Despite praise being regularly heaped on new digital promotional platforms, there still appears to be nothing quite like email marketing.
Indeed, research published by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), which named the channel as most popular among B2B organisation, seems to confirm that email remains the port-of-call for any firm looking to boost their online presence.
However, the study also highlights that competition to be noticed in a subscriber's inbox is undoubtedly hotting up, so how can firms ensure they stand out from the crowd and gain those all-important open rates?
Paul Cross, product and marketing manager for Thomson Local, feels email targeting is the only way forward. He suggests that messages must be relevant to really become prominent as, in the future, "irrelevant emails will simply be deleted".
With this in mind, where do growing businesses begin on the road to targeted perfection? According to the expert, it is all in the detail.
"Effective email marketing starts with an accurate data list," he explained.
"If you don't have accurate data, your email won't reach your recipient at all and you will have wasted valuable time and marketing budget."
The issue of research has been in the news recently due to claims by Robert Keitch, chief of membership and brand at the Direct Marketing Association, that companies could be overlooking opportunities to boost the value of their promotions by not gaining an insight into clients.
He said: "All too often direct marketers rely solely on prior campaign results and broad testing to make important decisions.
"The power of direct marketing lies in its targeted approach and to ensure that this precision is maximised it is vital that direct marketers use all the tools available to them."
Mr Cross echoed the DMA official's comments, claiming that one of the key ways to boost message relevance is to "know your customers".
"Examine things like their size, location, core business activity, and use this information to build up an ideal customer profile. You can then use this profile information to identify other similar companies you should be talking to using your email communications," he outlined.
The identification of a target audience can then be used to create messages that are "targeted to speak directly to them", he explained, adding that growing businesses should not hesitate to consider outside help from an agency or third-party provider if they do not have time to do this themselves.
Finally, a fundamental tactic which can be used to check if messages are properly targeted is testing.
According to Mr Cross: "See which email campaigns get the best response in terms of generating opens, clicks and leads and use these results to refine your communications further."
While it seems obvious that relevance is the key way to improve engagement with clients via email, the expert added that tactics based around targeting do not necessarily start and end with that channel alone.
"All direct marketing communications must be targeted to achieve stand-out – so the same strategy of knowing your customers and buying an accurate data list can also be applied to direct mail and telemarketing," he concluded.
