Email Marketing is not dead. SMB's still believes Email Marketing as the popular way of marketing their products.
The other traditional marketing methods cannot be totally avoided because case studies shows that always try email marketing after you make a buzz using the traditional marketing methods like TV, news paper ads etc.
In a real world scenario suppose a company plans to market a new Laptop, they should first advertise the product using TV advertisement, newspaper and other traditional mediums. This will make the crowd aware that there is a new Laptop available in the market. Awareness plays a important role in the marketing
Next step is to send a customized mail to potential customers describing features of the new Laptop, its features, specifications, pricing and shops they are available. All the people who are aware of this product is definitely going to open and read this mail if it had reached his inbox.
If the mail is descriptive enough and a persuading one, for the potential customers there is a 90% chance that they makes an inquiry, and if you are providing a discount coupon along with this mail, the chance of inquiry further goes to 95%.
Once your product is purchased by the customers you can send out a feedback-form to these customers after a certain period of time. This enabled you to understand more about your product. If they have complaints you should rectify it as soon as possible and that makes customer happy because of you being pro-active. These steps will help you to further impress the customers and for creating goodwill about your product. Within no time your product is on the roll through word of mouth