As expected, Facebook introduced Monday new communication channels for its users - including a @facebook.com.
Among the upgrades, users can tailor communication channels for each person in their network - that is, they can indicate a certain friend will receive an IM instead of an email because that is the platform she prefers. Once that information is inputted, the user simply chooses the name and types a message.
The biggest change, though, will likely be the @facebook.com - a project that Facebook has reportedly been working on for many months. Depending on how widely it is adopted it has the potential to cause significant upheaval among email marketers.
Or maybe not. A series of quick chats with people in the industry suggest this may prove to be more beneficial than disruptive. Facebook email is a boon for marketers who want to collect and measure data across multiple channels, says Tom Sather, director, Professional Services at Return Path.
He suggests:
1. Encouraging @facebook.com users to sign up via all channels. Facebook email will require permission from all marketers, so the typical rules of email deliverability are now gone.
2. Include SWYN (share with your network) and 'like' buttons in all of your emails, especially to your @facebook.com subscribers.
3. Using incentives to collect email data, encourage subscribers to sign up for emails. Offer exclusive deals for @facebook.com addresses and followers.
4. Start thinking about distinct strategies and content for both channels. “Sending the same content to both your Facebook fans and email list isn’t good enough anymore.
5. Integrating a shopping cart to @facebook.com emails - assuming the same functionality for Facebook pages is available to email.
6. Don’t cause too much upheaval as you implement these changes. That is Len Shneyder, senior product manager of Unica’s advice based on his premise that @facebook.com email itself is not likely to disrupt anything marketers are doing today. “It will be another domain and its importance will grow over time similarly to how Gmail grew over time. People are creatures of habit; I don't expect to see a huge migration to Facebook's email client, no tectonic shifts or anything like that. Quite the opposite, I think it'll be gradual and happen over time.”
Shneyder points out that when Gmail was launched there were the same concerns, that the world would change overnight. “The opposite was true, people migrated over time, and Gmail has grown in importance as a domain to be specifically addressed by marketers.”
7. Don’t think of it as email. That, in fact, is Facebook’s pitch for this product and one worth paying attention to, says Buddy Media CEO Mike Lazerow. "Facebook has the opportunity to make email, or more importantly personal communication, very relevant again by categorizing communication by closeness - family, company, networks, etc. and combining all forms of online messaging. By creating seamless integration across chat, IM and email and making it easier to have conversations within the Facebook eco-system, Facebook will grow the number of daily interactions among its users well beyond 4 billion.”
8. Watch for changes in the domain distribution of their email lists and how that might impact sending practices and deliverability, says Dave Lewis, Chief Marketing Officer of Message Systems. “Make no mistake, the combination of email, text and IM in a single, easily accessible inbox for Facebook’s nearly 550 million users takes channel convergence to a whole new level. Companies should monitor this development closely and be alert to how Facebook’s ‘social inbox’ prompts changes in customer communication behavior. Given the user’s ability to filter and segregate messages, clearly contextual relevance will become increasingly important to reaching those with a Facebook ‘social inbox.’
The big question is whether customers will view the Facebook inbox as their home for just social interactions or use it in lieu of the services of other mailbox providers for all their digital messaging.”
9. Email marketers should also be mindful of the priority or purpose that customers assign to different email addresses, Lewis says. “These points alone are important because they’ll require changes to data acquisition and management strategies as marketers seek to capture the ‘best’ addresses and link various addresses and other elements in their databases. But at a higher level, companies will need to also be attuned to the implications on cross-channel messaging to ensure the effectiveness of their ongoing customer communications.”
10. Don’t overestimate the bite it will take out of Google, says Thomas Harpointner, CEO of AIS Media. “Since the Facebook messaging system is modeled after chat, and designed to be less formal and personal, it's aimed at the social consumer and will not replace business class email. It will however take a bite out of AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, etc.” But Gmail’s integration into Google Voice - a service Facebook can't match (for now).
