It's the first week of December, the day after Cyber Monday, and my wife is annoyed about all the email offers filling her inbox.  She is getting 20-30 emails a day from retailers and is tired of deleting them, so she says she is taking the time to unsubscribe from each email list.  How did something she once requested become an unwanted intrusion?

Could it be that email newsletter marketing is dying? Or evolving into something else?

I asked her reason for the change of heart, she simply responded: "I don't have the time to delete all those emails."

Interesting, she didn't say she didn't have time to "read" the emails, she doesn't even get that far.  Deleting them is the problem.

What does this tell us about email marketing?

Could it be that people are just getting plain tired of dealing with email.  Has email become a hassle?

Email was once considered a time saver.  You could send a two-minute email and avoid a 20-minute phone call.

These days I need at least two hours during the day to process email, some days, like Mondays, it takes all morning to clean out my inbox.

Ok I admit it, I'm sick of email.  After nearly 20 years of dealing with email each day, I am just plain tired of facing my inbox each morning. It is not fun anymore.

Speed is my goal now when processing my inbox.  How fast can I clean out the clutter and get down to the final 10 or so emails that require action.

Email newsletters and marketing offers almost always get deleted before opening. If I do open them, they barely get skimmed and I often hit the delete button spontaneously without premeditation as to why I don't want the email. All I want is the email gone and out of my life.

Email is the new snail mail. I read my mail standing over the trash can, looking for the reason to toss each letter, not for the reason to open it.

Young people don't like email and many do not have email accounts.  Ask a teenager or younger 20-something and see if they have email.  I've done this many times and have found that the younger generation uses Facebook and texting to communicate and in general find email boring and cumbersome.

I predict email will go the route of the fax machine, it will take a while to die but eventually a technology will come along that is less burdensome, and email will be gone.  I forecast email will be gone by the year 2020.

I think the toll free 800 numbers are on the way out too, but that's another article.

So what do you think? Are you tired of email?  Or do you think email is here to stay? I would love to hear your thoughts on the effectiveness of email newsletter marketing.

Takeaway: Your prospects are getting tired of dealing with email, so business' using email marketing need to be looking at how their potential customers are using the Internet, and adjusting their online marketing accordingly.

PS:

Sorry old timers, but you're just going to have to figure out what "Facebook and Twitter actually are.