This is a guest post by Michael Sengbusch, CEO and co-founder of Eletype, a smart assistant for marketing teams that uses Slack and MS Teams. Michael was recently featured at the CallRail Agency Summit in Chicago and speaks frequently at conferences on topics ranging from messaging platforms, digital marketing, social media and enterprise software development. Michael works closely with today's major digital platforms and has strong relationships with Slack, Facebook, Google and HubSpot. "The seer is the message." It's an old adage by philosopher Marshall McLuhan, but one that's just as relevant today as it was 50 years ago. It's also a phrase that has taken on many different meanings over the years, which was exactly McLuhan's intention and demonstrated his point perfectly. This phrase resonates with me every time we get a new technical innovation, whether it's the shift to browser and web or the rise of mobile and app ecosystems, or the current shift to messaging platforms that we see today. You may not have noticed, but messaging platforms are changing the way we marketers work and deliver value to our customers.

And it happened very quickly, representing nothing less than a generational shift in the Employee Email Database way we do business and build apps. The Rise of Messaging When we talk about messaging platforms, we are of course talking about Slack. It's the fastest growing business software ever, and through our recent survey, we found that over 95% of marketing agencies use Slack. Embedded content: Slack has become the dominant collaboration tool for marketers by combining the best parts of text messaging, group chat, video conferencing, document repositories, and social networks. So how did this new platform take over so quickly? First, we were all overwhelmed with emails. In fact, 74% of people feel overwhelmed by their inbox. I know I'm doing it as I strive for that Inbox Zero mirage that's still just there on the horizon, but seemingly disappears the moment I approach the oasis. Second, we've been living in a mobile-centric world for nearly a decade now, which has contributed to the always-on, always-connected lives we lead. As a result, we stopped thinking about work-life balance and got really good at work-life integration around our smartphones, emails, and social and professional networks.

Third, flexible working hours, telecommuting, and remote working have become the norm for most teams. Whether it's juggling the kids, managing a team overseas, maternity/paternity leave, or working from home on Fridays, we've all seen how this has created not just communication issues, but also collaboration and culture challenges requiring solutions. This cocktail of email burnout, mobile, remote, and disparate teams required a new way to communicate and collaborate. We were hungry for something that would succeed where email failed us, combine it with the best parts of chat, and incorporate the fun parts of social media. Enter Slack, which has quickly become the best business messaging platform that's so ubiquitous in the modern workplace. Clearly, the messaging-first movement has revolutionized the way we work within our own businesses. So how can we apply this knowledge to how we build applications and deliver value to our customers? Messaging-centric design Each new medium brings new advantages, opportunities and benefits as well as disadvantages and limitations. Email is no different in this regard, so let's see what an email strategy looks like first.