Email is Social, and it’s not Going Anywhere

When consumers want to share something from the Internet with their friends or family, such as a video, link or article, what methods do they use? While social media is gaining ground on email, the latter still dominates as a sharing tool.

Email is the original opt-in tactic, while social and mobile are newcomers. And email works in tandem with most other tactics to increase engagement, deliver relevant content and build contact databases.

Dispelling the Myth that Social Media is going to Abolish Email

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31393#

Email Performance 2001 to 2009

The Takeaways:

In 2001, it was still easy to get opt-ins. "Relevance" wasn’t our ad nauseum catchword yet, and simply throwing up an email capture field would yield names. We saw a peak in the bursting bubble year of 2002. Then (as now) marketers were looking for low cost ways of reaching their target markets, retaining customers and hitting their quarterly goals.

Over time, we see that efficacy fell off the high. Email matured, inboxes filled up and other media worked their way into business and personal life. Given the competition for attention, email has held up remarkably well, especially given its yearly obituary at the hands of the latest, greatest tactic.

In 2004 we see our two groups begin to really diverge. At this point it’s no longer a walk in the park to get new subscribers; marketers are finding that they have to provide value, think about relevance and pay attention to their email programs to see continued increase in its impact.

Every year the gap grows, as those who fit our ‘best practices’ model (a definition which evolved over the years based on tracked metrics) report stable or improving impact for email, while those still batching and blasting see diminishing returns.

ref: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31332#