Is email dead?

I keep seeing the question “Is email dead?” pop up all around the interwebs.  The question appears mostly driven by the tremendous growth of social networking sites and their increased acceptance as a marketing channel.

I’ve followed many discussions on this topic, and while the line seems to have been drawn between the “yes” and “no” camps, the evidence is more solid from those who assert that email is as viable as ever.

Take as an example the study put together by ShareThis analyzing “data from 200 million monthly visitors across 130,000 sites” which found that:

“Email remains the tool of choice for that purpose, accounting for 46% of content-sharing activity compared to 33% for Facebook, 14.5% via other channels and just 6% for Twitter. People who receive links through ShareThis also tend to spend time with the content, at an average 2.95 page views per click, followed by Facebook (2.76), with Twitter trailing at 1.66.“

Email isn’t going away.  And definitely not because of social networks.  There’s a relationship between the two, and my birthday provided a perfect example.  Last week I received birthday wishes all morning (via email) from people who (likely) wouldn’t have known until they saw it in Facebook.

Kris Dougherty | Operations & Deliverability