Is e-mail marketing dead?

Hey Steve,

I appreciate your passion! I should have definitely framed this as more of a glimpse into the future vs. going for the "click bait" title as it seems to have caused confusion. My bad!

As I type this, I am keenly aware that many many millions of dollars are being earned via e-mail across all niches as we speak. I still drum up B2B consulting calls through plain old fashioned B2B e-mails. In fact, I used to teach guys in the merchant cash advance business how to crush it with e-mail... E-mail has been very very very good to me my friend.

Now that we agree that we all love e-mail and it's here to stay...

We can all agree that building rapport with an audience leads to far superior results than just sending ice cold traffic to an offer right? We agree that there are many ways you can go about building rapport right? Webinars, eBooks, emails, YouTube vids, etc. Ok, agreed. Now, can we agree that it's important for business owners to shorten the sales cycle and spend less on customer acquisition when the opportunity presents itself?

If we agree on these things then the approach I outlined amounts to a compelling math problem. Any serious business owner is obligated to run some experiments with the approach to either quickly validate, or invalidate it's effectiveness? The only reason I say that is because the approach saves time and actual money for an crazy combo that can lead to all sorts of oppty's to scale.

Now, taken that all into account this post is more about math and process optimization vs. e-mail dying. I have to stress that. E-mail is past it's prime but it's not dead.

Seeing is believing... try this out.

Take your phone from your pocket. Open your e-mail app. How many e-mails appear on your screen? What's your process for selecting which one to click on? How do you respond to calls to action embedded in certain e-mails?

Now, open a social app like Facebook or Instagram. What's the first thing you see? How many of that item (posts or images) do you see in the same screen area without scrolling? Which seems more interesting? The video with an intriguing title playing in your feed or figuring out which e-mails to open, and what to do with them after opening them?

Immerse yourself into that experience for a moment. Then ask why on earth would you want to subject potential customers to the whole e-mail thing when it's a better experience and more engaging to put content in front of them on social? ESPECIALLY, since it costs you less time and significantly less money?

GRANTED... this approach hasn't been tested across ALL niches like e-mail has at this point so no one knows if it "will work for their niche," unless they try it. If anyone doing 6 figures in their business has any rational argument why this approach is not worth trying I'd like to know. You don't even have to disrupt your main business, pull something off the shelf of "ideas" or "future products" and just test.

Lastly you said: "...they will find that email marketing is still the best approach..." I agree and disagree. Anything is the "best" approach when you're not willing to try anything new. Most people are set in their ways and will talk themselves out of being curious about anything. It's human nature.

Disagree. No need to swim against the current when you don't have to. I'd rather work a lot less hard, and spend a lot less money to build a bond strong enough for me to start making offers.

It's definitely alive and will not totally die.

However margins will thin out for marketers that don't adapt as:

1. 52% of all web traffic comes from mobile. Twenty years ago, that was 0%.
2. People spend more time on social than in their e-mail boxes.
3. Video will represent 70% of all content consumed online by 2020. Think about that, 20 years ago it was nearly 0%.
4. Human attention spans are dwindling... Sad but true.
5. Communities are forming like Telegram and Slack groups by savvy marketers looking to keep in touch. Being a part of community where the community leader posts value and / or offers is proving to be more effective than e-mailing value for many marketers.

So, I'm inclined to want to align my marketing with the data / trends vs. closing my eyes and hoping the overall effectiveness of e-mail doesn't diminish. It seems that some on this thread don't quite see the opportunity and the money to be made by reducing dependence on e-mail and aligning marketing with data / trends.

That aside, much of this is market dependent.. If your market is older ladies who enjoy cooking like my mom, then e-mail is great. E-mail is about as technical as my mom gets. She won't be in any slack group or telegram group. She doesn't use Facebook. Just e-mail her a link to the cookbook.

You might be on to something. The sheer and never ending volume of e-mails is causing folks to become more and more desensitized to e-mail. That's why it's becoming cheaper in terms of dollars and cents, and faster to build the bond with customers through means outside of e-mail.

I receive more e-mail every day, and read less and less of it.

E-mail is destined to be a tool in the drawer, but not THE tool. If you have a power drill for bolting doors together, chances are you have a screwdriver in case your drill breaks. I view e-mail as that screwdriver. Screwdrivers have been around for probably well over 100 years but people use power drills because they get the job done faster.

100%. E-mail is going no where. It just will get more and more expensive to acquire customers via e-mail because people are receiving more e-mail than ever, but spending less time in their inboxes than ever as well.

Smart marketers are responding by trying to be ahead of the pack through rapid experimentation, so as to find the cheapest and fastest route to building a bond strong enough to make offers.