Email's decentralized nature has allowed it to evolve and address market and user demands. What was once a basic communication platform is now a universal ecosystem. Other than "don't send an email to everyone you possibly can," not all email marketing rules have been written yet. With particular consumers and massive amounts of data, email marketers can write the new rules.
 
The treasured inbox
According to a report by The Radicati Group, a technology market research firm, there were 4.3 billion email accounts associated with 2.6 billion email users in 2015. In 2015, daily emails sent exceeded 205 billion emails. Spam email accounts for about half of all email sent. Since as early as the 1990s, spam email has been an issue; "spam" became a word in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1998 because of its pervasiveness. Since then, spam filters and junk folders have worked to keep inboxes manageable.
 
As inboxes become increasingly precious and the tools for managing them become more familiar to users, email marketers have to develop strategies to reach the appropriate audiences so that their messages don't get discarded before even being opened. Plus, misdirected marketing can dilute or even damage a brand while wasting valuable resources. Email marketers need to find their place in the mix of favorite newsletters, relevant discounts, professional event notices, professional contact emails, resume submissions and even emails from mom that fill the treasured space.
 
Email evolution
The first "email" was a message sent in 1971 from a computer without a monitor. In the mid 1980s, schools and businesses introduced email for students and employees alike to communicate. Enter the royalty-free, decentralized worldwide web in the 1990s that allowed information to spread through email between various domains and through websites to foster creativity, collaboration, and innovation. In 2003, Blackberry made email accessible "on-the-go" without a computer, transforming email into an essential, convenient, "always on" platform for businesspeople; Blackberry began targeting consumers in 2006 with the same "push" platform.
 
Email will continue to evolve as long as the market's needs evolve and is likely the single most adaptable ecosystem available to marketers due to its decentralized nature. With that said, marketers cannot expect email to adapt to their desires; rather, marketers need to meet email where it is headed based on market demands.
 
Workplaces are adopting non-email communication platforms such as Slack to improve productivity. Programs like unroll.me allow individuals to unsubscribe with the ease of a swipe to the left. Email, and what is considered useful and acceptable email, is not what it was a decade ago, and it won't be what it is today in a decade. As the direct descendant of direct mail, email open rates and response rates are likely to be subject to the same constraints that direct marketers experienced in the direct mail era: the perception of “clutter”, heightened competition, increasing levels of recipient skepticism, and the long-term impact of poor customer experience with direct email marketers.
 
Email marketing needs a strategy
The cost for an email recipient to read an email is her time—one of today's most valued resources that marketers can't waste. The only emails that will get through the spam filters and recipient's discretion upon reading the subject line are ones that seem to be intended for that one, specific individual, which is why mass email blasts will need to be fine-tuned in messaging, personalization and targeting. Enter data-driven email. This isn't a new concept, but it isn't yet ubiquitous. In 2015, only 20% of marketers were using behavioral targeting.
 
How do you get into the inbox? And how do you make sure your message is read? New email marketing strategies, such as behavioral, event-triggered email sequences, data-driven mail, and personalized content can get your email through the filters, into the inbox, and opened in front of the right reader.
 
Segmenting an email database can allow marketers to reach consumers based on demographic data. Behavioral targeting tells marketers what the consumers are definitely interested in, while segmenting may only indicate what the consumer may be interested in. The real-time data that behavioral, event-triggered marketing provides can reach consumers at particular sales cycles with the exact message they need to read.
 
Customer and prospect demands for “super personalized” messaging will drive marketing automation technology. Marketing technology needs to meet customer expectations—that messaging is meant just for them.
 
Standards for email content are on the rise, and so is the accessibility of data-driven email marketing strategies. Opportunities for product and service development in email marketing are endless. To remain relevant, marketers need to remain agile as technologies and markets evolve.

Despite its many iterations, email is here to stay. Embrace it.
 
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Resources:
 
http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Email-Statistics-Report-2015-2019-Executive-Summary.pdf
 
https://blog.returnpath.com/email-intelligence-report-q3-2012/
 
http://www.zdnet.com/pictures/a-history-of-blackberry-in-nine-iconic-handsets-and-one-meh-tablet-photos/3/
 
https://econsultancy.com/blog/66409-only-20-of-marketers-use-behavioural-triggers-in-email-marketing-report/
 
http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-coming-era-of-on-demand-marketing