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With all the hype surrounding social media, mobile marketing and other new online communication channels, most of it deserved, it would be easy to assume that email is yesterday’s news, with little chance of keeping up with the other marketing methods now available; facing a slow, inevitable death online. But according to the numbers this assumption is an incorrect one. Email usage and its business potential have in fact remained remarkably steady over the last few years, even in the face of this new competition.

"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." Mark Twain

Research consistently finds that email is still the preferred method of receiving commercial messages by adults online, at 74% currently. This perhaps surprising statistic can help explain the continued growth and proliferation of e-marketing seen today.

It’s no longer true that the largest firms are the most likely to use email marketing. The use of e-newsletters and other commercial email messages is now fairly universal, with many smaller and newer firms getting into the act as well.

As companies age they outgrow their sole-proprietor beginnings, they increasing look for new ways to expand their businesses to support higher headcounts and overhead. Business surveys revealed that almost half of small businesses were using email marketing in 2010, with an additional 36% reporting they planned to begin this year.

This high level of participation shows in the dollars spent annually. Including businesses of every size, email promotion accounts for an average of 15-22% of total marketing budgets. These billions of dollars spent every year on email has certainly attracted attention, with a large number of email distribution services found online today, along with expert web copywriting firms too.

This gives today’s business owner or marketer many options to choose from, ranging from "self-serve" programs to ones that are turn-key, the entire process managed by an outside vendor. Choices are often dictated by the level of expertise and resources available internally.

It’s projected that the number of worldwide email accounts will continue to increase, from over 2.9 billion accounts in 2010 to over 3.8 billion by 2014.

And with higher ROI potential than direct marketing, which has the added costs of materials, printing and postage; the future looks bright for the continued relevance of email marketing. Coupled with growth expectations, it’s clear that e-marketing is here to stay.

Jim Haynes is the Owner of Hat Trick Associates, a firm dedicated to spotting web content and online communication trends, and educating businesses on web and social content. As a provider of writing and web distribution services, their focus is on increased online conversions, SEO and revenues for clients. For more information, visit http://www.hattrickassociates.com or call (314) 494-3494.

Is your email communication really safe? As our online capabilities change rapidly, it can be difficult to know what online behavior is acceptable and what can threaten our cyber security.

Fortunately, secure email solutions are not that difficult to come by. Email safety is not so different from any other sort of safety, so being safe on the internet is simply a matter of applying principles you already know to an online environment.

Take computer viruses, for instance. You know that there are a lot of them and that they can cripple your computer. The internet is the easiest access way between those viruses and your computer, so how do you protect yourself?

How do you protect yourself from actual viruses? You keep yourself healthy (with anti-virus software) and watch what you put into your body. If you do not know where an email comes from, you should no more open that email than eat an unidentified object off of the floor. If you only accept emails from sites or people that you know, viruses will have a difficult time getting in through your email.

Another major concern with email security is your password being hacked. Many people use their username as their password. This and other simple passwords are an incredibly bad idea. Many people do banking and manage their credit cards online. If someone hacks the password of your email, they can not only access your communications, they can also request your bank and credit card log in information.

To put it another way, would you feel secure if anyone who knew your birthday could walk into your bank and access your accounts? Because using your birthday as your password allows hackers to do the online version of that. Make your password longer. Include at least one number and one capital letter. Make sure that your password will not be something that even you can guess.

Finding secure email solutions is not difficult. It requires only that you think about what your email could allow others to access and take the same kind of precautions you would take in the physical word. If you do that, your chances of running into problems with email security will be greatly reduced.