Emailing your email lists via Facebook; wow!

I had dinner with a good mate last night and every time we get together, we invariably discuss Facebook, its merits and its longevity.

I won’t go into our respective arguments on the topic because that is for another time, though from last night, I do have one great takeout.

It might not be a revelation to some marketers, though I am not really a Facebook guy (or user) and I am somewhat disconnected from the activities our clients engage with on Facebook; my firm does not provide social services and instead, recommends specialised social agencies.

 

Email lists are back

As pretty much any marketer would know, the days of email ‘lists’ are over.

No doubt they were good days when marketers could simply purchase a list of email addresses and SPAM away, though that is exactly what it was; SPAM:

And SPAM isn’t allowed anymore. You cannot send mass, unsolicited emails, no matter how good the list might be, or how much of a great offer you have to email or indeed, whatever right you think you might have to send unsolicited, mass emails.

Except that with Facebook, old-skool marketing is back.

What I learnt last night, is that you can upload your email list to Facebook and it will match all those email addresses it can; 70% was the strike rate my mate was achieving from an old list of email addresses sourced from a company complimentary to my mate’s company.

Even better, Facebook can get clever and based on your email list, make all sorts of smart recommendations, identifying users will similar company emails and who knows what.

In one sense, it is pretty outrageous for us suffering users. Just as our inboxes have been purged of SPAM, now we have to deal with it in Facebook.

Conversely, Facebook will be careful to understand the quality and relevance of the offers being sent to uploaded email lists and so as users, we should be somewhat guarded from garbage SPAM and instead, be receiving offers and ads from advertisers and promoters more aligned to our interests.

We did after all signup to a complimentary email list at some stage so these advertising are just smelling our scent.

Sure, there are plenty of other ways to target users in Facebook, many of which could conceivably wield the same results as uploading an email list; though the email list approach is cool!

I leave it to your imagination as a marketer, though it you dream of the cowboy yesterdays of the Internet like I do, you’ll have a smile on your face like I do thinking about this Facebook feature.