I recently went to a seminar where the talker kept on saying that e-mails are no longer being used. I was skeptical at first but after hearing him out I do believe that facebook did have a very negative effect on e-mail marketing.
A few years back most people communicated with one another with e-mails. Now days if anyone wants to speak to someone they use facebook. They might go weeks on end without even opening their e-mails. Fortunately most companies still use them so it's still possible to use e-mails for marketing purposes.
Well, in terms of communication, I don't think emails were ever used to "chat". Phones, chat clients such as google chat, yahoo chat, skype, and what not always existed. Fb chat was just part of that group. Then came the age of whatsapp. And now we live in the era of snapchat and all the other "evolved" and secretive chat apps, where messages self-destruct quickly.
Email was never in competition with FB, and so there is nothing that FB has taken away. While you may get newsfeed, articles, and completely useless rumors on FB, any "actual" information still comes via community centered lists and reviews (such as Goodreads,imdb,etc.) or via digital publishing(newsletters, blogposts, articles, curated customized content, and so on).
Where do wedding invitations, gift cards, shopping receipts, warranties, banking communications, insurance claims, newsletters, and promotions go if not into the mail box? People are
reading more not less now, and a lot of that reading is happening online. And you can't get a newsletter or the customized bestsellers list or any other information via FB. Frankly, I never stop reading or writing, and I get all of my updates (including from this forum) via my inbox.
Also, FB tried to do something related to digital publishing, but Google is going to beat them out of that space too. Anyone who wants to stay sane in this crazed world of information overload would need to organize and FB doesn't let one do that. I want to know when the next Game of Thrones trailer is out, and I want to know it as soon as it comes out, not via a delayed newsfeed on FB, but
via a simple mail from the official youtube channel. The same holds true for anything personal that I do. And when someone posts new content, its usually promotional in nature (even the trailer is a promo for the actual show so that people tune in!). And all of that promotion happens via email.
So, email marketing is thriving. And FB is now becoming the "old" social network. People moved on to twitter. And now they've moved on to a whole bunch of other social networks, like instagram. FB will be dead but email marketing will never be dead as long as people continue to read.