According to an article on Mashable.com by Adam Ostrow, a new report from Forrester Research shows the number of U.S. adults who use email on a monthly basis is pegged at 165.4 million.
By comparison, social networking users have doubled since 2007. There are 55.6 million adults (about 1/3rd of the U.S. population) that visit a social networking site at least once a month (up 15% from 2007 to 18% in 2009). 54.3 million adults use SMS for instant messaging (unchanged from 2008) and 37.1 million read blogs (unchanged from 2008).
What this Means for Marketers
While email has solidified its reputation as the backbone of one-to-one marketing, I see more and more brands like Dreamfields Pasta, Papa John’s, Carharrt, and Powell’s Books using Email + Social Media to build communities of vocal and influential “brand fans.” This integrated approach is enabling brands to leverage the combined power of social networking and direct marketing to develop and retain customers.
Using email marketing software to deliver relevant and useful information to customers is smart. But, using tools like Social Forward to make it easy for email subscribers to share email content directly with friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and many other online communities is one of the best things you can do to accelerate the performance of your email marketing program.

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