Is Email and Email Marketing Dead?

When a newspaper (remember those?) printed his obituary after rumors he had passed away, 19th century writer Mark Twain famously quipped, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
The past few years, many obituaries have been written for email and email marketing. Some people are saying that social media is to blame, as millennials prefer to communicate in 140-character bursts on Twitter and via pictures shared on Snapchat. These “experts” are saying that because people aren’t using email, reaching consumers with email marketing is also dead.
Here at On Advertising, we make decisions based on examining and interpreting data, so when we hear the question, “Is email and email marketing dead?” we ask another question: “What are the numbers?”

Worldwide, there are more than 4.3 billion email accounts and it’s predicted that number will grow more than 26% by 2019.
It’s estimated there are 2.5 billion email users, including consumers and businesses.
In 2014, more than 122 billion emails were sent every hour.
The use of mobile devices has changed the way people use emails – 72% of adults say they send or receive emails on their smartphones.

And the stats still look good for email marketing:

61% of people like to receive promotional emails on a weekly basis and 28% want to receive them even more often.
66% of consumers have bought something online as a direct result of a marketing email.
81% of people who shop online are more likely to make additional purchases as a result of emails based on previous shopping behaviors.

Whether you believe data don’t lie or that email should be banished into a newspaper obituary, a full multichannel approach still needs to include email as part of your marketing strategy or sales funnel. Depending on your industry it may still be the only way your customers hear from you, or one of many ways to increase the touchpoints to sale.
We leave you with these quotes:

“Email is not dead because people want to write to one another, using their email accounts, in more than 140-character bursts.” – Neil Schwartzman, Executive Director, CAUCE

“Email is not going to disappear. Possibly ever. Until the robots kill us all.” – Paul Buchheit, a founder of FriendFeed

“Nigerian princes have given email a bad name. We help people reclaim their inbox by sending them emails they really want to read.” – Irasema Jeffers, Chief Digital Officer, On Advertising.

On Advertising has the expertise to help you use email marketing as part of an effective digital marketing strategy for your company. Contact us today to learn more.