Is traditional email marketing a dying breed?

How many email accounts do you have? I personally have a work email account and two personal accounts. Three doesn't sound too bad, but most days it seems like more than three when you factor in Twitter direct messages, Facebook messages, and LinkedIn messages, nevermind text messages. With so many ways to get an email message or be notified, is traditional (1993) email marketing a dying breed? Though there are many ways to receive messages now, I don't think that email marketing is dead just yet. However, the rise of various social media networks and Gmail's new "tabbed inbox" is certainly drawing people's attention away from your perfectly branded and designed mass email. The idea of Google's new Gmail "tabbed inbox" is to help users filter their email. Great for the user, bad for email marketers. Whether you are using Constant Contact, MailChimp, Vertical Response, YMLP or another email marketing system, "tabbed inbox" will automatically filter marketing email messages out of a person's inbox and move them into a tab called, "Promos." Other default tabs include "Primary" -including email from friends, family and other contacts, "Social" - including email from social networks and social sharing sites. Lastly, "Updates" is a tab that includes auto-generated updates, confirmations, receipts, bills, and statements. The user can, of course drag an item into another tab. One good thing is that Gmail does not have a mobile version for "tabbed inbox"...yet. For now, I've only seen this auto-filtering on Gmail but Google tends to be a trendsetter so we could possibly see this auto-filtering with other email systems sooner than later. In our industry, email remains a constant, something that most of us are doing all day, every day. For now my best advice is to come up with creative subject lines, invest in good design, be sure your email blasts are mobile compatible, and always have quality content. Fun Fact: The #1 rated costume this year will be a Minion from Despicable Me. This data is provided by Google and Bing who analyzed all the searches for Halloween costumes. Source: Experian Diana Podaski is marketing and social media manager for Linear Retail Properties, Burlington, Mass.