Declining use of email?

Research suggests that teens rarely use email to communicate. They prefer to send text messages to each other. Considering that they are more likely to be in contact with each other during the day by phone than computer, that makes sense.

But do you think this will continue once they enter the workforce?

In other words, is disinterest in email a factor of their youth, or do you think they will continue to shun email as they get older?

And if so, will business correspondence change as a result?

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A business owner on my LinkedIn network posted the question above today. At the time of this writing, I saw many good responses to her question (you can read it here). Some excerpts and common themes were:

“E-mail is the ideal way of sharing documents, files and information in workgroups that are working dispersedly around the globe.”

“Reality is that once you enter the workforce and are no longer able to drop what you are doing to text someone, texting goes away.”

“E-mail will continue to be the medium of choice until a better system comes about. SMS messaging is nice to get something quick out, but you cannot write a business proposal in SMS format, etc.”

I read some good answers, but here are my thoughts. Working in advertising can be an intense daily life…a typical life cycle of an idea is: CMO gets a new idea, passes the responsibility onto his marketing team, they throw it to their agency which in turn has to completely revamp the plan they created yesterday for yesterday’s idea, vendors’ plans get scrapped, which they’ll hear about two weeks later. With all these channels much can get lost along the way just like the telephone game we used to play as children.

Email may decline but it’s still largely useful for storage and lengthy conversations. People used to think phones would die off completely because of email. When I worked in my dad’s company at 12, I remember hearing that phones would be obsolete in ten years. I use one every day. It may not be a land line, since I only use my mobile or Skype; but voice communication is still vital to business. Email is now, and will be more so, used as a filter. It is another ring in the degrees that separate us, and it’s becoming the least credible because anyone has access to it. I used to work for CBS and anyone had access to any employees email in any division of this massive corporation. I doubt seriously Sumner Restone was replying or even reading the emails sent to him unless a screener deemed it necessary. The people he needs to speak with know how to get him. SMS is not the future of Gen Y workers, but mobile is.

I’ll use Mark Cuban as another example, the seemingly rebel owner of the Dallas Mavericks and successful entrepreneur, and dub him the “most tech savvy CEO.” He has a very popular blog which routinely gets at least fifty comments per post. Anyone can email ideas or suggestions to him from the blog. You can find him on Facebook, MySpace and I’m sure countless other social networks. The point is that if you really know him or he wants you to know him, then you will have another way to touch base with him outside of email.

My Blackberry provides you the opportunity to touch base with me via AIM, Yahoo, Google Talk, SMS, MMS or email; and if you have my Blackberry PIN, you can get me on Blackberry Messenger too. And after reading all of those, there are still methods that I’m not using where business is being conducted. I don’t actively use Second Life or WOW, but I know people who would never have otherwise worked together are so now because of their common interest in MMORPGs. All of these niche worlds create new places for people to meet and congregate. Content delivery and quality are being reconstructed to be more efficient and effective in mobile delivery. Intel is about to release a chip that will power a laptop the size of a PSP because some people just need a laptop to run applications not a full blown system. I travel often and don’t need a laptop with huge amounts of storage and/or a DVD player. For around $200, I can buy a 250GB USB hard drive no larger than a Passport and a program that will store and play presentations/movies/games/pictures/etc. I can put the new laptop and hard drive into my jacket pocket…the cell phone into my pants pocket. The point of bringing up the laptop is to illustrate another incentive for content providers to rethink the quality of delivery.

Working in business development, I routinely call media directors, planners and buyers at advertising agencies. Everyone wants a piece of their time. Everyone has something new to show them. The bottom line is that they’re not going to put your idea in front of their client unless it’s A) a better way to do something they already use, B) a game changer that they can’t miss out on or C) they trust you. “C” is the most important because the other two are least likely. They don’t check voicemail at all because they know that, unless they’re waiting to hear back on something specific, it’s probably not anything important. If I want to get in touch with some of the decision makers, I know to try them via SMS, IM or BB Messenger. I even have two senior level ad execs that prefer I get them on Facebook because it doesn’t get flooded with random emails and newsletters…they control their environment. Last week, I had a conversation via SMS with a WPP exec that was attending an AAAA Conference in Orlando. His voicemail, in NYC, said he would be out all week not returning phone calls.

One of the many things my father taught me about running a successful business is that you must change to stay ahead of the curve. In his case, it was all about using new technologies to reinvigorate an old industry…tying things no one else was willing to try.

In recruiting Gen Y and eventually letting them run organizations, people don’t have to become experts on every form of communication or shift entire groups around those methods; but it’s important to be knowledgeable of those forms, and, if needed, hire experts to educate you on them. If you’re older than Gen Y, don’t be scared…reach out and/or listen. If you’re in Gen Y, as I am, be cognoscente of the fact that you will need to grace the presence of the next generation repeating the cycle of older generations today.