Email is very much alive and kicking

In the wake of social media, instant messaging and any other alternate and efficient means of communicating - one would surmise that email must be taking a back seat. However, many of these new technologies rely heavily on email for registration and notifications relating to their service.

While Facebook has 500 million active users, email makes Facebook look like a poor cousin in comparison. With no technology currently available to replace the messaging and notification capability of email, I see many more fruitful years of content filled emails ahead.

Some points to consider

Yes, it is true that around 80% of all email sent worldwide is SPAM, but how much of that SPAM actually reaches a user's inbox? SPAM filters have become incredibly sophisticated. But it's important to keep in mind that SPAM won't go away if people stop using email, it is channel agnostic and will merely follow people to their next choice of messaging channel (and in many cases, it already has.)

Yes, email is an old technology but email is not static - there are regular advancements in this space (Google's priority inbox, is one of the latest examples.) However, email must continue to innovate to keep pace with additional digital communication channels and I am confident it will.

Email is not dying

Recent stats in a blog published by Royal Pingdom go even further to prove that email is far from dead. Impressive numbers of email users of the world's largest three webmail services include Yahoo (Yahoo Mail) with 340 million users and Microsoft (Hotmail) with 450 million users (user numbers as per Doubleclick ad planner)

The statistics become even more compelling when coupled with information on how these services contribute to overall website traffic to their respective domains.

Gmail gets 23% of the traffic to Google.com.
Hotmail gets 39% of the traffic to Live.com.
Yahoo Mail gets 20% of the traffic to Yahoo.com.

What stands out is how large these percentages are in terms of total traffic to each domain. For Google and Microsoft, webmail traffic accounts for the second highest source in domain traffic and Yahoo Mail contributes more traffic to Yahoo.com than any other single contributor.

If any of these companies chose to discontinue their webmail services, they would suffer financial devastation through the loss of advertising revenue and valuable user behaviour statistics. They would also lose the ability to influence user behaviour through additional offerings such as Google Buzz.

Email is still the people's choice

Where does this bring us? Email is still very much alive and kicking! Choice has become the order of the day. People can choose their preferred medium of communication and while it doesn't pretend to be the best at everything, email delivers on many functions where alternatives just don't quite make the grade yet.

How is email working for you?

Nicola Els
striata.com