The story of email begins much like a lot of other story. Built from necessity, electronic email really started as technology that needed to replace something archaic. But in 2015, email itself is becoming ancient and there are many people calling for a change.
Along with the productivity implications, there’s a very large movement towards building more equity in personal branding. From email services like myMail from My.com advertising with “Create your own cool @my.com email address” to AOL’s About.me service started a few years ago.
Besides the branding implications of today’s email, it’s functionality is being challenged by how we work and by how productivity has changed over the last decade. Email as we know it, is changing, and the technology will need to change with it.
Why Email As We Know It Isn’t Working
More and more, people are getting out from behind their inboxes as a task list, and working collaboratively. This means the idea at it’s base of email, a box, with communication stuffed inside of it, is broken.
Popular email clients have tried to help us sort out and prioritize our mail like spam filters, categories, and social integration, but working from your inbox is still an arduous task. It just doesn’t work.
Here are the main problems:
- The inbox doesn’t reflect well what you need to get done.
- It’s become a constant stream of (sometimes) unwanted mail.
- It’s not collaborative.
In our active lives, who’s got time to sit and organize their inbox. Think about the old idea of a mail room, with delivered mail and lots of wasted paper. It’s almost like that.
The main reason email as we know it doesn’t work is because it’s not formatted or sorted to fit our lives. We move, a lot. And as much as new smartphone hardware tries, it can’t quite replicate the agility that our work lives require.
Gone are the days of sitting in one place for 12 hours and focusing on 1 screen.
The Social Aspect That’s Missing From Email
We all want to know who we’re talking to right? And with so much of the social web mapped by companies like Facebook and LinkedIn, there is good information on the web about people.
My.com for example, has pushed the inbox forward with two clear advancements.
Making Email Social
The flagship app myMail, incorporates photos and information about people right into the inbox. Because the imagery is on the inbox screen, you get a feel like you’re using a chat application, which is where everything is headed.
The second part of this is the obvious one, being a ‘mobile-first’ platform. Everything they’re doing is pushing mobile, because they know email usage is right in the middle of a mobile take over.
Building a platform for mobile use means rethinking how we address the limited real estate on our screens. App developers are having to think about…
- What’s the most important thing for the user to see.
- What’s the friendliest way to display the critical data.
- Allowing people to do technical aspects.
- Storage and compression challenges.
- Making mobile email social.
Who’s Winning The Email Future
There’s a lot to be said about messaging platforms replacing a lot of communication. But the email giants seem to be stepping up to the plate. Here are some interesting stats about email and who’s winning.
Over all, email marketing (used as a reference in this case) is seeing a major resurgence in digital marketing. This means more people trust email to market with and to accepts offers from.
What’s interesting is that it’s happening over the last 5 years. If this is any indication, email client’s need to focus on their mobile interface more than anything.
Web research company Capterra shares this data.
- 897 Million mobile email users worldwide.
- US consumers interact with a brand 11 times via email per day.
- Email is acquiring customers 40 times faster than social media.
The future is still yet to be told from a UX standpoint, but we should see more investment and focus from developers on mobile, usability and social integration. There’s also a shift between how people communicate and what time email, chat, or text with.
Eventually, we’ll some sort of marriage between email as we know it now, our social media accounts and our phone’s messaging service. You can already see if with iMessage and a few other developments.
