While I was catching up on my reading, an article from Digiday’s Giselle Abramovich caught my eye. The article, “The Most Underrated Digital Marketing Tactics,” asked leading digital marketers for their thoughts on what digital media opportunities are most underrated.

Not surprisingly, email marketing was recognized in the majority of responses as the most underrated. Bob Arnold, associate director of global digital strategy at Kellogg stated, “From a pure cost-effectiveness standpoint, it’s hard to beat email. It’s relatively cheap, consumers opt in, so they are very receptive to the marketing message, and it’s fairly easy to measure success.”

Later in the article, Wayfair Group Manager for Digital Media Michael Beaulieu added, “While many brands today are enamored by social media and other newer marketing channels, standard email marketing, which has been around for over 20 years, is one of the most effective means of communicating your brand identity and generating sales.”

But what he goes on to conclude is even more important: “Earning the right to stay in their inboxes requires delivering consistent value, both in the content and offers delivered.”

We completely agree and can’t emphasize enough the importance of relevancy and targeting in email marketing. We have experienced firsthand the level of success enterprises can have with email for increasing consumer engagement and ROI.

With that said, it’s important that you also consider and stay on top of the emerging email marketing trends and external forces impacting the success of your email campaign. For example, we are seeing a much greater focus on improving the alignment of email with social and CRM/eCRM strategies and more turnkey integration across these channels.

We’ve also seen more improved usage of email marketing with better targeting, improved outbound lists, and a greater adoption of responsive design to cater to the growing number of people accessing email from mobile devices.

When we work with our clients on their digital marketing strategy, we look through the lens of the customer of “ONE” and on which channels he/she prefers to be engaged. Often email is the winner, but making sure you are consistent across any touchpoint wins the day.

What’s your thought? Would love to hear what’s working best for you!

About the Author:

Alex Lustberg

Alex is Chief Marketing Officer at Lyris, with responsibility for all marketing activities as well as product strategy and management. Alex brings more than 15 years of product marketing, strategy development, client services, and delivery experience at both established and early-stage technology companies, and holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Organizational Studies from Stanford University.