We gave email a piece of our mind in our last blog. But lets be fair, email rocks big time at doing a lot of things, and its not without a reason that we are inseparable from our email inboxes. Just trying to sum up a few below.
- Everyone has email. Well, just about – Its almost certain that whoever you are trying to get in touch with has an email account. Also, someone you’ve just met will more readily share their email id with you, than their phone number or social network contact.
- For most people, stuff that lands up in their email inbox is more relevant to them than what they see in the Facebook or Twitter feeds. Social network feeds are ‘broadcasts’, while emails you receive are ‘directed messages’. A higher relevance is built in.
- An email requires an immediate call to action – open it, and read it. If you want to ask someone to do something specific, you are far better sending them a direct email than broadcasting a feed on a social network.
- Is asynchronous – people can check when they want to, respond when they want to. That is quite unlike phone calls. With email, you can either check it once a day, a few times a day, or even use push email and have all your email sent to your phone so you can check it very frequently. It gives the recipient a lot of control on when they would like to read their communication, and when they would like to respond.
- It does not depend on whether the person you are mailing is (1) online or not (2) sleeping or awake (3) working or hiking (4) in their office or on a holiday. There is no ‘wrong time’ for sending an email. You can just send it when you want, and the recipient can read it when they like. That, combined with almost guaranteed attention from the recipient helps achieve a unique balance – You can get the recipient’s attention without having them stop in their tracks and respond to you.
- Its free! Well, just about.