Email epidemic: Don't cut the flow, embrace it!

I know I go on about student email like Dawson goes on about Google Apps, but the vast majority of people outside the university environment really don't seem to grasp how important it is.

Dedicated student email is such an intrinsic part of our livesand it needs to be remembered. I see students sometimes constantly refreshing their email web pages when they're expecting something through, or all jumping on the BlackBerry bandwagon to keep up to date.

And again it comes down to identity. To the world, my email address is zaw2@kent.ac.uk but within the confines of university scenarios, my identity falls down to three letters and a number - zaw2. All I need to do is utter those letters and people know not only how to get in touch with me but can reveal my universal identity.

But the other day, I hit the 3,000 email mark, and for sake of accuracy, all university-related email goes into a folder in my Outlook. I have now received just over 3,000 legitimate university related emails.

Email may well be unfashionable, outdated and a bit stale, but it's still important and vital to every day running of society and especially, on-campus societies, events, seminars and lectures.

58% of the votes in a poll undertaken some months back indicated how important email still is, yet social media still has a part to play in terms of spreading the message taking 30% of the vote (12% were individual comments).

Take Twitter as a prime example. If the university called off work because of snow which it did last year, one tweet could be read by thousands of students. But instead, they opted to email the entire university through a mailing list which would have cost money, energy and server processing power.

Remember, not all students use Facebook or Twitter, yet whether they use it or not, they are given a university email account.

How does an organisation get in touch with all of its customers, or a university get in touch with all its students with guaranteed reading/responses? Leave your thoughts after the beep...