Facebook has not had that much success with email traditionally.
They had previously offered users a facebook email address, and then that service was withdrawn.
Meg Coffey discovered they have (re) entered the space, but now looking to work on the sender-side of the email equation.
Send marketing emails from your page? What new sorcery is this Facebook?!
— Meg Coffey (@TexanMeg) June 1, 2020
Have you seen this new feature where we can now send emails directly from Facebook? This is definitely new to me and only available on one account so far. pic.twitter.com/aSIkSx1uDo
As Meg has reported, Facebook is offering some of its Page managers the ability to send marketing emails, strangely however you cannot simply send a message to your pages fans. You must manually upload your list to Facebook in the first instance.
As described in more detail by SocialMedia Today it would seem that Facebook is looking to move into the CRM space. The question remains are they potentially looking compete directly with enterprise solutions like MessageGears and others or do they plan to be competing with Email Service Providers like MailChimp and Campaign Monitor?
For the moment limited features and functionality would seem to point to the fact that it is likely they are not (at least for the moment) a threat at all, and more likely to be introducing new rookie marketers to the email space. As Andrew Hutchinson of SocialMedia Today has pointed out the offering has more of an “introduction to CRM vibe” than anything else.
However there are others on Twitter are already asking if this is a threat to the industry.
Is this a new threat to email marketing service providers?
— Tejas Rane (@tejas3732) June 2, 2020
emailexpert does not see this new product offering as a threat, and more likely a bridge introducing even more small and cottage business owners to the power of email marketing. Their is a growing ecosystem of small business that operate almost entirely from Facebook and often do not even have a website. This offer from Facebook introduces the email channel as a viable marketing method to those poeple.
In closing we should say thanks to Antonis Gkekas for bringing all this to our attention in the first place.
Facebook Adds Option to Send Marketing Emails via Pages App | Social Media Today https://t.co/unpYREiOdE
— Antonis Gkekas ☁ (@AntonisGkekas) June 2, 2020
