How Much is that Email Contact Worth? $948, Say Researchers
In a recent study conducted by IBM, researchers from IBM and MIT found that the average email contact was "worth" $948 in revenue. This is believed to be the first time a specific monetary value has ever been assigned to social network contact. To arrive at that number, the researchers dove into the address books and emails of 1600 IBM consultants (identities withheld, of course) and compared the communication patterns with the consultants' performance in terms of billable hours, projects participated in, and revenue generated.
Close Ties = Improved Performance, More Money
In addition to determining the value of an email contact, the researchers also found that those who had strong email ties with a manager enjoyed greater financial success than those who kept themselves more distant. In fact, those with strong links to a manager produced an average of $588 of revenue per month over the norm. (So maybe you should start emailing the boss more?)
Another value tied to greater financial success was network reach. A more diverse circle of correspondents - specifically, the number of people reachable in three steps - was also tied to higher performance.
Some Negative Impacts
However, if there were too many managers involved, the old expression "too many cooks spoil the broth" proved to be true. Projects overly-managed tended to have less success.
As for those who typically emailed the same people over and over, the results were also found to be negative. This is perhaps due to repetitive and redundant information being exchanged, the researchers theorized.
The study also identified a particular type of email user dubbed a "gatekeeper." The gatekeeper was someone who insisted upon personally approving or enabling every request. The researchers determined that this person was a less valuable team member - monetarily that is. In other words, if you're constantly being asked to provide information or access to others, don't be flattered - you're just another node on a colleague's network and one that may very well be a bottleneck to the information flow.
What's better is to have a handful of "superstars" on a project who are well-connected and in the center of the information flow. This actually leads to better performance than if all team members were central to the communication pathways.
Finally, the researchers found that there were a handful of things that seemingly had no impact on performance. These included access to different divisions, access to different geographical locations, and gender distribution.
Conclusion
The results of this study can be extrapolated only so far since the researchers used consultants to determine the monetary value of connections and the success of projects. In other industries and companies, there may be different factors that determine a project's success or failure.
That said, there are still some over-arching truths to be found here - and these truths are relevant to the discussions we're having on the web today. For example, just recently, there was a lot of talk about how much value there was in your Twitter network. The question was raised after Jason Calacanis offered Twitter $250,000 for placement in the "Recommended Users" section of Twitter's site for a period of two years. His contention is that there's a definite value to the number of followers you have on the Twitter social network and he wanted Twitter to sell him those connections for a set price. But was he offering too little or too much? Without more research, it's hard to know.
As our social networks continue to figure more prominently in our interactions, both personal and professional, there's likely going to be more opportunities like this to study the value of those connections. What will a Facebook friend be worth, for example? What about a LinkedIn contact? Can any study ever really tell us for sure? All we do know now is that value doesn't come from the sheer number of connections alone, but in how you leverage those connections, how they're laid out in your network, and how they're interconnected, too.
For more information, you can refer to the slide deck (PPT) that summarizes this study's findings.
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Its definitely interesting data. I can understand the qualitative part (more email to the boss is better).
Also I would have also included analysis of impact of corporate blogging and micro-blogging. Emails are reducing because lot more is being communicated via internal and external blogs and micro-blogs.
Ridiculous, invalid, snake oil. Sales, marketing and PR people desperate to file billable hours to clients. Sounds like someone who took the term "Social capital" too literally commissioned a study from IBM.
"...see, I got you 13,327 followers on Twitter. At $948 each, you now owe me $12,633,996.00. Were you going to pay that today?"
Show me one insurance company that will write you a policy for lost email addresses or Twitter followers at one penny each, let alone 900 bucks each.
@Todd
You didn't got the real math there.
@Sarah
Very good article, it makes sense. Well, it may not be $948 for every contact. But when it comes to "power managers" in your "close" contacts, it's makes sense. More email interaction shows closeness between two individuals and weight of power mangers would definitely boost your revenue.
Interesting information. probably be different for each organization but for IBM that makes sense.
Great story Sarah. Placing a dollar value on a relationship is no easy task. Look forward to digging into the details a bit.
raivo pommer-www.google.ee
raimo1@hot.ee
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thanks
thanks
a lot of the time, emails are a more prefered way of contact than phone. we really need to be careful about protecting our email, check out this link to justaskgemalto with information about how private your email can be
The email interaction shows closeness between two individuals and weight of power mangers would definitely boost your revenue.
Today sending Emails is very common thing, to promote products, build a community...etc
But their is another side as well, When we are talking this, Some of them are using Email to Spam or try to send vires via Email to damage your computer,
Dont open attachments, such as
Un known email Attachments,
Email who is sending emails [predicting] from your friends
Use wisely and stay safely
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Now you can earn money via emails as well, Try using via Google "Earn money via Email"
Great post.Thanks.