Both. But this highly debated topic was somewhat put to rest recently when the AP Style Guide officially announced it was dropping the hyphen from “e-mail”. And atlas, the world rejoiced. I never appreciated the hyphen in e-mail, so now we can write it (and not be accosted by our editors) without the hyphen.
Read all the other updates to the style guide here:
Josh Nason writes a concise 5-pointer on what you should do if you feel your e-mail results are diminishing.
My sixth point to add to this list is this… The bottom line is that e-mail marketing is always evolving. If you don’t believe me, then you are doing it wrong, and possibly out of date. There are always new things to think of – be it social media integration, mobile-readiness, conversions, tracking, etc. So, keep up to date with technology by researching constantly.
A great article by MediaPost discussing the latest ComScore numbers regarding e-mail usage:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=143363&nid=122890
Source: ComScore
Daily mobile e-mail usage is up 40% year over year for November 2010. I’m not surprised about this stat, due to the proliferation of mobile devices that are highly e-mail friendly such as the BlackBerry, iPhone, Droids and iPad.