Is email dead?

With almost 350 billion emails sent a day across the world, that'd make a pretty alive-and-kicking dead electronic communications format. If you are a boss taking to Instagram to talk to your employees, to me that can only mean you're talking at them, and not with them. DMs, WhatsApps, texts and social media messaging all provide different ways to communicate as an added layer to email, and omnichannel ought to be in most people's minds. However, it's no accident that most 'influencers' channel people to subscribe to their mailing lists. An email address shared is the ultimate VIP access to an individual.

Email has been pronounced dead for so long. And yet. You can't register for a social media account without one. Funny that. How will you communicate with the people who don't have your particular flavour of social media account? By email of course.

Email is the backbone of the internet, it's the one thing that everyone has in their pocket and it's the one thing people still love. You can file it, search it, tag it forward it and the best part is it's universal.

Email is the one thing I can rely on to reach the person I expect it to and for them to respond to. Social media channels are great fast, tailored, communications but emails aren't going anywhere for a very long time yet.

And for marketers everywhere, they are the forgotten channel that makes a huge difference.

For the sake of my clients, I sincerely hope not. I have had people sat in front of me who feel hounded by their managers and colleagues on WhatsApp, or who used to enjoy social media as a form of distraction, mini respite or way to quickly catch up with their friends and family. Now, it's become work, and they cannot get away from it.

Somehow, email feels more ringfenced, more contained, and therefore more controlled. That sense of control is one of our fundamental emotional needs. With work communications spreading out over more and more platforms, how can we ever feel like we have our own space, another vital need.

I love and use all the social media, but email is essential to my business. Imagine getting a full write-up of your mortgage and protection needs in a Whatsapp message? Email will stay a good form of communication for years to come. Its also fully recordable and helps with compliance.

I dont believe email is dead, but I do believe we need to think of different ways to communicate. What’s happened to the traditional way of picking up the phone? I think WhatsApp for business and Teams help with communication, but I’ve never thought to message my colleagues using LinkedIn.

I'm forty this year and wow I feel old now. Am I really going to be a dinosaur in 10 years when email is on its last legs, like those people desparately clinging to their Blackberry 10 years ago when iPhone demolished Blackberry's market. Probably! I'd say I was modern and slick, tech driven - new clients can connect via a variety of channels and socials. But I’ll always try to get them on to email if possible. Email is a comfort blanket for me. I’ve tried WhatsApp for communications. But sending documents via email to a client just seems better. But that’s because I’m old perhaps? Certainly in 10 years time it will be a very different landscape.

Companies may need to rethink how they communicate with employees, but using personal social media profiles for business communication is not advisable. Email and phone are still the most effective and secure ways to communicate within an organization. Instant messaging apps like WhatsApp can also be used, but should not be used for sensitive or confidential information. Additionally, it's important to have a way to record and audit communication for compliance purposes.

If you're using Instagram or LinkedIn to talk to your colleagues, you're missing out on great alternatives. Slack, for one, is great as you can also use it to talk to your customers! Thanks to the likes of IFTTT & Zapier, most 'emails' into a business are going directly into a CRM and being responded to from one. Emails probably are dead as far as B2C is concerned. I speak to 99% of my clients 99% of the time through WhatsApp, and most prefer it. It's real-time and all parties are held accountable to the blue ticks. People are less likely to ignore it versus an email.

Email inboxes are too full of spam for my liking, so I'm happy to move my core comms away. Sadly B2B is taking much longer to leave this technology behind, so I think it's here to stay for a while. Many in my industry (lenders!) still want paper docs posted to them!

Spoonfeeding young employees with the latest way to communicate is a nice idea but it's our job as a good employer to train them to be effective employees. Being able to respond in a timely way to whatever form of sharing information your employer choses is a key skill for all staff to master. There's no denying that this is getting more challenging but we would do young people a disservice if we don't do our best to make them good employees.

Is this man on a different planet? Over the last couple of years Instagram reach has plummeted and is at an all time low. Using Instagram to pass information to people who are interested is not a strategy that works very well these days. I have almost 2,000 Instagram followers and less than 200 see my stories while even fewer see my grid posts - around 50-60.
I send an email once a week, keep it punchy and interesting and it is by far my best communication resource in terms of response. With an open rate of 56% on average, even with a far smaller audience, I reach more people by email. The key is both getting it to 100% of the people interested, grabbing their attention with a good email title and making them want to open future emails because the content is always good.

Email is still very much alive and kicking, particularly for external comms. Last year, our B2B email agency generated over 5,000 leads for customers through email. Businesses and prospects must still be very much engaged in their inboxes for this to be possible :)

Platforms like Trello, Asana, and Monday.com are much more efficient for projects. It's user-friendly and easy to add comments, and checklists, track progress, assign tasks and share information. You can communicate with these project management tools, and when it comes to managing a team, these tools are much better.

I do not believe that email is dead. Social media may be a good solution for internal communications but email is a great way to communicate externally with my clients who are busy at work during the day, as they can check and respond at their convenience. I would not use social media to contact my clients as I feel that this would be too casual to reflect the professional service that I offer. It would be far too easy for important business messages to get lost amongst social messages. Email provides a simple audit trail that can be searched and referred back to when necessary.

What a ridiculous statement! Of course it's not dead, but more worrying - you want to speak to your employees you go on Insta/Linkedin? How about we just talk to each other? You know that thing we do to survive and live together peacefully. Talking to each other removes the miscommunication that written tone on tech can create. Also creating a relationship using only tech isn't good for anyone's mental health. Of course Linkedin or Instagram are 2 ways to communicate but not to your staff. The clue is in the word. Go with the Cambridge Dictionary definition - "to say words, to use the voice, or to have a conversation with someone". To SAY, to USE the VOICE to have a CONVERSATION. You cant have a conversation with employeeS properly on these platforms. Get a coffee, make a call. Remember Lockdown when we craved social interactions?

I don't believe that email is dead, but in terms of marketing messages (whether that's internal or external) it now has be to viewed as just part of the mix rather than the only solution. Lots of companies, particularly for internal communication now use WhatsApp or Messenger or Slack, while there is still something to be said for SMS, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. It really is a case of horses for courses - and continuing the horse analogy, if you only bet on one horse in a field of 20 you are taking a real gamble, spreading that bet over 3 or 4 horses reduces your risk, but at the expense of increasing your costs to get the same return.

Email is still the second-largest channel for customer communication, sandwiched between voice and webchat. So irrespective of whether it’s the best channel for communicating internally, email communications will remain as long as the customer wants it.

There has been a massive explosion in internal communication tools. My advice is to find one tool that suits the needs of all your departments – as different applications across a company makes communication even more fragmented.

Internal communications must be joined up collaborations – the ability to easily view interaction history, add and assign team members to tasks and link to a knowledge base or CRM to have consistency across the business.

Email may be meeting its demise in the corporate world, but for one-person businesses with tiny turnovers and clients who come and go (client retention is a strange fantasy when you work with pregnancy and birth) it remains an important lifeline. Long live email!

It's a lot easier to reach (and get a response from) colleagues and existing clients using social media or message apps, but email still has a firm place for messages with larger attachments. Also for newsletters and subscriptions, I reckon people are more willing to give out their email rather than a mobile number.

I don't think email is dead, it is still the most universally used medium and allows for easy file attachment and message management. However, I am seeing more diverse platforms being used by clients in their communications with me; email for some, text messages with others, messenger and WhatsApp all get used. This does create some issues staying on top of all the different places people could be sending me things, especially those that seem to flit between different platforms. Overall though; does a text message, Messenger, or WhatsApp really do anything fundamentally better or different, from an email? Or is it change for change's sake?

Companies that want to stay ahead need to constantly be questioning whether they are using the most appropriate tools to sustainably grow.

Within digital operations, that includes email as a communication tool.

Growing teams can't expect to manage projects through email. It's not adept at monitoring tasks, allowing for clever notifications or personalisable based on how different individuals work and view data. This is where project management tools such as Asana, Monday.com or ClickUp are essential for businesses who want to keep costs down, efficiency up and maintain oversight without being a micro-manager.

Businesses should be aiming for one source of truth when sharing information internally to present one source of truth to clients.

Email isn't dead; it's just relegated to a specific type of communication. Some kinds of messages aren't appropriate for Slack or Instagram. Chats and social media aren't the right places for formal communication and sharing official information such as layoffs and salary raises. Using email gives messages seriousness and formality, which in some situations are required in the workplace.

Companies shouldn't quit emails but should consider which information they want to share on this channel.

Ludicrous, email has given way to some amount of automation, however most real tasks need a go to, referral point or written confirmation. In Davos those elite of business owners ought to ask themselves what incoming work and clients are being ignored if emails are not being responded to #languages Ignoring emails gets right under my skin.

Who doesn't use email? I have more people contact me via whats app but email is still by far the most popular form of communication.

Yep. EMail is the new snail mail. It is largely ignored by those under 35.