Email marketing-Is it worth the money invested in it???

Many of the web companies spend a hundreds of dollars on this cheap mode of marketing, i.e. Email marketing. They are mostly ad agencies who cunningly get email addresses of common web surfers through their websites often promising something very promising things.
But, as day by day, the common internet surfer has become very alert against spam, he/she has almost finished an era of this cheap marketing service.

Now why this once very popular type of marketing is turning into failure? One thing that has made that a failure is that many email providers restrict to affect their clients. To my observations many such emails go straight into the Junk or Spam folder, thus not convincing the clients to read those emails. Another reason to the failure of email marketing is the unwillingness of the people to read emails from unknown senders. Moreover stricter laws like a US law disallowing sending of more than 200 mails an hour or the sender may land in jail! Thus, those good old days are gone(you are in 2009!).

Bottomline is that DONT SPEND A DIME ON EMAIL MARKETING. Instead use services like Google Adwords to get targeted buyers and visitors.
Give me your 2 cents on this..