We all know that email is a great way to drive traffic to your business’s Twitter page. But in my view, the biggest challenge for businesses using Twitter is convincing your customers that your corporate tweets are relevant, interesting, and worthwhile.

So, I was fairly intrigued to read about new restaurants in Boston using Twitter to create buzz around their grand openings. Of course, an event like an opening is inherently interesting to local consumers because of its newsworthy nature. But after the first customers are served, how does the restaurant continue to use Twitter effectively? What would I want them to tell me?

I guess I want to know what’s in it for me. Daily menu specials or entertainment listings might be beneficial to Twitter users. Even better, if we’re talking about a very busy restaurant where I can almost never get a reservation, Twitter would be a great place to share table availability due to last-minute cancellations. (Maybe then I would finally be able to eat one of the tasty daily specials I always read about!)

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One of the things I like most about working in the email space is that as of 2009, being an email user is entirely label-free. When you give someone your email address, it doesn’t drag along a laundry list of negative connotations or misleading assumptions about who you are as a person. An email user therefore is given a tabula rasa—a clean slate—that gradually takes on the character of the contents within the inbox.

Now compare that perception with your initial reaction upon hearing a new acquaintance say, “you can find me on Twitter.”

Of course, with any new technology there is always going to be the knee-jerk reaction that any early-adopter is probably a geek. But let’s disregard that perception for now—as any mobile phone user now knows, giving out your cell phone number today does not send out images of the Zack Morris brick phone the same way it did in say, 1990. Once a technology becomes mature, the geek argument becomes moot. But think about the other stereotypes that come with saying “you can find me on Twitter” to someone you have just met, and then consider the obvious negative implications that someone might draw from it:

• You have enough interesting and/or important things to say in 140 characters or less that this person should be happy to receive all of your updates in real-time…
• By that logic, you consider yourself an interesting and/or important person…
• You are very concerned with how many people are “following” you…
• You are an egotist.

Obviously, this string of stereotypes is an unfair characterization to draw without getting to know someone first. But here’s the problem I see facing the Twitter community: there is some significant truth to these conclusions.

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Every day it seems that another once well-respected sector of the business world finds itself under fire from the economic downturn. For whatever reason, many analysts seem eager to add email marketing to the list of soon-to-be casualties of the recession. Tweets, texts, and pokes – oh my! (or is it OMG?!)

My advice to the pundits: don’t call the coroner. Even better, you can un-friend him on Facebook because he won’t be visiting us anytime soon.

Now, I realize that I have covered this topic on our site before, but there have been some over-reaching statements made recently regarding the viability of the email industry that require a response. Let’s have a look at what’s being said about email right now and think about what’s really going on.

From ReadWriteWeb, responding to a Nielsen report showing that more adults are now on Facebook:

Our take away from these findings? People prefer the clean, controlled, multimedia and publicly social experience of social networking communication over the relatively open, individualistic and spammy medium of email. The fact that there is effectively no data portability allowing communication archives to be ported from one social network to another as there is with email doesn’t appear to be bothering people in the short term.

While the Nielsen numbers do confirm that adults have definitely warmed to social networks, they do not indicate what people “prefer” or how they interact with them. To suggest that MySpace became popular because it provides a “clean” experience is patently absurd to anyone with two functioning eyeballs. To suggest that the 15 Zombie/Vampire War requests I have in my Facebook account or the now-famous “work from home” Facebook ad scams are not “spammy” is equally ridiculous. For the record, I would also point out that there’s a difference between being private and “individualistic” – I would consider my email account private, while my tally of Twitter followers skews more towards the realm of “individualistic” and ego-serving.

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I just loved this email I recently received from Urban Outfitters, and thought I’d share some of my thoughts about it with you all.

Scrolling through my inbox, the main image of the Urban Outfitter “Where to?” campaign grabbed my attention above all the others. For those of us on the East Coast, it’s been a long winter. Nevertheless, spring is in the air, and Urban Outfitter’s image of the ocean popped out at me. The creative inspired me to open the email and daydream a little about being on a beach where I could forget about the economy and relax.

The “Where to?” campaign is a great example of using attractive photography and creative marketing to engage your subscribers to open your emails.

Because I took the time to look at the picture, I saw that Urban was advertising friends’ top picks for the season based on their travel plans. Their approach of using friends’ favorite items was a clever take on viral marketing, used in this instance to market a number of different products. Even if the recipient does not have any trips planned, the items fit different personalities as much as they fit the destinations selected.

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An interesting piece popped up in a recent edition of the New York Times that makes you realize just how different the marketing universe has become thanks to interactive web technology. It seems that Tropicana, the fine purveyor of orange juice, has scrapped its latest re-branding effort and will bring back their old packaging in the near future. I see this as a smart move for Tropicana – a solid way to gain a reputation as a company that listens to its loyal customers.

In the good old days, marketing agencies would hand out new branding ideas and even if consumers didn’t like the changes, they would eventually accept them. With a few notable exceptions (New Coke is the classic example), it used to be difficult for consumers to make a fuss about their displeasure with corporate marketing. But in the brave new world of Web 2.0, one customer’s voice can be heard fairly easily. And in some cases, that one voice can lead to an avalanche of public opinion over the web. As the Times piece states:

Such attention is becoming increasingly common as interactive technologies enable consumers to rapidly convey opinions to marketers.

“You used to wait to go to the water cooler or a cocktail party to talk over something,” said Richard Laermer, chief executive at RLM Public Relations in New York.

“Now, every minute is a cocktail party,” he added. “You write an e-mail and in an hour, you’ve got a fan base agreeing with you.”

…Or disagreeing with you, as the case may be.

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