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Email is under assault from all sides. I've heard all kinds of predictions over the past couple of weeks, ranging from 'email is dead' to 'email is broken' to 'email will never be replaced'.The reality is that we're entering a new era of online communications, where some media are maturing (email) and others just being born (videopodcasting) and others moving out of infancy (blogging and podcasting). As new media for communication continue to evolve out of existing technologies, it seems that there is no end to the different ways in which people prefer to communicate, and the appropriateness of each medium for delivering different kinds of messages. Take a look at a recent article in the Montreal Gazette (in which, we blushingly admit, Sequentia was quoted) which talks about blogging and when blogging is effective, and read our feature article today on the future of email. In this issue, you'll also find the world's most beautiful commercial plus some Sequentia news. And mark your calendars for an invitation to our spring open house May 18! Jen Evans President, Sequentia Communications  "Video killed the radio star..."
That wasn't only the first video played on MTV, it's also wrong. It seems that throughout history whenever a new medium for communication arrives, the death knell for the previous is sounded. Movies meant the death of radio, TV meant the death of both radio and film, and the internet meant the end of everything. Lately, the death knell has been sounding for email. Email for personal communication is unlikely to be replaced. How we read those emails and on what kinds of devices: that is anyone's guess. But business email is also unlikely to be completely replaced by technologies such as RSS. Why?Ease of delivery Email is a killer app. An overused term, but a good one, because email was and is a killer app. For the majority of the population, there may have been other factors, but you bought a computer to be able to email regularly. RSS is never going to be an individually personalized delivery vehicle, but will likely become a standard for delivering customizable content. The value of email is immediately obvious ; RSS is more of a sell job and is likely to become an embedded technology versus a driving technology. In other words, you will still have an email address in 2020. It may not be called an email address, and it may not look like the email addresses we have today, but there will still be a way to delivery personal virtual messages into a semi-permanent mailbox. Adoption Email adoption rates are incredibly high. And as long as large quantities of people are using email, advertisers and marketers will be working to reach those people. Email won't go away until people decide it isn't useful anymore. Spam was becoming enough of a nuisance that using email was becoming less convenient, but do you know anyone who's actually talked about giving it up? (If so, please email me, I'd love to talk to them for a future issue!) Personalization There's a big difference between customization and personalization, and unlike web pages, RSS, blogging and podcasting, you can't effectively personalize content without email. The key to email is that it's push, not pull, and doesn't rely on the user to take any action. It just arrives, and is personal to you, and that combination is without peer in the entire landscape of advertising and marketing. It's a wonder that anyone spends money on TV ads anymore for anything other than big blitz launches. Timeliness A last minute seat sale. The flat screen TV you've been hankering for just got to the price you can stomach. A house with all your requirements has arrived on the market. There's no other medium that can wed need and offer as effectively - and enable the user to control the experience by defining their criteria and managing information to wean it down to what you really want to know. In other words, we're going to see a lot of movement in this various forms of media over the next few years, and a lot of change in form factors as well. This may have the biggest impact in how we interface with data and information over the course of our lifetimes - and we may yet see that scene in Minority Report, where commuters on the subway watch their newspapers change as the headlines do. And maybe that's how we'll be reading our email as well. Comment on this article at OneDegree. Sequentia News
Sequentia is pleased to announce that Alison Evans has recently joined us from Corus Entertainment. Alison will be joining our account management team and working with clients such as HarperCollins Canada and Strategic Connections. Welcome aboard Alison!We'd like to issue very warm congratulations to Chris Carder of ThinData, Bryan Leblanc of Whiterock and Alexander Younger of MGT on the recent arrivals of their first children - not to mention our own Andrew Green who welcomed Abigail Louise into the world on December 29! Plugs for some of our favourite organizations and people... if you're an entrepreneur looking to expand your business, one of the best ways to do that is to work with Warren Coughlin and his Massive Action Challenge. Warren has coached Sequentia through some pretty significant growth and we cannot recommend his business planning and smart growth programs highly enough. Learn more here! White Ribbon Bowlathon - mark your calendars and get your bowling shoes on to support this great event! There's a chance to spend a day with the Blue Jays for the winning team! Download an information sheet or pledge forms here. Finally, we'd like to issue congratulations to a great friend of Sequentia on his new role - congratulations, Ken, on your new role at Tucows! First Bill, and now you? We're officially calling it a trend... Timewasters
Remember musicplasma? It's still around, but we're becoming addicted to lastfm. Integrate all your music download and purchase options and lastfm starts building a database of your preference and starts making eerily accurate predictions.Need a daily moment of Zen - and not the Jon Stewart variety? Daily viewings of this ad, featuring the strategic deployment of 250,000 Superballs, are good for the soul. And the behind the scenes on how it was made are fascinating! |
In This Issue March 2006
 Blacklist? Whitelist? Greylist? The world of email deliverability is getting increasingly complicated and stringent thanks to all those annoying spammers out there. ThinData's latest newsletter offers some great insights into staying on the good side of ISPs.
AOL introduced a paid email deliverability program in January, prompting criticism from not for profits and other groups. Have we left the Pony Express era of unpaid email behind? Talk about it at OneDegree.
Conventional wisdom aside, deliverability is improving: Lyris, an email software company, stated that deliverability had improved by 2% in Europe and the US during 2006. 
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