Think that social media has killed off email? Hardly. Active email users far outnumber users on any social network. For example, 3 billion people use email. Now compare that number with one billion Facebook users, 200 million Twitter users, and 200 million LinkedIn users.

Email is thriving, not perishing, in our social media-loving age.

Rather than killing off email, social media is extending email's reach. The click-through rate (CTR) of an average email is 2.4% without social sharing capabilities. Add social icons in the email, and the CTR jumps to 6.2%.

To help marketers understand how important social media is to email, GetResponse, an email marketing solutions provider, put together an infographic, which cites an increase in the use of social share icons in emails.

In 2012, 29.4% of email marketers included social sharing icons in their emails, up from 18.3% in 2011 (a 61% increase).

So, just how many social share icons are being included in an average email? According to the infographic...

• 39.1% have three icons.
• 34.9% feature four icons or more.
• 14.9% include two icons.
• 11.0% have just one icon.