My view on the future of email

I’m lucky enough to know @simmsjenkins, probably one of the smartest dudes in the country when it comes to the finer points of email marketing.  In fact, if you don’t have his book The Truth About Email Marketing, you need to buy it asap.

Simms wrote an article for ClickZ and he asked me what my thoughts were on the future of email.  No surprise, I was more bullish on the ways we can reach people via social than email, but it’s still one of the best (if not the best) communication channels today.

You can read the whole article (link above) but here’s what I said:

“It’s my opinion that email marketing is both the most effective form of marketing and at the same time the least maximized. Because email is inherently effective, marketers get away with poor processes and little innovation and still are able to produce better ROI than their other marketing efforts.”

and

“In 2010, you’ll start seeing marketers pushed to evolve their email practices by consumers growing use of social networks in lieu of email. I see social being a big threat to email but at the same time being the impetus that marketers needed to stop taking email for granted.”

What do YOU think?