On January 21, Facebook announced a new function on Facebook Page, this function allows Facebook Page or Facebook application creators to collect emails of their fans. I don’t know about you but I think it’s not safe at all to give out emails to companies these days, even through Facebook. Will email marketing be the next trend on social network?

Email Exchange for App fucntions

Although fans have to approve on giving out the email, but companies would try anything to collect them, which means there might be a new era on Facebook that Applications might start to collect emails for companies, users might have to allow these apps to get their emails before they can use them (obvious ones would be the games).

Not all of them unsubscribe

Users can of course unsubscribe from the mailing lists; however, not many users are as internet savvy as most of us, they will just end up getting all these junk mails not knowing how to unsubscribe.

Out of Control

Some companies also buy emails, it’s not hard to create a Facebook App that’s interesting enough to collect emails, if these email lists are sold and it’s out of Facebook’s control, it might even be impossible for people to unsubscribe, AKA spam!

When I first learnt about direct marketing, it was all about envelopes and mailboxes. Then email marketing came out. What’s now?

I’m sure many of us are aware of the push and pull concept in marketing these days. Direct marketing doesn’t have to be “direct” anymore. The whole point of DM is to customize the ideas/ messages and send them to the segmented targets directly, with a call-to-action most of the time.

Blogs and Twitter can do almost the same. Interested targets can subscribe to a blog, or follow a company’s tweets, so that companies can “direct” the customized call-to-action to these segments. As I said on my previous post Spam and Junkmail killing Direct Marketing, people start to care less about what they recieve in the mailboxes. Instead of spending money on printing or costly email databases, companies should start migrating and allocate more resources on these newer kind of “indirect” direct marketing tactics.