E-mail's Future? There's More on the Way

What will e-mail marketing be like in five years? First, readers should keep in mind I'm the guy who predicted in the late '90s that AOL was going down due to its appalling treatment of customers, and that the new VW Beetle would never take off.

I'm finally being vindicated on the first prediction and was laughably wrong on the second. But I've been asked to write a piece predicting how e-mail will look for marketers in five years, so here goes.

Contrary to some expert proclamations, e-mail is not dead. It's not dying. It's not going to die. It's not even sick. People are addicted to it now. They'll be even more addicted to it.

Of the e-mail users surveyed by AOL this summer, 46% say they're hooked on the medium, up from 15% in 2007.

Half check their messages at least four times a day, and a fifth 10 times.

The survey also shows a blurring of the line between work and home.

For example, 62% of those who use e-mail at the office look at their work messages during e typical weekend. And 19% check them five or more times.

Another 28% do this while on vacation — in fact, 19% choose spots with e-mail access.

And people read their messages in odd places, thanks to the growing adoption of Web-enabled mobile phones. Of those polled by AOL, 59% have checked e-mail in the bathroom (up from 53% last year). And 67% have scanned it in bed, 50% while driving and 38% in business meetings.

Business e-mail use is expected to rise dramatically. Small to medium-sized companies have been slower than larger ones to embrace e-mail marketing, but they're seriously adopting it now, according to a report from Forrester Research.

And volume? Marketers already fighting inbox clutter ain't seen nothing yet.

Forrester predicts the volume of U.S. commercial e-mails sent annually will explode to 840 billion by 2013, compared with 420 billion this year.

And yes, people will be checking their e-mail everywhere on handheld devices, and mercilessly deciding which messages to read later on a larger device like their desktop PC.

As a result, I predict — drum roll, please — that in five years, the e-mail subject line will have evolved, far and away, into the one area where marketers will be able to differentiate their messages from everybody else's slop. Even so, most commercial e-mailers will continue to think up their subject lines as an afterthought just before the campaign goes out…as they do today.