Accepting the fax of life
Remember the fax machine? The central role it used to play in every office up and down the land?
Nothing makes me feel quite as old as the blank look on the faces of people of a certain age when I talk about how a business used to run before email.
Is the writing on the wall for email? Will those blank faces be faced with looks of equal confusion in ten years time when they talk wistfully of attachments, out of office replies, send, reply and forward?
Unthinkable. Or maybe not…
Startling research from the States shows that email usage among 12-17 year olds in the US fell by a mind boggling 59% last year. Read that again. 59%. Some estimates show that around 90 trillion emails are sent every year. If that percentage decline were applied universally that would make a drop of 53 trillion emails. The same report showed that overall email usage fell by 8%. Not a headline grabber, but still representing 7.2 trillion fewer emails.
The growth in popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter is perceived to be behind this trend. And it’s not surprising.
Just as in an email world there was suddenly something crude about putting a piece of paper into a machine and dispatching inkjet dripping copies to locations far and wide, so there is something primeval about sending an email, when you can feed your content into the richer, more elegant and interactive medium of the social networks.
For all businesses this presents an interesting challenge over time. How to use these channels in a professional capacity? How to work within the cloud, using collaborative working environments that break down the barriers between individuals and organisations?
From a marketing perspective it also asks some tough questions. Email marketing has become all too often a bludgeon. An attractively cost-effective to fire out missives on a daily basis, justified by the ability to track and measure response rates like never before. While social networks offer brands new and exciting opportunities and still provide a low cost option, they are much more involved to maintain and much more complex to evaluate. There’s nothing quite as simple as pressing the send button.
This report may be one of the earliest indications that email’s time in the sun may eventually draw to a close but rumours of its death will no doubt be greatly exaggerated for years to come.
You can still buy a fax machine. We occasionally receive a fax from time to time. We push our way through the cobwebs and down the tunnel to where it lies, like a forgotten relic of a time when the pace of business was a little slower, a little more relaxed, even if the print wasn’t always that easy to read.
Email’s not going anywhere. But its universal relevance is obviously starting to weaken. These US teenagers may be young now, but there will come a day when their communication will be with colleagues, bosses, customers. Discussing briefs, project progress, ideas, collaboration. When they’ll be uploading spreadsheets as well as photos. Downloading orders alongside apps.
How will they view email as a truly effective tool for communication? For now the blank faces are ours, we have no idea. But be prepared for them to look at us in surprise when we ask them to send an email in years to come.
Just a vague possibility, or a growing probability?
Answers on a fax please. 0191 2614026.
Today the reassuring beep as the old machine kicks into action, the gentle chugging of its rollers as it prints out words on a page would be welcome sounds with which to face the future.