Is Email Dead?

With everyone  connecting on Facebook, texting, Tweeting and sharing photos on Instagram you would think that email is dead and no longer in the  marketing tool belt. Is the oldest way to share content dying off? Business Insider and Bloomberg BusinessWeek bloggers would have you believing yes, emailing is a dying tool. Business Insider points to the low rate of individuals opening their email, Gmail even has a tool that sends promotional emails to their own folder outside of the general inbox folder.  Bloomberg points to the lack of collaboration offered by your standard email, millennial generation  spending more time on Instagram uploading photos of their breakfast than checking their email and the difficulties of sharing  content from an email.  Marketer Paul Jorgensen suggest that email is not dead offering stats like the ROI of email being 4,300%  due to the low cost of sending an email, he also points to the fact that 64% of decision makers read emails on their mobile phones with only 32% of Marketers not having a strategy to optimize email on a mobile device. Social Media Today also adds the fact that having a social sharing button on the email increases click through rates by 158% . With this information it is clear that our oldest online media sharing method is transforming. People want to share deals and information with their family and friends, this is a hassle via email, also sending to many offers begins to clog the recipients inbox and can become overwhelming and lead to a decrease in opening.  To bring email to the new age we will see marketers begin to add a social sharing button to emails, they will integrate email into the marketing mix, possibly warning customers of deals coming to their email, and we should also see emails becoming more mobile friendly because this is how consumers are accessing the information.