Before you say anything let me first put some context around why I’m asking this question.  On Friday I’m going to be speaking at the Social Email Marketing conference in San Francisco.  Almost all of the sessions are going to be focused on email, and then…there’s me.  The nice fellow whose going to be talking about Social CRM.  It should be an exciting event actually and I’m quite curious to see how SCRM is received amongst a perhaps mainly email crowd.

When first planning the session I had a few chat with the organizers and the topic of “where does email fir within social CRM” came up.  Well, I don’t want to disappoint anyone but email is a channel just like any other.  It “fits” if it’s a part of your customer engagement strategy but asking where email fits is like asking where twitter or facebook fit.  They fit wherever they make sense to execute your customer strategy, maybe they don’t fit at all.

I’m sure the topic of tools such as Rapportive will come up (I know it will).  Rapportive is basically a free gmail plugin that allows you to see social information of the people you are emailing with in your sidebar.  While this is a nifty plugin to have it’s still (as Rapportive describes) a “rich contact profile inside of gmail.”  Definitely a great tool to have and one that I use quite regularly, however it’s still just a tool not something I would consider (yet) as something that “fits within SCRM.”

Perhaps this is a bit anti-climactic, maybe you were hoping for some sort of an in depth explanation or description?  Sorry to disappoint, email is just a channel.  I actually asked where email fits within SCRM on twitter (to see what other people thought) and of course the vocal Esteban Kolsky jumped all over that comment 🙂

I will be presenting a brief 20 minute session on SCRM talking about moving organizations from fans and followers to customers and advocates.  Later in the day I’ll be joining a panel on privacy which should also be interesting.  If you’re in San Francisco I hope you can attend the event, there should be some very interesting discussions following the conference.  Hope to see you there!