I read a really interesting article by Cory Doctorow recently which set me thinking. He was discussing the recent trend of dismissing social media - largely sparked by the actor Ricky Gervais who decided to give up on Twitter despite only sending a handful of tweets, by all accounts - and came up with a really excellent analysis. He wrote:

Criticizing the "banality" of Facebook conversation is as trite and ignorant as criticising people who talk about the weather. There's a reason we say "Did you sleep well?" at breakfast and "How was your weekend?" when we turn up to the office on Monday (and it's not that we care about the weekend or the rest)... Most of [what gets written] is "social grooming" - messages passed between friends and family members as a way of maintaining social cohesion. The meaning of the messages isn't "u look h4wt dude" or "wat up wiv you dawg?" That's merely the form. The meaning is: "I am thinking of you, I care about you, I hope you are well."

My contention is that people have an innate understanding of when this kind of social grooming is appropriate and when it isn’t. There are a whole load of cultural differences to take into account (i.e. British people *never* talk to each other on a train or a bus whereas it seems to us that Americans *always* do), but fundamentally the human brain is well attuned to detect whether or not social interaction is genuine.

More to the point, it is the strength of our existing relationships with people that determines whether or not their behaviour towards us is appropriate. You wouldn’t expect a stranger to tell you what they had for breakfast or that their cat was sick on the carpet, but you’d be really upset if your life partner only ever talked to you about the weather.

I’ve long maintained that marketing communications of all kinds are at their best when they are nearest to reading like personal one-to-one messages between real people, and Doctorow’s conclusion really struck a chord with me.

I think those of us concerned with email marketing communications can learn two lessons from this:

1) We can make our messages more like the "social grooming" that Doctorow mentions. We should be spending time building space in our email marketing programmes for messages that are about "shooting the breeze" – building relationships with our recipients rather than only trying to sell or persuade them about something.

2) We can see our email marketing communications as a way of building the relationship so that the social media we use can have more impact. We can use the greater space, and the capacity for better design, to tell our customers much more about ourselves so that when we tweet or text, they are more inclined to see those messages as genuine and believable.

Email remains the bedrock of marketing. But what’s interesting to me is the way our email marketing can potentially make our social marketing better, and vice versa. To me, there's huge potential for a virtuous circle - one that I’m really keen to track through 2010.

But now I’m off to make myself a cup of tea - not forgetting to tweet about it first, of course!

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About the Author

Kieran Cooper is senior manager of support services for Lyris' international operations. Located in the Lyris UK office, he is responsible for account management, implementation and support.

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