Email is dead. Long live email.

I just came back from a conference called Inbox/Outbox and I had the chance to attend some interesting seminars regarding email marketing. Hot topic was of course the statement 'email is dead'. Most of the speakers didn't agree and had very good reasons to nuance the statement. No surprise there. After all it was a conference on corporate email and messaging systemsHowever, we can't deny that new online media are breaking though the monopoly of email as the only online communication medium. Instant messaging, blogs, social media (such as Facebook and Twitter) and mobile communications are considered as a threat to email. But are they also replacing email? Here are the main reasons why the statement 'email is dead' is a bit of a hasty conclusion:

• Many 'new' media are still centralized in the inbox. A new follower on Twitter, comments on your Facebook posts, rss feeds: they all end up via email in the inbox.

• How many times a day are we checking our inbox? Not only via our computer, but also on the go via our Blackberry, iPhone or other pda.

• Rss, social media, instant messaging, etc. are complementary to email. The new media don't replace email, they communicate in a very different way. Email still is an effective way to communicate a message to an individual and has characteristics that are unique.

So, I think the truth is somewhere in between. On the one hand, the upcoming new channels are snatching away an important share of online communication and will probably grow in the future as well. On the other hand, email is strongly embedded in our day to day life and complementary to the other channels, so that it won't disappear in the near future. Taking into consideration this multi channel reality, a marketing strategy needs to reflect this, using the different media correctly.

Maïté