Communication Developments in the Last 20 Years

Twenty years ago, what was happening in the world? In no particular order:

• Tony Blair won a landslide victory in the UK general election
• Céline Dion was topping the charts with, “My Heart Will Go On.”
• Hong Kong was handed over to China
• Dolly the sheep was cloned
• The first Harry Potter book was published

Quite a year, one way or another, and lots to be communicated. How DID we communicate news in those long gone days — and how did we make contact with our clients and potential customers on a business level? In this article, we’ll highlight how communication has developed over the past 20 years, and how you can take advantage of new communication technologies and methods to grow your business.

Rise of social media

Well, for a start, there was no Facebook, which didn’t emerge until February 2004. Today, it’s almost mind-boggling to realise that there are 65 million business pages on Facebook, and a quarter of the world’s population engage with it. It’s a wonderful, informal way of interacting with, and building, an audience, and great for encouraging people to visit your website.

We didn’t use Twitter, because it wasn’t created until March 2006. Unbelievably, just 11 years on, Twitter has more than 319 million monthly active users. For your business, it’s an instant way to build connections with a relevant audience, to strengthen your brand, promote new products and services, or simply develop relationships.

We didn’t use image-based Instagram either, which is an extremely effective platform for driving customer engagement and sales or imparting information in a snappy way to a possible 600 million users. That’s because it wasn’t launched until October 2010. Pinterest was launched at the same time, which enables businesses to create a virtual shop front to promote their products online.

There wasn’t even LinkedIn until 2003, which, although its focus is on job opportunities, serves a valuable function for branding, marketing and sales via business pages. Neither were there smart phones — we had to wait for 2007 for those — so our electronic communications were very much desk-based.

More effective direct mailing techniques

There wasn’t much choice but to use direct mail as a marketing strategy in 1997, but it worked — and, in many ways, works even better today. Everyone loves to receive mail – especially if it’s personalised mail. You might think it’s an older generation preference, but Royal Mail has carried out a survey which shows that 15-34-year-olds are:

• 42% more likely to find mail memorable than the UK population as a whole
• 27% more likely to welcome it
• 71% more likely to trust it
• 21% more likely to switch suppliers because of mail

Not for nothing does the Royal Mail’s brochure The Private Life of Mail carry the strapline, “Mail in the Home, Heart and Head”. The power of direct mail must never be underestimated, despite the advancement of all the digital forms of communication.

Then there was the telephone and face-to-face interaction, which of course will never go out of fashion.

Emails started life in 1965, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They were a way of sharing files and messages for academics. In 1971, American computer programmer Ray Tomlinson, introduced the @ and in 1976, HM the Queen sent her first email. The process was still largely in the domain of academic institutes until 1988, which heralded the arrival of Microsoft Mail.

The first commercial internet service providers (ISPs) hit the scene in the early 1990s. Hotmail launched in 1996 and Yahoo Mail in 1997 — twenty years ago. Smart marketers realized that email communications were the future and began to make the shift into using email to communicate with customers.

Communication technologies constantly evolve

How lucky we are, in 2017, to have such an abundance of ways to communicate! Each method has its place: each will appeal more to a different demographic, or be more suitable for certain products and services. Things move on with exciting digital developments — but mail through the letterbox will never lose its appeal.