What Facebook's Social Inbox Means to the Future of Digital Messaging

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For years, the email marketing industry has railed against imperfect spam filtering and advocated reputation measures as an alternative. We’ve acknowledged that filters play a vital role in protecting customers from those who seek to harm or exploit them through unscrupulous practices and malicious tactics. But we also argued (rightly) that filters are poor proxies for customers’ true intentions about messages from the companies they do business with—of what they really do or don’t want to receive. And by attempting to make these determinations and intercepting legitimate messages in the process, spam filters impede communication and commerce, potentially damaging both brands and the customers they share with ISPs. We’ve further argued (again rightly) that reputation rating systems are better proxies of customer intent than filters, and should at least be used in determining which brands deserve to be exempted from filters, and perhaps awarded special privileges (maybe at a fee) for their good behavior.

While giving lip service to the notion of customers being the final arbiters of what they want, neither the email industry nor ISP community have invested much in making that a reality—outside of a few user preference options and spam buttons—or given much thought to the consequences should it occur. Instead, since reputation systems haven’t really taken hold, many brands have blithely continued to treat digital messaging (especially email) as a broadcast medium, despite all the indicators that it was becoming more personalized and one-to-one. And ISPs have continued to take a paternalistic stance on end-user protection without full regard for protecting the user’s right to express their own preferences, despite mounting evidence that this was a next step toward customer empowerment.

For marketers, deliverability has become a game of finessing the rules, testing the margins of best practices and negotiating acceptance of their messages with the ISPs, sometimes with the aid of reputation services but often without them.

Enter Facebook’s Social Inbox. In one fell move, Facebook has changed the rules of the game.

With its November announcement, Facebook did more than signal its entry into the inbox business. It’s offering cross-channel inbox convergence—a true unified inbox—and enabling members to make their own decisions about how to manage it. Soon 550 million Facebook members will be able to directly determine what messages they want and don’t want, but more importantly, what messengers they do or don’t want to hear from—and to apply those determinations across channels.

The combination of a unified inbox and user control is strong differentiator relative to other inbox providers, and will likely prompt a wave of similar offerings. Some are already moving in that direction. So while the email industry ponders the likelihood of Facebook of displacing Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail, it’s missed the fundamental issue about what it means to have the customer as the final arbiter of message and messenger acceptance, especially in the context of a unified inbox.

As an industry, we should welcome the Facebook move. Ultimately, it should mean that ISPs can stop worrying about unwanted mail so much and rely on filters to do what they do best—protecting end-users from truly egregious and criminal activity—and leave the rest to their users to sort out. After all, the ISP doesn’t know the nature of the relationship between users and the companies they choose to do business anyway. Why should they be in the middle of the communication flow in making acceptance decisions? It’s a no win position.  Why not put the power in the hands of the end-users? But for marketers, this is definitely a case of being careful what you wish for, as we’ll discuss in a moment.

None of this is to suggest that the authentication has become passé. To the contrary, sender identity remains core to creating a safe and secure environment for online communication and commerce. And if anything, it should gain greater importance as we contemplate persistent identity across channels and how to authenticate it as messages morph from one channel to another.

What this does suggest is that the role reputation systems play in determining which messages should reach end-users has changed. Like spam filters, their value as proxies have been diminished. With the combination of message authentication, properly applied filters and users being the final arbiters of acceptability, a good reputation rating would simply provide an enhanced opportunity for a brand to present its message based on its past behavior and whatever privileges the receiving ISP may extend to that brand at its domain. But ultimately, it will be up to ISP users to determine whether that rating means anything and warrants a brand’s continued access to their inbox.

So now we come to the true rub for marketers.

Whether Facebook becomes a serious rival to other inbox providers misses the point. It’s only a matter of time before the Facebook notion of user empowerment in managing a unified inbox finds its way into other provider’s solutions. What does this portend for the future of digital messaging?

With customers being the final arbiters of message acceptance, there won’t be any appeal to the ISP. And it would be folly to assume that they’ll be more forgiving than the ISPs. In fact, the risk to marketers is even greater since customer non-acceptance decisions may apply to the messenger across ALL digital channels, essentially locking the brand out of their customers’ unified inboxes. And we don’t need to enumerate the consequences of companies losing their vital connections to customers for communication and commerce.

So while empowerment may be liberating for customers, it could be lethal to those brands who ignore what’s happening, are stuck in their silos and don’t engage in customer-centric practices in all that they do. In the new reality that’s emerging, customers will expect the companies they do business with to know who they are and act on what they know in delivering meaningful content through the most contextually relevant channel. And their inboxes will be reserved for those brands who meet those expectations and earn the right to be there. So best practices are no longer optional; they’re mandatory. But companies need to go a step further in embracing message convergence as their core strategy for staying connected with customers in this new reality of changing customer communication behaviors, heightened expectations and, importantly, control. As David Daniels (CEO, The Relevancy Group) and I suggest in our new whitepaper, ‘Preparing for Message Convergence’, companies have only a small window of opportunity to respond and delight their customers.

Yes, empowerment can be both liberating and lethal. Yet, the future of digital messaging is bright for those companies that empower themselves by putting their customers at the center of their business model, liberate themselves from their silos, and adopt message convergence as their mantra. For the companies who do those things, the upside business opportunities will be as enormous as the downside risks for those who don’t.

It’s time to take a hard look at customer empowerment and what it means for the future of digital messaging and the companies who engage in it. It’s time to get on the right side of the issue.  

About Dave Lewis

Dave Lewis is the chief marketing officer for Message Systems, and is a 26-year direct marketing veteran and a recognized industry thought leader. He writes and speaks frequently on digital messaging opportunities, challenges and best practices.