Computers never delivered on the promise of the “paperless office” and, similarly, email has so far failed to deal a killer blow to the established postal system, affectionately known as “snail mail”. Undoubtedly, creating an email message—plus adding a file attachment—still costs a fraction of the price of an equivalent posted document. Hence the question—why hasn't email totally replaced snail mail yet?

One argument against snail mail is that sending an email message is significantly faster than printing out a document plus creating the envelope label for it. Additionally, there's the cost of sourcing the necessary postal stamps and the trouble of stuffing the letters into the envelope themselves. By contrast, an email can be sent with just one mouse click. Moreover, work can flow much faster with email since delivery is almost instantaneous. Indeed, thanks to the Net, email can reach virtually every single corner of the world. However, despite email's obviously significant advantages, postal services continue to survive.

Unfortunately, it's hard to unearth recent statistics for the volume of snail mail sent and received. Figures compiled as long ago as 2004, showed that around 425 billion letters were sent annually worldwide—with a single country, the UK, making up about 1.2 billion of those letters.

One very simple answer to why the postal services still survive is provided by the greetings card. People still love to send and receive cards via snail mail and not email. Judging from the £1 billion per annum greetings card industry in the UK alone, for example, the average person sends around 55 cards in a year. This number might sound high but it does include festive season cards as well as birthday, congratulations or get well cards.

Another important reason for the postal services' survival is trust. Businesses still prefer to send important documents—like business and legal contracts, for instance, via the postal services. However, the real culprit here is spam. It has been estimated by a web security firm, MessageLabs that spam accounted for 81.5% of all email traffic in June 2008. Back in December 2007, Barracuda Networks put the figure higher and estimated that spam then accounted for 90 to 95% of all emails.

This has lead to some IT experts suggesting that spammers might return to snail mail if spam filters did their job more effectively. Companies such as ClearMyMail claim their antispam software can act as an impressive 100% guaranteed spam filter. So, theoretically, spammers would be forced to return to snail mail if such filters do their job and are universally installed.

One of the innovations, which was expected to sound the death knell of the picture postcard, especially with young people, was the introduction of the cameraphone, which gave us picture messaging, technically known as MMS. It was assumed that cameraphone owners would simply send their holiday snaps via MMS rather than bothering to purchase and write a postcard. Although MMS usage has grown, it is still used by only a minority. Young people, for example, prefer to upload their holiday pictures to their Facebook page. So, if anything, it is really the social networks, which are killing postcards—not MMS.

According to David Green, business development director with the GB Group, it is the marketing industry itself, which is sustaining snail mail. The bulk of received snail mail is direct marketing from banks, building societies, insurers, pension providers, utility providers and zealous marketeers. "Marketeers are failing to capture accurate email and mobile data when they sign up new customers, or entering it inaccurately on to databases," Green explained. "Only 12% of entries in an average customer database include an email address, and a significant proportion of these will have unusable data entered within the field." Thus Green firmly believes that, "It's marketeers' failure to be ready for the 21st Century that is the ‘oxygen’ for the postal industry."

Another reason for snail mail's popularity is customer dissatisfaction with customer support via email. A recent survey carried out by Tickbox.Net for Fasthosts Internet found that 78% of consumers had been disappointed by a slow response to a customer service email enquiry. On an average, the typical consumer sent three emails before receiving a satisfactory response.

Given that switching to email alone would significantly reduce an organisation's carbon footprint, once again email should logically be ousting snail mail. However, one company—ViaPost—has introduced a hybrid solution that offers a compromise. According to an independent report from Carbon Planet, a service like ViaPost can eliminate at least 80% of carbon emissions compared with regular mailshots. ViaPost has partnered with Microsoft and local postal services, such as the Royal Mail in the UK, to introduce a method of sending double-side letters from the computer desktop. The documents are encrypted and then emailed. They're then printed out by a local ViaPost agent before snail mail is used for the final mile delivery. Such a service is particularly efficient for sending business documents internationally.

So, while email’s lower carbon footprint; speed of delivery; and convenience should have put the final nails into snail mail's coffin, postal services are still looking pretty healthy today.