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Thursday, April 23, 2009

Deathmatch: Twitter vs. Email Marketing



In the graphic above, I pulled searches for "twitter tools" and "email tools" in the United States. (email tools=red, twitter tools=blue) I could have just pulled a report of twitter and email marketing, but I think this gives us a more clear picture of how people are searching. When using a technology, people tend to look for tools to help them manage that technology or make things more efficient. Obviously there are more people with an email address than a twitter account, but this gives you some insight into how much real activity is taking place in this space.

Does this mean that Twitter is going to replace Email?

Lets take a look:
  • Tools and Analytics: Both technologies have tools available to measure impact, emails are more mature. (Let)
  • Subscribe: This one is pretty easy, just follow someone on Twitter, like me @seanhecking (Advantage Twitter)
  • Content: 140 characters? please! Email allows you more space for delivering your message with branded content (Deuce)
  • Forward to a Friend: Twitter allows for a retweet (RT), the equivalent of forward to a friend. Email allows for traditional forward to groups (Let)
  • Unsubscribe: Twitter also allows you to unsubscribe (unfollow) and means it! (Advantage Twitter)
  • Tagging: Twitter allows for content tagging to help organize tweets. Email: "what are tags?" (Game, Set, Match?)
What are your thoughts on this match?

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posted by seanhecking at Thursday, April 23, 2009

2 Comments:

Blogger John Ettorre said...

Sorry, but this just seems crazy to me. Twitter is a closed system (while it might seem to people who are tweeting that everyone is doing it, it's still a relatively small subset of the population). Everyone, on the other hand uses email. Open systems win over closed. We've seen that over and over.

4:09 PM  
Blogger seanhecking said...

John,

Thanks for the comment. I agree with you that email is everywhere. There are very few web technologies that can function without email. I think we are seeing that having an email account isn't enough for many people. Having a semi-closed social platform (like Twitter or Facebook) for messaging gives the end user more control over the conversation and forces companies to engage customers directly.

9:11 PM  

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