Is email dead?

Facebook COO Cheryl Sandberg’s speech at this week’s Nielsen 360 conference is getting a lot of attention for her observation that email is dead because only 11% of teens check their email daily.

But is it?

You bet.

But here comes the weaselly qualifier:

Email is dead in the sense it is no longer THE dominant way to reach consumers with timely and relevant messages, especially if you’re targeting youth today or anyone 5 years from now.

Teens don’t use email (much) because they find it too slow. They get their timely and relevant communication from social networking services like Facebook and through text messaging (SMS).

Does that mean that email is going away all together? No, not by a long shot. But it does mean that if you want to continue to reach consumers with messages that matter, you need to start incorporating social networking and mobile messaging into your marketing plan. Today.