Facebook-messages

Meet the contributors
Chip house Senior Director, Industry & Relationship Marketing

What's Inside?
3 A Brief iNTrODUCTiON OVerVieW fUNCTiONALiTY: HOW iT WOrks DeLiVerABiLiTY issUes 3 5 7

Kristina huffman Senior Design Consultant

10 emAiL DesiGN & reNDeriNG
al iverson Director, Privacy and Deliverability

13 CONCLUsiON

Jen ribble Marketing Communications Associate

Jeff rohrsPrincipal, Marketing Research & Education

Chris studabaKer, Supervising Consultant, Design Solutions
© ExactTarget All rights reserved 01-03162011

exacttarget snapshot: Facebook Messages

www.ExactT arget.com

exacttarget snapshot: Facebook Messages
A Brief iNTrODUCTiON
Since the launch of Facebook Messages in November 2010, marketers have questioned how this new platform could impacttheir ability to communicate with subscribers. Will Facebook Messages revolutionize email marketing? Or, conversely, does it have the potential to become an email killer? In this Snapshot, we’ll assess Facebook Messages as it stands today* in terms of functionality, deliverability, and design issues. We’ll also provide insight and advice to marketers regarding the current challenges presented byFacebook Messages. We all know how quickly the world of interactive marketing can change—especially where Facebook is concerned. As Facebook Messages continues to grow and evolve, we’ll do our best to provide updated assessments and advice.

OVerVieW
The new Facebook Messages (FBM) platform has been promoted as a single inbox that consolidates private communications from a variety ofchannels—including email, chats, and texts. Facebook positions the new platform as more casual and personal than email, with a format that more closely replicates real-life conversation. Launched as an invitation-only add-on to Facebook accounts, Facebook plans a gradual rollout to all users with the eventual goal of replacing the current “Messages” functionality. In the early days of this new platform,speculation was rampant that FBM could spell the end of email as we know it, despite this quote from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a press conference announcing the FBM launch: “This is not an email-killer… This is a messaging system that includes email as one part of it.” — Mark Zuckerberg, as quoted in Business Insider, November 15, 2010

Keeping up k with Faceboo ld be changes cou b! a full-timejo

* Note: This report was published in March 2011. Material changes to Facebook Messages after that date will be covered in our blog: http://blog.exacttarget.com.

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exacttarget snapshot: Facebook Messages

www.ExactT arget.com

Some of the uproar may have been fueled by conflicting comments from other Facebook insiders, including this quote from COO Sheryl Sandberg: “If you want toknow what people like us will do tomorrow, you look at what teenagers are doing today. Email… is probably going away.” — Sheryl Sandberg, as quoted in FastCompany, June 15, 2010 While there’s no way to predict the growth potential of FBM, it is helpful to consider the history of other online giants. For example, Google was dominant in the world of search engines when it launched its Gmailplatform in March 2004. there are no official statistics tallying the number of users for web-based email providers, but there’s enough widely-available information to graph an approximate growth chart:
GROWTH OF GMAIL OVER TIME Number of Unique Users (US)
40 M 35 M 30 M 25 M 20 M 15 M 10 M 5M 0 3/04 4/06 1/08 1/09 7/09

be Gmail grew to est the third larg ail web-based em provider in just fiveyears!

Like FBM, Gmail was initially offered by invitation only; the platform was opened to the public in February 2005 and finally ended its beta testing period in July 2009. In that five year period, Gmail grew to be the third largest web-based email provider. By comparison, Yahoo! Mail had approximately 106 million unique users (US) in July 2009 and Hotmail had about 47 million. (Reliable...