Have You Shifted to Living Online?

Abu Noaman, in his recent blog post about “The Age of eMarketing” states as the sixth reason for the paradoxical rise of eMarketing spending: “Most importantly, prospects and customers have shifted to living online”.

Is he crazy?  Do you believe this?

Well, are you reading this blog post? 

Think about it: are you living online?  Are there some activities you do via an internet connection today that would have taken you to a brick-and-mortar facility ten or even five years ago?

I’ll bet that ten years ago, the following activities would have led you to the paired brick-and-mortar facility, but are now handled via the parenthetic online solution:

• Register for a professional event:  drop a check and registration card in a mailbox/at a Post Office.
  ( Register via an online event registration solution )
• Pay your utility bills:  go to your local utility office to pay in person, or mail a check at the Post Office.
  ( Use an e-bill-pay service, or have your bank make payments electronically )
• Respond to a survey:  send the completed paper survey back to the company by snail mail.
  ( Respond to an e-mailed or website-based survey software solution )
• Deposit your paycheck:  walk to your local bank branch.
  ( Use direct deposit between your employer and your bank [this has been available for 10+ years])
• Research a book, article or school paper:  go to your local library.
  ( Use Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia or some similar search engine/resource to hunt down your information )
• Call your brother, sister, mother, father or a local pizza shop:  pick up your land-line phone to place the call.
  ( Use your cell phone to call, or more inexpensively, text or send e-mail from your phone )
• Send a mass full-color mailing to thousands of customers:  engage a snail mail marketing firm to send bulk-rate mail.
  ( Use email marketing software, or contract with a marketing firm who does this )

Can you identify other areas in which online services have superceded (for you, for others) brick-and-mortar services?  Let us know!