Will Facebook destroy the class reunion business?

I had the ‘pleasure’ of attending my wife’s high school reunion recently. We both went to the same high school but graduated in different years. There were more than 330 students in my wife’s graduating class (way back in the late 1970’s). 75 people showed up for the reunion and that number included spouses and significant others. It was set up by one of what appears to be several companies that specialize in setting up class reunions. They did an ok job but it was expensive (buffet dinner and open bar was included) and most of the attendees spent their time within 50 feet of the bar and a sad DJ was playing music from the ‘70’s and ’80’s,

I heard several people mention that all that was really needed was a big room with drinks without food. Tracking down people has never been easier and one would think Facebook could even consider getting into the business of helping set up reunions – if people still want to go to reunions in the first place.
After 30 years it is interesting to see how people have turned out even if only 15% of your classmates were able to attend. But social networking has put people back together on a much more personal level (at least initially). One of my still under 30 nieces said she does not even think she’d go to a reunion since she is in touch with the people she wants to be in touch with via FB.

Remember Classmates.com? They are still around but that might not be the case much longer. They too have been undone by Facebook and to a lesser degree MySpace. Same problem. I had a friend tell me that when he was contacted by someone he had not heard from in more than 25 years it was awkward. He said the reason that he hadn’t been in touch with that person was NOT because he could not find him!
Still, I maintain that there is nothing like being there.

But the notion of reunions every ten years (is that really necessary?) seems to me to be a dying proposition. Maybe 25 year and 50 year reunion s (for those that are still around) will survive but I think the heyday of class reunions has come and gone.

What do you think?

The trouble with email opt-outs – they are killing what’s left of email marketing

We had an employee recently depart our company and agreed to forward emails to the employee's personal email for 6 weeks. After 6 weeks the emails were then redirected to an address back at our company. I was assured by the former employee that the individual had opted out of newsletters and sea of emails they received on a daily basis (many, many emails), yet the deluge continued.

So I opted out on the employee’s behalf. That stemmed some of the tide but far from all of it. What began as a desire to simply stop the madness ended being a study in deception. I have come to realize that despite best practices being an easy email opt-out (most of the companies did have this procedure) there were a good number of companies that did not have an easy opt-out, and even more that ignored the opt-out request by continuing to send daily emails even after an acknowledgment was sent saying ‘sorry to see you go’. Those companies are not only breaking the law, they are taking down the medium day by day.

Our company supports email marketing to current customers as well as those would-be customers that have opted in to receive more information. We rarely use email as a customer acquisition tool. And for the Generation Y folks and Millennials email is a passé form of communication. It is seen as an irrelevant communication tool and my recent experience only goes to support that notion. And ask for an email address from someone and you are 6 times more likely to get it than to get access to their Facebook account. Pretty easy to see which is the more relevant communication.

What possible benefit could a charity, marketer, or anyone for that matter gain from continuing to send out emails to those that do not wish to receive them? Aggravating them? An unusual marketing tactic to be sure but I am hard pressed to think of any other reasons other than dishonesty, laziness or plain stupidity.

Email opt out should be obvious, easy and immediate. Those that are not doing so are just killing it for the rest of us.