Blog

I remember the founder of our company once telling me how revolutionary the fax machine was to his business. LKCS (or Letterkraft Printers, Inc. at the time) no longer had to mail proofs to our clients — we could fax them and clients could receive proofs in minutes instead of days. And, I remember thinking big deal, it’s just a fax machine.

I have a fax machine in my office. It doubles as my printer. It prints – a lot. But, it receives and sends very few faxes.

WOW! E-mail revolutionized our business. (I’m sure my kids don’t care….it’s just e-mail after all.) Our sales and customer service representatives send and receive well over a thousand e-mails each day. (Yes, thousands — I just checked our e-mail archives to be sure.) While I don’t have hard data, I find it nearly impossible to think we used to send and receive over 1,000 faxes daily.

It makes me think….and should make you think as well.

• Are you effectively using e-mail as a marketing tool to communicate with your members/customers?
• Should e-mail become your primary method of member/customer communication? Or should you still rely on traditional mail or phone calls?
• What’s the next big business revolution? Cell phones? Mobile internet? Social media? Something else?
• Have you made these emerging technologies part of your marketing plan? Or are you still thinking about them?
• Are you ready for the next revolution?