My little blog has a nice crew of contributors. Some contribute a lot, many do it for the fun and passion of sharing, some do it a while (I guess until their Pagerank is up or they seek incoming links somewhere else), some do it now and then and some allow me to take what I like from their blogs.
There are all kinds of people, all kinds of reasons to do things and they are all welcome.
Email marketing is a form of marketing. Marketing is a global and holistic strategy with one final goal: generate revenues. There are many ways of achieving this goal, from direct marketing to branding.
Email marketing is a part of a global marketing strategy. Social media marketing too. Customers are increasingly online. They decide when, where and how they want to connect. And why: to gain information, buy, complain, talk, comment, interact, etc.
Marketing should strive to get a global view on the customer by tracking all online and offline interactions. The goal is to create customer satisfaction.