ColdSpark Blog

The other day I was googling for details about the pros and cons of different messaging channels, and I couldn’t find anything quickly.  I discussed it with some people around the office, and here are some thoughts:

Postal mail- It’s definitely the most ubiquitous channel for communicating to customers regardless of age or technical inclination.  From what our customers say, placing something in the mail is a sufficient best-effort to reach out to their customers, as opposed to sending an email.  As a result, to leverage email for certain transactions, print must be used as a fallback should the email delivery fail.  Seems like an odd distinction to me though- I have more faith that I’d receive any legitimate email than postal mail.  More importantly though, postal mail is very expensive per message, isn’t environmentally friendly, and is slow. 

Email- Of all electronic communications, email is the most ubiquitous and widely adopted, making it the logical first-step away from postal mail.  Not only is it less expensive, but it is faster to deliver and easier to track customer responsiveness.  As we all know, however, legitimate email can get buried in your spam folder.  I personally try to get all messages I get from businesses to come via email, for speed and to be green.      

SMS- It’s good for real-time messaging on mobile devices.  You are limited to 160 characters, which can be a blessing or a curse- good for concise, time-sensitive notifications, but in terms of marketing you have to make your pitch quickly.  A significant con is the high cost per message.  Due to that cost, getting customer opt-in is extra critical.  SMS is excellent for use in conjunction with email when timeliness is critical.

Facebook- Some email people I know consider Facebook to be narcissistic and irrelevant, but I’m personally a big fan.  For interactions with your customers, it’s powerful because it enforces opt-in, and thus your messages are more likely to be trusted and read.  It appeals to a wide audience, but especially younger people.  By offering networking, broadcast and personalized messaging together, it’s far more interesting to spend time browsing Facebook as opposed to monitoring one’s Inbox.  As opposed to email, social media is still evolving, especially in terms of B2C communications.  As a result, it can be challenging to figure out how to best leverage this channel. 

Twitter- I only tweeted for the first time today, so I know very little about this channel.  However, my more savvy coworkers like that it’s opt-in, real-time, nice for short broadcasts, and a good channel for viral promotion.  I personally like it as a channel with which businesses can reveal their personality, by tweeting about things more trivial and personal than marketing plugs and formal announcements.  A substantial power of social media is the ability to establish trust through pervasive and genuine communications.    

IM- We use IM heavily for internal collaboration at work, for which it is fantastic.  I personally have a hard time imagining companies with which I do business reaching out to me via IM, since it is such a conversational medium.  However, I think the concepts of presence and the power of extensible messaging protocols like XMPP will grow beyond the world of IM and into the space previously occupied by other protocols such as email and SMS. 

I’m interested in your thoughts!