Within our application we have an internal messaging system for users. Recently our marketing staff has asked for a feature to allow them to mass message using our internal system rather than sending emails.<p>My first response is that it should be better in most cases to send emails.<p>What is everyone's opinion on this? Should it be acceptable for us to message our users within the application, or should we only use email?
I think there are situations that warrant both, and lots of companies do both. For example, Google has an alerts button in many of their apps that shows in-app messages about new features or issues that need your attention. They also send mass e-mails for more important notifications like policy changes.<p>You can give your marketing staff the power they want without any in-house development by popping <a href="https://www.intercom.io/" rel="nofollow">https://www.intercom.io/</a> into your app. It handles both in-app messaging and real e-mails, with a system for segmenting users so you can send messages to only the groups that need to receive them, e.g. only trial users or only those that haven't logged in recently.