I’ve been pre-occupied with Facebook lately, in part because its demographics are changing so rapidly.

Here’s the current profile, as reported by MediaPost.com:

"Facebook is aging fast. The number of U.S. users over 35 has doubled in just the last 60 days, according to new data from Inside Facebook. The burgeoning crowd of older users means that the majority of Facebook members are now over age 25."

The more Facebook’s population ages, the more valuable it will become for most nonprofits.

As this happens, some say the role of email will change considerably. Uh-oh! Email is the probably the online tool most nonprofit fundraisers and communicators think they understand best today! But, consider these comments from Loren McDonald of  e-marketing firm Silverpop, writing in Email Insider:

"Because so much personal communication is happening on social networks now, what’s left in the inbox is commercial messages, social-network notifications, time-sensitive alerts like payment-due requests or appointment reminders, and, of course, a bit of spam.  
 
Every week, I have less incentive to log into my Gmail account, where I receive personal and commercial email, because so little of it speaks to me as an individual. It’s a disheartening blur of subject lines that all say basically the same things: "Free shipping!" and "25% off!" …
 
My own "ah ha!" moment came recently on my birthday. In my personal email account, I found 33 notifications from Facebook that friends had left birthday greetings on my Facebook page, but only two company-branded emails with birthday greetings.
 
Two observations:
 
1. Most interactions came from my social networks. Not only did most of my birthday greetings come via Facebook and Twitter, but almost all of them were made where other people could see them. Those public greetings prompted several well-wishers to add their own.
 
2. Email marketers were noticeably absent. Email marketers did not take advantage of my personal occasion, for which I had given them data (in this case, birth date, which I know I’ve provided to dozens of companies), to send email that is personally relevant and therefore, more interesting to me.
 
My point is not about birthday information, but that, in general, most marketers are not using the data they collect to deliver the relevant messages that consumers increasingly expect."

This article, including Loren’s suggestions on how to keep your email  competitive in a blizzard of messages from "friends," is well worth reading.

The e-communications landscape is rapidly changing, and I think Loren’s point is quite valid and applies importantly to nonprofits. Email messaging — the main tool of most nonprofits for "push" marketing — will need to meet a higher and higher bar in terms of relevance, or it will be increasingly ignored.

Tom