Facebook Messages Jul2011

Meet the contributors

Chip house Senior Director, Industry & Relationship Marketing
What's Inside?
3 A Brief iNTrODUCTiON
3 OVerVieW
Kristina huffman Senior Design Consultant
5 fUNCTiONALiTY: HOW iT WOrks
7 DeLiVerABiLiTY issUes
10 emAiL DesiGN & reNDeriNG
al iverson Director, Privacy and Deliverability 13 CONCLUsiON

Jen ribble Marketing Communications Associate

Jeff rohrs Principal, Marketing Research & Education

Chris studabaKer, Supervising Consultant, Design Solutions

© ExactTarget All rights reserved 01-03162011

exacttarget snapshot: Facebook Messages www.ExactTarget.com

exacttarget snapshot: Facebook Messages
A Brief iNTrODUCTiON
Since the launch of Facebook Messages in November 2010, marketers have questioned how this
new platform could impact their ability to communicate with subscribers. Will Facebook Messages
revolutionize email marketing? Or, conversely, does it have the potential to become an email killer?

In this Snapshot, we’ll assess Facebook Messages as it stands today* in terms of functionality,
deliverability, and design issues. We’ll also provide insight and advice to marketers regarding the current
challenges presented by Facebook Messages.

We all know how quickly the world of interactive marketing can change—especially where Facebook is
concerned. As Facebook Messages continues to grow and evolve, we’ll do our best to provide updated
assessments and advice. Keeping up
k
with Faceboo
OVerVieW changes could be
b!
The new Facebook Messages (FBM) platform has been promoted as a single inbox that consolidates a full-time jo
private communications from a variety of channels—including email, chats, and texts. Facebook positions
the new platform as more casual and personal than email, with a format that more closely replicates
real-life conversation. Launched as an invitation-only add-on to Facebook accounts, Facebook plans a
gradual rollout to all users with the eventual goal of replacing the current “Messages” functionality.

In the early days of this new platform, speculation was rampant that FBM could spell the end of email as
we know it, despite this quote from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a press conference announcing
the FBM launch:

“This is not an email-killer… This is a messaging system that includes email as one part of it.”
— Mark Zuckerberg, as quoted in Business Insider, November 15, 2010

* Note: This report was published in March 2011. Material changes to Facebook Messages after that date will be
covered in our blog: http://blog.exacttarget.com.

3


Some of the uproar may have been fueled by conflicting comments from other Facebook insiders,
including this quote from COO Sheryl Sandberg:

“If you want to know what people like us will do tomorrow, you look at what teenagers are doing today. Email… is
probably going away.” — Sheryl Sandberg, as quoted in FastCompany, June 15, 2010

While there’s no way to predict the growth potential of FBM, it is helpful to consider the history of other
online giants. For example, Google was dominant in the world of search engines when it launched
its Gmail platform in March 2004. there are no official statistics tallying the number of users for
web-based email providers, but there’s enough widely-available information to graph an approximate
growth chart:

Like FBM, Gmail was initially offered
GROWTH OF GMAIL OVER TIME by invitation only; the platform was
opened to the public in February
2005 and finally ended its beta testing
Number of Unique Users (US)

40 M
be
Gmail grew to 35 M
period in July 2009. In that five year
est
the third larg period, Gmail grew to be the third
ail
web-based em
30 M largest web-based email provider.
By comparison, Yahoo! Mail had
provider in just
25 M
approximately 106 million unique
five years! 20 M
users (US) in July 2009 and Hotmail
15 M had about 47 million. (Reliable
numbers for more recent dates are
10 M
hard to come by.) So despite its rapid
5M growth since 2004, Gmail still lags
0
these “old school” email providers by
3/04 4/06 1/08 1/09 7/09 a wide margin.
Date
The difference between FBM and
Gmail is that Gmail offered robust
email functionality with never-before-seen features. Facebook, on the other hand, stresses simplicity
and contends that its messaging platform is not an email service—despite the use of a facebook.com
email address.

4


fUNCTiONALiTY: HOW iT WOrks
At its most basic level, Facebook Messages appears to function exactly like any other web-based email
platform. After being granted access to FBM, the user receives an “@facebook.com” email address,
which can be used to send and receive messages.

Messages sent to the facebook.com address are routed to one of two places:

• the “messages” folder, which is reserved for messages from Facebook friends (and friends
of friends). This is roughly equivalent to Gmail’s “Priority Inbox.”

• the “other” folder, which is the repository for all other messages, including bulk mail and
anything from individuals from outside the user’s Facebook circle. Although not technically
a “junk” or “spam” folder, this is clearly a less desirable spot for messages to land due to its
somewhat hidden location.

ou’ll
Here’s where y
s”...
find “Message
But
and “Other”.
“Other”
you’ll only see
the
after clicking
der.
“Messages” fol
hidden!
Until then, it’s

5


FBM consolidates all messages from the same user into a single thread. Emails, texts, and chats all appear in
one feed, and the user can respond via the channel of their choice. The user can also send messages via FBM
to recipients on any platform—email, text, or chat.

THe PrOs. From a consumer perspective, there are some advantages to this unusual format. By bundling
all messages from the same sender into one thread—including email, texts, and chat—FBM creates a
complete history of conversations with that individual. theoretically, this could be kept for years and
become a modern version of old letters saved in a box.
And the division of messages into the Messages and Other folders does promote Facebook’s stated objective
of making this platform more personal—it’s reasonable to think that a consumer might value messages from
ges
You like messa
Facebook friends over messages from acquaintances or brands.
ends
from your fri
rketing THe CONs. Unfortunately, consumers will also discover that some features they’ve come to expect are
more than ma completely missing from FBM.
t?
messages, righ • no subject lines
Facebook has eliminated email subject lines in FBM, claiming that this enhances the casual nature
of the platform. When a traditional email with a subject line is delivered via FBM, the subject line
appears in bold text as the first line of the email, right below the sender name. When the user has
several emails from the same sender (displayed in a single thread), it can be extremely difficult to
find a particular message, especially considering there’s also…

• no way to file or organize messages
FBM provides no functionality for organizing message threads into
folders, or for separating messages from the same sender. For example,
it’s impossible to separate messages from your spouse regarding
“ Some features
consumers have come
to expect are completely

”
weekend errands from those related to your summer vacation. If they’re missing from Facebook
all from the same person, they’re all in the same thread. Messages.

• no way of knowing how many unread messages you have
An unread message count appears next to the folder name (Messages or Other) when you have new
messages, but it disappears as soon as you open the folder—regardless of whether you actually
open any messages. If you have multiple unread messages from a given sender, you’ll also see an
unread message counter displayed next to the sender name—but this also disappears as soon as
you open the thread from that sender, regardless of whether you read any of their messages.

6


DeLiVerABiLiTY issUes
Consumer functionality is all well and good, but as a marketer, you need to know whether your brand’s
messages are going to get through. When it comes to Facebook Messages, the answer is… maybe.

Facebook currently offers no support for bulk senders, and no analytics to help marketers determine
where messages are being delivered. So we’ve done our own testing and analysis to find out what
happens to marketing emails in FBM.

“MessAges” Vs. “OTHer.” As mentioned previously, only messages from a user’s Facebook
friends (or friends of friends) are delivered to the Messages folder. Everything else is lumped together
in the Other folder—even messages from companies the user has “liked” on facebook. It’s
reasonable to think that in the future, Facebook may give priority placement to brands that users have
“liked,” but this functionality is not currently available.

It is possible to have your brand’s message delivered to the Messages folder—if the user “promotes”
your brand using a command in the Actions menu. (Messages can be “demoted” to the Other folder in
the same way.) So if you begin to notice facebook.com email addresses popping up on your subscriber
list, consider targeting these customers with periodic messages, asking them to “promote” your brand
to the Messages folder.

romote”
A user can “p
the
your brand to
er...
Messages fold
ind
if they can f
n menu.
this drop-dow

7


To add an additional layer of complexity to the “Messages vs. Other” issue, delivery to these two folders
can be somewhat inconsistent. Messages sent by one person from different addresses aren’t grouped
together, as they aren’t recognized as the same sender. So if you use multiple send addresses for your
marketing emails, it’s possible that some of your messages might arrive in the Messages folder while
others are relegated to the Other folder. This is yet another reason to follow best practices and send all
your marketing messages from a single address.

OrgANizATiON. Facebook groups all messages from the same sender in a single thread, in an effort
to simplify the user experience and create a platform that more closely mirrors real-life conversation. But
from a marketer’s perspective, this system is extremely problematic.

Because all of your messages are grouped together, your brand only gets one spot in the messages
or other folder—regardless of how many messages you send. Combined with the lack of a true subject
line, this makes it extremely difficult to give your brand any visibility.

ts one
Your brand ge
essages
spot in the M
er
or Other fold
that’s it!

8


One more organizational quirk of note: when a user clicks to view the message thread from a given
sender, messages are actually displayed with the oldest on top. New messages are sent to the bottom
of the list.

OUr ADViCe… Despite significant barriers to deliverability, it’s far too early to sound the alarm on FBM.
As of right now, a very small number of people have facebook.com addresses, and even fewer are likely
using FBM as their primary or sole email address.

In surveying some of ExactTarget’s largest retail clients, we found that no more than .001% of
subscribers are currently using facebook.com addresses. That’s nothing more than a rounding
error, for those keeping score at home. But it’s likely to grow as Facebook enables FBM functionality in
more user accounts.

Some have suggested simply
refusing to accept facebook.
com email addresses for opt-in

Here’s a great
programs, as a way to avoid FBM
deliverability issues altogether. While
that would certainly work, it seems example of
like an overreaction given the minute a subscriber
number of current FBM users. opt-in screen
One suggestion that could make
sense in the long run, however, is
to make it easy for subscribers
to opt-in to your messaging
through your facebook page.
(Crocs and Digital Evolution Group
do a great job with this on the Crocs
Facebook page—see example at
right.) Interaction through Facebook
seems a likely path to having your
messages delivered to the Messages
folder in the future, although this isn’t
currently the case.

9


eMAiL DesigN & reNDeriNg
As part of its dedication to simplicity, Facebook Messages has done some unexpected things in terms of
email design and rendering. When a user clicks to open a message in FBM, their initial view of the message
does not include images or links. If the message was sent with a text version, FBM will initially display
approximately the last 40 lines of the text-only message. If no text version was included, the user will see a
scraped version of the HMTL code.

Here’s what
e
subscribers se
when they open
your message.

10


To view the full email message, the user must click “Expand” (in the upper right corner of the message),
which opens the full message in a new window. Rendering in the expanded view was quite reliable in our
tests—even for messages up to 900 pixels wide.

In terms of links, we saw some messages functioning correctly in the expanded view, while others had
problems. For consistently clickable links, the user must click “View As A Web Page.”

” view
The “expanded
Links
shows images.
ve, but
should be acti
sistent
this was incon
in our tests.

11


In summary, it’s a multi-step process to view a fully-functional email in FBM:

• First the user must click on the message thread from a given sender

• Then they must locate the current message, which may
be at the bottom of the thread

• A plain text or HTML version of the message is displayed

• The user must click “Expand” to view a full version of the message with images

• To activate links consistently, the user must click “View As A Web Page”

While this is only three clicks from the Messages folder to the full HTML version, FBM’s current functionality
still makes it somewhat more complicated than the average email client.

“
OUr ADViCe… FBM is designed to encourage simple, plain text messaging.
While the system has the capacity to view HTML email, the interface clearly Facebook
hasn’t been engineered with this style of interaction in mind. In truth, FBM is Messages is more of an

”
more of an email reader than an email client. email reader than an
email client.
But this doesn’t have to be a problem.

A multi-channel approach is essential to your interactive marketing program—but that doesn’t mean you send
the same message across every channel. You wouldn’t compose a Tweet and then spend hours optimizing it
for use on your Facebook wall… The same holds true for email and FBM.

Consider this: If you have subscribers who are so firmly entrenched in Facebook that they’ve made FBM their
primary email address, you should probably be communicating with them primarily through facebook
status updates and wall posts—not FBM! Email is likely not the channel of choice for those consumers, so
don’t waste time and resources optimizing your email program to work with FBM. Engage them on their own
turf, and capitalize on the unique strengths of Facebook to reach that segment of your audience.

At a more tactical level, there are some simple things you can do to improve the user experience always
for FBM subscribers. First and foremost, make sure you send messages in multi-part mime. Our advice:
essages in
ExactTarget has always recommended including a text version with your HTML messages, and this send your m
IME.
becomes even more important in FBM. You spend hours building an email; why not spend a few extra multi-part M
minutes creating a text version?

12


“
Keep the limitations of FBM in mind as you build plain text messages.
Subscribers will see only the bottom 40 lines of your message, so keep your Facebook has made
content under 40 lines (approximately 50 characters per line) to avoid scrolling. it clear from the start that
Facebook Messages is not
And finally, remember that at this point in time, the FBM audience is far too

”
intended to be a full-blown
small to warrant significant re-work of your email communications. Even if
email client.
FBM’s adoption rate over its first three years were to double that of Gmail, it
would still have no more than about 30 million users—less than 1% of the 3.8
billion email accounts projected by 2014.* But like everything else, you need to look at this from a cost-benefit
perspective. Continue to monitor your subscriber list and be ready to adjust your strategy if facebook.com
addresses become a sizeable part of your subscriber base.

CONCLUsiON
While Facebook Messages may be an exciting new channel for casual, interpersonal communication, its
usefulness as an email platform is clearly limited. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise—Facebook has made
it clear from the start that it’s not intended to be a full-blown email client.

Consider the fact that a user must have an external email address in order to sign up for Facebook and it
becomes clear that—at the present time—facebook does not anticipate fbm becoming the primary
Remember
email platform for most users. This position is clearly supported in this quote from Mark Zuckerberg at a quires
November press conference announcing the FBM launch: Facebook re il
ema
an external
rder to
“It’s true people are going to be able to have facebook.com email addresses, but this is not email. Email is one way people
address in o
unt!
get an acco
are going to use this system, but we don’t even think it’s going to be the primary way.” —Mark Zuckerberg, as quoted in
the Daily Mail, November 16, 2010

Instead, Facebook seems to be focused on the idea of real-time communication—a trait that frankly isn’t very
important for email. In fact, one of the strengths of email is that it typically doesn’t require an immediate view
and response. You send an email, and the recipient may or may not open it right away—which is fine, because
there’s no expectation of an instant reply. In this way, email is far less intrusive than other channels—one of the
key reasons it’s been such a successful platform for marketing messages.

This focus on real-time seems to be solidified with the March 1, 2011, announcement that Facebook has
acquired Beluga, a standout in the quickly-developing field of group messaging. While it’s not yet clear what
plans Facebook might have for this acquisition, it seems likely that group texting functionality could soon
be added to fbm.

*Source: The Radicati Group, Inc. release: “Email Statistics Report 2010-2014,” April 19, 2010
13


As we see it, there are three possible paths that FBM could follow;

fbm remains essentially as it is today and fulfills Mark Zuckerberg stated
1 expectations—a casual, personal messaging platform that includes email as one
component. In this scenario, FBM remains largely unsuitable for dynamic, visually intensive
messaging such as marketing emails—and remains a secondary messaging resource for
most consumers.

2 fbm develops additional functionality and becomes a more robust messaging
platform. In this scenario, FBM could draw a significant number of users away
from Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, and other emails clients, and may even be viable as a primary
messaging resource for some—particularly the younger users who rely heavily on text
messaging and social media to communicate. But as these younger users mature, their needs
may also mature. Facebook could be forced to develop a fully functional email platform or risk
continual loss of users as they “outgrow” FBM’s capabilities.

fbm has a brief moment in the sun, and then quickly fades away, unsuitable for
3 the robust, complex messaging that consumers have come to rely upon. (Remember
Google Wave?) We suspect that, at the moment, Facebook may be trying to be too many
things to too many people—cramming email, texts, and chat into an interface that wasn’t built
to support them. We all compartmentalize our communications, and our communication style
varies by channel. If users can’t find their “voice” on FBM, it could end up being nothing more
than a footnote in the history of the social media giant.

“
With all of that said, history shows that Facebook is constantly changing. The
messaging platform of today may bear little resemblance to what’s available
Consumers think
hese reports
six months down the road. And while there’s no denying Facebook’s growth
Check out t , and ability to innovate, consumers will only tolerate so much change of Facebook as primarily
fo on Email

”
for great in before becoming frustrated. Facebook needs to consider its users’ needs a personal channel, not a
nd Twitter: marketing channel.
Facebook, a and provide easy-to-use interfaces and appropriate user support as it adds
et.com/sff
ww.exacttarg
functionality. Otherwise features like Messages, Group Texting, and whatever
w comes next will have a hard time reaching their significant potential.

Another important point to remember—consumers think of Facebook as primarily a personal channel, not
a marketing channel. As we discussed in SUBSCRIBERS, FANS, & FOLLOWERS #8: The Social Break-
Up, only 43% of U.S. online consumers have “liked” at least one company on Facebook, out of the nearly

14


three-quarters of U.S. online consumers who’ve created a Facebook profile. This ambivalence toward
marketing is likely to apply to FBM as well, as we anticipate consumers will view FBM as an extension of
Facebook rather than just another email address—regardless of any functionality that might be added to
FBM in the future.

For now, FBM is just one small cog in the giant interactive machine, and you should treat it as one small
part of your overall interactive marketing strategy. Our overarching advice is to deal with the here and now,
and don’t spend too much time worrying about the future impact of FBM. Instead, stay vigilant, be aware
of new developments, and respond as needed—without overreacting.

We’ll do the same. We’re keeping a watchful eye on FBM, and we’ll provide updated guidance as new
!
developments emerge. Don’t panic
ur back.
We’ve got yo

Want more information about how consumers interact with
brands through Email, Facebook, and Twitter? Download the
entire SUBSCRIBERS, FANS, & FOLLOWERS research series at
www.exacttarget.com/sff.

15

Consumers don’t isolate channels.
Why should you?
ExactTarget’s Interactive Marketing Hub™ is the only tool that gives you a single view of real-time
conversations across Email, Mobile, Social, and Sites.

With CoTweet available in the Interactive Marketing Hub—and integrated seamlessly with Facebook—
you can monitor and track conversations about your brand in one combined stream. From scheduling
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Visit www.exacttarget.com/hub
to learn more and register for a LiVe DemO!

This document may not be copied without the prior written consent of ExactTarget. © 2010 ExactTarget.

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