For more than a decade, customers have been asking us to add an email service to our product. To this day, it remains one of our most popular feature requests. Most of the population would say that email is an essential communication tool for business. Estimates indicate that 74 trillion emails are sent every year. That's a staggering number, the equivalent in seconds to 2,334,404 years! Keep reading to learn why we don't offer email and discover 5 reasons for texting vs. email.
So why would a company choose to not offer such a widely popular method of communication? On the surface, it would seem that email would be very complementary to the mass texting and calling services provided today. The demand for email is enormous and likely offers a substantial opportunity to add revenue.
Let me start by saying that we're a different kind of company. If you don't know us already, here are some of the reasons why we're different:
Now that you understand us a little bit more let's get back to the topic of email as a feature. Our service is part of a particular niche of mass messaging that focuses on informational messages (again, no SPAM). We provide value by making it easy for our users to reach large groups of contacts quickly and easily engage those contacts when they reply to messages.
While this might sound similar to email, there are some key differences;
While texting has been around since 1992, the first email was sent way back in 1971. Texting is still a relatively new technology and continues to evolve. RCS, 5G, and other technologies are bringing new features to texting that will allow companies to do more. Imagine branded messages, identity verification, read receipts, typing indicators, and rich content like maps, surveys, and more.
We want to invest our resources in technologies that provide the most value to both our users and the contacts they communicate with. Without question, texting is the preferred communication method for most people today. As the underlying technology evolves and messaging continues to shift toward texting - we'll be there to provide solutions for our customers.
Going back to our high-level strategy, we want our clients to believe we're THE best mass messaging service out there. We're great at texting and calling, we're a joy to do business with, but there are already too many companies that are great at email. Adding that into our mix would be a distraction. The learning curve would be really high, and we'd likely have a sub-par product compared to the hundreds of different solutions already in the marketplace.
Companies already offer excellent solutions, the MailChimp Free plan is ideal for beginners and will let you deliver up to 10,000 sends to 2,000 contacts.
When it comes to texting vs. email, hopefully, we've helped you understand how powerful and effective texting can be. Great reasons to send emails definitely exist. However, the vast majority of our customers are looking to quickly reach contacts with valuable information, and texting is the clear winner.
If you're an existing customer and you'd like to tell us why we should build an email solution, you can add your comments to the current product feedback board.