had an opportunity to talk with Ray about how his invention became the bedrock of communication. And since less is more, I also told Ray that I forgave him for allowing strangers to fill my email inbox everyday.
Marketing Goods and Services via Email
Before social media darlings like
Facebook and
Twitter and
Google became forever intertwined with how we compete online, there was email.
According to the June "2009 Marketing Trends Survey" by StrongMail Systems, 42 percent of nearly 1,000 global business leaders polled plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2009. Of those, 81 percent intend to increase their email marketing. Spending on email marketing, which has flowed seemingly unabated for years, shows no signs of slowing down---even as
social networks and search engines continue to dominate the marketing headlines.
What makes email so appealing to people like me?
Unlike social media marketing where a monetary valuation is often arbitrarily placed on interactions with consumers, email marketing is trackable. Its results are obvious and email marketers are more results-oriented and ultimately accountable for their performance. While social media certainly has its place in the Web marketing world, it has nothing on email. And the proof is in the budget.
Spending on email marketing will expand at double-digit rates for the next five years, according to a report from private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson---expanding at 18.5 percent each year. The reason email is growing at such phenomenal rates is because you and I rely on it and marketing vendors are getting better at using their services as integrated communication platforms:
Search engines drive website traffic; social networks promote brand awareness and blogs encourage community engagement. But email drives results---in the form of traffic, awareness and engagement.
Source: Website Magazine, November 2009
