Email in 2020

time_report_forblogLate last year Litmus invited me to contribute to a whitepaper they were putting together about email in 2020. Today, they released Email Marketing in 2020. I am honored to be included in the list of experts that they chose.
One of the things I find so so much fun in participating in this type of joint project is seeing what other people’s visions are. When Chad first contacted us, his request was very simple. He wanted 400-ish words on what we thought would change. We all approached it from our own perspectives. The final document really touches on a wide range of changes and gives an bright and rosy view of the future of email.
It’s hard to imagine I’ve had email for more than 25 years. It’s become such a fundamental and critical part of my life. I mean, sure I’m an email professional but it’s more than that. Some of my best friends I met over email. I’ve gotten multiple jobs based on my presence on email discussion lists. Steve and I met around email. One of the fun bits of M3AAWG is that I get to see friends I first met almost 20 years ago over email.
Email has really changed in the last decade. It is now a critical part of daily life for many people. Even social networking would be nowhere without an email address. Email really is the key to the digital kingdom. That’s not going to change.
Email being the key to the digital kingdom is a challenge. It lets nefarious people into our homes and into our lives and into our computers. A lot of very smart people are working on how to make email safer for us. I think it will be much safer in 2020, through the hard work and dedication of a lot of people.
I strongly encourage you to download the Email Marketing in 2020 white paper from Litmus. There is a lot of insight. It will be fun to see how much of what was said becomes reality.

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This was a notice from Ello telling me that they’d get to my request for an account “at some point.” There were two fails here. The first is very obvious from the To: line. The second is even worse. I have an Ello account, I’m not waiting. Apparently they pulled their “current user” file and added it to the “waiting user” file and then mailed all of them a notice the accounts were getting turned on, albeit slowly.
The footer of the mail made it clear they knew they were spraying and praying:

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