Two statements recently drew attention to signaling the beginning of a new era in terms of our relationship with technology. On the one hand Amber Case, an anthropologist, said in a lecture at SXSW that ” we are already cybergs “, and on the other hand Tim Cook, CEO of Apple announced the beginning of a “post-PC” era during the launch of the new Ipad. The two statements walk in the same direction regarding our interaction with technology and therefore are directly relevant to the world of email marketing.

Case is of the opinion that the computer and the cell phone already work as our external brains and that alone is enough to understand that technology is already an organic part of our lives. If we have a whole network of people connected through the mobile phone, as well as memories in the form of photographs and correspondence in the form of email messages, the affirmation of anthropology does not stop making sense.

Ya Cook argues that the computer age as we are used to has days counted. He did not refer only to that idea of the original personal computer, with monitor, cpu, keyboard, mouse, cables, etc. He also did it for notebooks and netbooks. The new era, according to what it says, will be tablets and smartphones, but not only that. In the near future we will be using technology without perceiving it, it will be so integrated into our day to day that it will cease to be something conscious. That is, we will be the cyborgs that Amber Case mentions.

We must think, therefore, where email marketing will be placed within that cyborg world. Clearly it is necessary to work on campaigns that can be visualized in any type of operational system or platform, but it is necessary to go beyond that.

To survive in that cyborg reality, email marketing must be integrated into the routine of people. If the technology comes through integrations will not be perceived by its users, email marketing as a practice should seek to follow just that logic. And how to do that? We do not have the answers ready, but one thing is clear, that kind of integration will only come with sophisticated segmentation of the base of contacts and deep knowledge of the habits and preferences of those contacts.

It will be more than ever essential for the email marketing professional to know their base of contacts and work with different strategies for segmented groups, making the experience something much more personal for the contact.