Not only is email marketing NOT dying, it is still the most trusted form of communication. Combine that fact with the reality that it is also the most cost effective way to market to clients and prospects and you have a real winning proposition!

Since email marketing has been around since the advent of email, there are some myths that persist about the practice. Or, to borrow a hot term, “alternative facts.” Here are 8 of them and why they are untrue:

1. You annoy your clients when you send frequent emails. Research shows that if you are sending relevant content, readers are happy to read them and take action. Just one extra email campaign a month can net you significantly greater opens and clicks.

2. Timing isn’t everything. 85% of email opens occur within two days of receiving an email, so don’t get caught up in thinking your email needs to be sent on a certain day at a certain time.

3. “Inactive users” should be culled from your list after six months. Actually, 20% of your annual openers do so after being inactive for six months.

4. Consumers mark most branded emails as spam.  Less than one subscriber in every 2,000 will mark an email as spam.

5. The more email a brand sends, the more they are ignored. Actually, if you send four emails a month instead of just one, this actually doubles the number of readers who will open one or more of your emails.

6. You get better results with short subject lines. It depends on how you define results.  Research shows that email subject lines with under 60 characters increases opens, but subject lines of more than 70 characters increases the number of clicks received. Actually, readers are much more likely to read an email because of who it’s from than the subject line.

7. Email goes to a spam folder because of subject lines. According to an analysis of 540 billion emails, spam keywords like “free” have little or no effect on whether they will end up in the junk folder. Spam filters are much more sophisticated these days and are more likely to use reputation rather than certain keywords in identifying spam.

8. Never send the same email twice. In 2016, the average open rate for email marketing campaigns was 24%. That means 75% or more may have never read your email. If you’ve sent an important email, don’t fret about sending it again — just be sure you send it only to those who didn’t open it the first time or use a different template and images with the same copy.