The now infamous Wall Street Journal article announcing the death of email sparked a fire in the bellies of email marketers and social media gurus alike. The overwhelming response is that social media is not posing a significant threat to email. To date, all the signs seem to indicate that these two channels will continue to evolve together.
True, there are dissenting voices. However, I have found none that are backed by credible statistical data. Since there is no statistical validity in personal anecdotes, I don’t care (except for the value they provide in forming hypotheses to be tested in future research). I care about what well-founded research tells us about the world at large.
Here is a list of the data sources I have located that reveal the truth about the current state of email use and email marketing:
Pew Internet & American Life: Online Activities Trends
MarketingSherpa
USC Annenberg Digital Future Report
Participatory Marketing Network
Pontifelx / Harris Interactive Survey
SmartBreif on Social Media
While not nationally representative, this poll is interesting in that is suggests even social media professionals are not significantly curtailing their use of email.
ExactTarget – Is Email Marketing Endangered?
We asked a question similar to the SmartBreif poll, however, the question excludes marketers—so it is a better representation of the population at large.
ExactTarget – 2009 Channel Preferences Study
Forrester Consulting – Customer Knowledge is Marketer Power
That is not to say there are not threats to the future success of email. Stay tuned for part two where I share insights from a panel I moderated at Connections last week where Julie Katz from Forrester, Rebecca Lieb from eConsultancy, and Stefan Tornquist from MarketingSherpa were asked to share their takes on the real versus perceived threats to email marketing.
True, there are dissenting voices. However, I have found none that are backed by credible statistical data. Since there is no statistical validity in personal anecdotes, I don’t care (except for the value they provide in forming hypotheses to be tested in future research). I care about what well-founded research tells us about the world at large.
Here is a list of the data sources I have located that reveal the truth about the current state of email use and email marketing:
Pew Internet & American Life: Online Activities Trends
- 79% of Americans use the Internet
- 90% of online Americans use email, making it the most popular online activity
- 57% of Americans check email daily
MarketingSherpa
- 78% of users email friends a link to information they wish to share with friends over the internet.
- 22% share through social media
- MarketingSherpa’s research directly contradicts research released earlier this year from AddToAny, which suggested people share information twice as often through Facebook as they do through email. However, there were serious issues with the AddToAny research.
USC Annenberg Digital Future Report
- How Many Americans Are Using E-mail? -- Almost everyone who goes online uses e-mail (97 percent of all Internet users).
- Regular Contact by E-mail -- E-mail users maintain weekly personal e-mail contact with an average of seven people in the current study, down from the peak of nine in 2006. Forty-nine percent of e-mail users said they maintain personal contact by e-mail on a weekly basis with five or more people.
Participatory Marketing Network
- Email (26 percent) and text messaging (26 percent) are the activities least likely to be "given up for a week," followed by TV (15 percent), talking on phone (11 percent), visiting social networks (nine percent), reading magazines (seven percent) and visiting non social network sites (six percent).
Pontifelx / Harris Interactive Survey
- 96% of online adults who have actually taken the step of providing brands personal information have shared their email addresses with marketers
- 12% of online adults have been willing to share information like their Facebook user name or their Twitter handle with a brand in exchange for information or promotional offers
SmartBreif on Social Media
While not nationally representative, this poll is interesting in that is suggests even social media professionals are not significantly curtailing their use of email.
- 59% of SmartBreif on Social Media readers (likely to have a heavy disposition toward social media use) report their use of email has stayed about the same despite the growth of social networks.
- 28% are using slightly less often
- 11% are using more often
- 2% of these readers rarely use email
ExactTarget – Is Email Marketing Endangered?
We asked a question similar to the SmartBreif poll, however, the question excludes marketers—so it is a better representation of the population at large.
- Net 25% of online consumers report using social networks more often over the past 6 months (42% using more often, 17% using less often)
- Net 23% of online consumers report using email more often over the past 6 months (29% using more often, 6% using less often)
- Net 21% of online consumers report using text messaging more often over the past 6 months (38% using more often, 17% using less often)
- 71% of smartphone owners report sending more PERSONAL email on their smartphones than BUSINESS related email—it’s not all business.
ExactTarget – 2009 Channel Preferences Study
- 57% of online consumers use email most often to send written messages to their friends, over text messaging (24%) and social networks (10%)
- 75% of online consumers prefer to receive permission-based promotional messages through email—up 3.6% from 2008—followed by 17% who prefer direct mail promotions and 4% who prefer text promotions.
- More than half of online consumers have made a purchase as the direct result of and email message they received, more than any other online communication channel.
Forrester Consulting – Customer Knowledge is Marketer Power
- 34% of marketers believe email will become more effective over the next two years, 19% believe it will be less effective
- Asked why marketers believe email will be more effective:
- 74% believe their email communications are getting more relevant
- 58% see email as an integral part of their multichannel activities
- 44% believe customers prefer email as a marketing channel
That is not to say there are not threats to the future success of email. Stay tuned for part two where I share insights from a panel I moderated at Connections last week where Julie Katz from Forrester, Rebecca Lieb from eConsultancy, and Stefan Tornquist from MarketingSherpa were asked to share their takes on the real versus perceived threats to email marketing.
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