• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, December 7, 2009

PARK CITY, Utah - Eric Kirby, an email marketing veteran, delivered a keynote address Monday at MediaPost's Email Insider Summit, where he brushed aside suggestions that email marketing may be losing steam while urging marketers to carpe diem and capitalize on social media networks.

Email has been a "workhorse" for a decade, and that's unlikely to subside, Kirby said early on in his well-received speech. His endorsement comes as the industry has dealt with suggestions in 2009 that its long-held, top-tier role is fading.

"I've never seen a year where a company said: we're pulling back on marketing spend -- the economy's not great -- time to stop doing email," said Kirby, a senior vice president at leading CRM agency Merkle. "The reason is the effectiveness of the channel is really resistant to those kinds of cutbacks."

Still, with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., Kirby spoke about the potential to move the needle. And not just with the younger set. "We need to be thinking about our business in ways to manage across these different connection points," he said.

Companies are doing some inventive programs on Facebook email that marketers could learn from, he indicated. Outback Steakhouse, for example, offered a free Bloomin' Onion to the first 500,000 people who became its fans on Facebook.

And its list grew by 125,000 between Nov. 16 and 24.

Demonstrating how impressive that is, Kirby asked the audience: "Anybody's email list grow by 125,000 over the course of a week in the last couple of months? Probably not, maybe a few."

Based on an announcement it made last week, Facebook might soon provide email marketers with an opportunity to grow their databases. "It may turn out that Facebook becomes a key component of your email list growth strategy," Kirby said.

Facebook is moving toward allowing companies to ask its users for their non-Facebook, primary email addresses -- although it is being careful not to be too intrusive to its user base.

Separately, Kirby's Merkle annually publishes a "View From the Inbox" multi-topic email study. And he shared some early data from the 2010 version. Research is derived from a Harris Interactive survey of 3,300 U.S. adults ages 18 and older.

Younger people (ages 18 to 29), not surprisingly, are the principal users of Facebook. With 71% visiting it at least once a week, the site has resonance even among people ages 65-plus, where 29% visit at least once a week.

"There's a pretty good chance that your grandmother at this point is on Facebook," Kirby said.

The AARP set is also using YouTube. About 19% over 65 are visiting it once a week, as compared to 48% among 18- to-29-year-olds.

Returning to the questions of whether there should be an obituary for email marketing, Merkle data shows that 87% of people (of all ages) say email is their preferred method of receiving communication from marketers. In second place? The phone, at 6%.

Nonetheless, the study shows email is losing some juice as a way for friends in the 18-to-29 demo to communicate with one another. Among the group's preferred methods, text messaging leads at 29%, followed by the phone at 26%, social networking at 16% and email in fourth place at 14%.

Furthermore, nearly a third of SMS users ages 18 to 29 say they have opted-in to receive text messages from marketers. And the figure is the same for the 30-to-39 demo.

Those findings may be surprising, since marketers have moved into the mobile space with kid gloves, believing it is a very personal arena.