Do you think email marketing is dying or not? if not, have you used a wordpress plugin for sending emails, newsletter. I have recently found such plugin that sends emails, so that I have not to paid monthly for costly autoresponders like Aweber or Mailchimp. why everybody didn't do that way? some wordpress plugins will be get responsive for email marketing?
There are a lot of people who go that route, Elcidofaguy uses a similar approach but doesn't use WP. He uses Sendy and Amazon ses, this method is very cheap. So it's just a matter of preference there are people who don't go the commercial route (aweber, getresponse etc.).
The reason I wouldn't go the wordpress route is because you're still going to need a service to send emails. You can use your webhost but this won't work on shared hosting, you need serious hosting especially if you have a big list. You can also integrate the WP plugin with services like gmail, amazon ses, mandrill etc. instead of using your host.
Your messages have a higher chance of being marked as spam, but there are ways to whitelist your IP with these mailing services. But that doesn't guarantee delivery as well. Your email list (most valuable asset) is also not safe from hackers, they can easily access your WP site and send an email to your subs on your behalf easily.
The analytics have limited features as compared to other commercial services and important things like A/B testing are missing on these plugins.
So it's not convenient at all, I would rather go the Sendy & Amazon SES route than wordpress.
