Earlier this year, comScore’s “2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review” report highlighted a decline in time spent with web-based email among all US internet users under 55 (with, not surprisingly, users ages 12 to 17 showing the steepest decline in usage, down 59%).
Is social media finally killing off email as the "pundits" have been predicting of years? Hardly.
As an article on eMarketer from late February 2011 observes that, with the proliferation of mobile devices, web-based email checked at a desktop computer is only one slice of all email communications. Further data cited in the article shows a more nuanced picture.
Specifically, 87% of internet users checked personal email daily in 2010, a number that has changed little since 2007. And among those with a separate email account for commercial email - i.e., the B2B crowd - 60% checked that account daily, down just 1 percentage point since 2008.
Moreover, the data shows that social media users are significantly more likely than other internet users to check their email four or more times per day, and less likely to check infrequently. So one could say that social media is actually boosting email usage.
So don't discard your email addresses just yet. Instead, as always, the key is to use email marketing and social media synergistically. For example, on our own email marketing platform, we recently rolled out the ability to insert social sharing icons, as well as a Facebook "Like" button, so that readers can easily share a law firm's email alert, newsletter or invite content with their social network and/or on their Facebook wall.
To read the full eMarketer article, click here.
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