Reports of the Demise of Email...

Ever since I saw my first email in early 1992, I have remained convinced that email is the 800-pound gorilla of the Internet. Despite periodic claims that email is dead or dying, as in email marketing, everything continues to point to the evergreen status of email.

The nay-sayers say that people are moving away from email for newer technologies, like RSS feeds, or are dropping email from their daily routines because of the trials and tribulations of spam, viruses, etc.

A couple of weeks ago I railed against the well-intentioned, but misguided spam busters who make our lives miserable with their scatter shot blocking methods. This is certainly not meant to ignore the impact of the effects of attacks on corporate mail systems and the Internet at large. However, let’s not ignore some realities of email, spam, and how employees manage their time in the workplace.

Here’s how it really is:

• A recent study released by eMarketer found that 56% of those surveyed estimated they received fewer than 10 spam emails daily.

• Over 10% of all the respondents report that they purchase products and services from spam e-mails.

• Another recent study found that employees waste, on average, a little more than 2 hours daily of company time online in personal pursuits. The majority of that time is spent online and on personal email.

By the way, yet another poll found that fewer than 15% of respondents even know what an RSS feed is. I think many of us get caught up in the excitement of early adoption and forget that we are not representative of the general population of users out there.

All in all, these recent studies are extremely reassuring and affirm that our investment in email marketing is not misplaced. What’s even more exciting is that we are fast approaching the holiday season and if this year continues the trend of last year, online shopping will be even more brisk. In the silver lining category, record high gas prices will be an even greater incentive to shop online and this is all very,very good for all those companies associated with email marketing.

Now, the only problems are delivering projects on time from all the business we’re seeing and keeping tabs on your employees to make sure they’re working on the clients’ email campaigns and not putting in for overtime after spending two hours per day on personal email and online shopping!