Learn more about Facebook Messages

By now you've likely read many an article on what this new Facebook feature could mean for your brand and your email program. At CheetahMail, we've been closely monitoring the news cycle and testing Facebook Messages (yes, we have accounts!) to gain a better understanding of how it will affect the future of digital communications and our clients' businesses.

What is Facebook Messages?

Facebook Messages integrates email, IM and texting (SMS) in a unified "social inbox." Users can send nontraditional emails (e.g. without subject lines) from an @facebook.com address and text their friends from the same interface. Messages are organized as "conversations" with individuals so you can view the history of digital communications you've had with someone across these channels. The revamped Facebook Messages will be rolled out to the social network's 500+ million users in the coming months, but initial access has only been given to a select few. (This is similar to how Facebook launched its flagship product.)

Facebook Messages, according to Mark Zuckerberg was born out of conversations he's had with teenagers. Teenagers, he says, think, "email is too slow" or too "formal." The goal of the Messages product is to provide one interface to communicate with your network - whether it's with your friends who email or your friends who text or use Facebook. Zuckerberg simply believes that this is "more fun" than traditional email. The question is whether it will be as useful, or serve the same purpose.
Facebook claims that the Messages product will prevent spam because you will only receive communications to your "Inbox" from your friends and your friends' friends. Any other messages will go to your "Other" folder. When a message from a person or company who isn't your friend comes to your "Other" folder you will be able to "promote" them to your Inbox. So while the assertion that you'll never get spam is accurate, you'll also never receive a notification that your flight is delayed or that your order has shipped unless you "like" or "promote" every brand or company you could ever receive an important communication from. This product was conceptualized to manage conversations with friends, not necessarily with companies.

What does this mean for marketers?

The most concrete advice we can give you right now is to take Facebook seriously and make sure to promote your presence on Facebook every chance you can. Follow our best practices for getting your email subscribers to "like" you and make sure your Wall presence is what you want it to be. Facebook is a destination and although adoption of Messages is unknown today, it will certainly be used by some of their 500+ million users - enough to make it even more important for you to invest your time and money in your social presence. Note that today even if a user has "liked" you, your email will still go to the "Other" folder until the user promotes you to their main Inbox. However, if you are "liked" you have a much higher likelihood of your email being delivered to the Messages platform. The biggest questions are 1) whether this will just be another "inbox" or if Facebook can pull people away from their tried and true email clients and, 2) how Yahoo!, AOL and especially Google will respond. Will they allow Facebook to shape the future of messaging? This remains to be seen.

We are here to help

Here are a few of the things we'll be doing to make sure you have up-to-date information about Messages:

• Determining any best practices for sending email to @facebook.com addresses (e.g. the system text is what shows up when a user first reviews your email - the user has to expand the message to view the HTML). We will publish a best practices brief on Messages in the coming days.
• Closely monitoring the adoption rate of @facebook.com addresses.
• Closely monitoring response rates at Facebook and all other ISPs.

• Working directly with Facebook and other partners to ensure CheetahMail is sending email in the most optimal way to the Messages platform.

Closing thoughts

Traditional email is still important. We all email with friends, but we also rely on email for important notifications and communications that come from people and companies we're not engaged with on a regular basis. I know I appreciate relevant messaging from companies and as our clients' open rates show, so do your customers. By choosing not to provide clear deliverability support and placing emails from marketers in the "Other" folder, the current version of Messages will make it challenging for email marketers to reach their customers in a personalized and relevant way. Facebook shows support for the needs of businesses across their platform, and it's very possible that in time, Facebook will alter Messages to be more marketing friendly.
Facebook has the resources and clout (and smarts) to have a lot of influence over the future of digital communications and it will be very interesting to watch how the worlds of email and social media continue to collide and how the other messaging platforms respond. Will Facebook Messages morph into something that looks more like Gmail over time such that it really could be a "Gmail killer?" Will Google respond with something more compelling? I don't know about you, but we're excited to find out.

Best regards,
Rachel Bergman
General Manager and SVP, Experian USA