There’s been a lot of debate recently about the future of email: is it pushing forward stronger than ever or on the verge of extinction, about to be overrun by all-inclusive social networks?

As an e-marketing specialist, I find it hard to imagine the internet without email. No matter what you use email for, I believe that we, as online content consumers, will always need our inboxes to aggregate, create, organize, and search the hundreds of online data points we create daily as we navigate the web. Email is the only private online location where users can store and create content with very few limitations or restrictions. Where else can you manage your social networks, businesses, bills, family, friends, banks, job searches, and more in one location?

At ListEngage, we help our clients with email and social media marketing daily, so we see the benefits and drawbacks of each: email is a great relationship building tool but not a great prospect acquisition channel, while social media, if used intelligently, is ideal for prospect acquisition and qualification but lacks the “direct contact” that opt-in email does.

I’ve been really impressed with a company called Groupon lately, that seems to be using email and social media as a dynamic 1-2 punch for spreading their daily deals and messages. Click here to read more about the union of email and social media, and how Groupon is delivering a winning e-marketing TKO.

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Imagine it’s December 31, 2010…

Has your business done better than you had hoped? Worse? Held steady for the last 11 months or so? Have you achieved everything that you wanted to? Do you even have the right tools to measure your successes tangibly?

Whether you’re just getting started with an e-marketing plan in 2010, or you’re well on your way to launching the next viral marketing campaign on YouTube– well, there are still several things every business should keep sight of from Jan. 1 to Dec 31 every year! And if you “keep your eye on the prize”, measure, and follow the 10 easy steps we offer below, it’ll be quite easy to look back on Dec. 31, 2010 and be 100% Regret Free!

If you’re looking for measurable returns on your e-marketing in 2010 (and beyond!) then keep reading, as we unfold the:

Top 10 e-marketing Tips for a Regret-Free 2010

1) Listen: Get in the conversation with customers, prospects, and competitors, and actually incorporate their ideas.

2) Define your social media goals: and get moving! Or pretty soon the social media train will have left the station!

3) Stay on top of your Data: 27 – 30% of your list goes bad every year. It’s your most important resource so stay on top of it. If your data is bad nothing else really matters.

Read All 10 e-marketing Tips for a Regret Free 2010

This year we wanted to spread our Holiday cheer by helping you send a cleaner, crisper, error-free email, to all of your clients, prospects, and friends. All you have to do is follow these simple steps:

The 5 Best ways to Avoid Email Blunders this Holiday Season

From all of us at List Engage:

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes in the New Year!

Clients often come to us for advice on how to engage their customers more, create relationships, and ultimately turn their “leads” into conversions.

We offer this sage advice: Create! Automate! Engage!

When it comes to email marketing, you can spend all the time in the world blasting out blanketing emails and flooding customers’ inboxes with little to no result, or you can get smart: send automated, targeted messages to the right people at the right times in your sales cycle.

The newsletter attached here offers our “Automated Drip Marketing” approach to email marketing, and we think you’ll find it extremely valuable.

Not only will you waste less time with “batch and blast” messages to all your clientele (and save yourself some resentful unsubscribe responses as well!), but you and your recipients will find much more value in the info you provide in the first place.

So skip the SPAM and treat your customers to something savory; they’re sure to digest your message much better when they know you made it especially for them.

Check out this month’s newsletter for more information on drip marketing >> click here

Trigger more than just your allergies this spring!

5 Easy Things You Can Do To Use Triggered Email Effectively
#1 Think “Response.”
Triggered email can refer to a variety of scenarios – from password reminders to shopping cart abandonment to whitepaper downloads. The key to using triggered email effectively is to identify points of interaction with your business and prepare pre-defined responses to different scenarios. Start with simple interactions first, and then begin looking for areas where a little customer service can impact your business-and your bottom line.

#2 Take Control and Free IT.
Your IT department has coding to do. Take control of your one-to-one communications and free IT from the email grip. It’s easy with a program that gives you visibility into your marketing campaigns and allows you to make changes on the fly to improve your subscriber response. You can pause, change, and restart your email marketing campaign without missing a beat. No IT intervention necessary.

#3 Reduce the Number of Clicks.
Research consistently shows that reducing the number of clicks required to take action on your site increases responsiveness. For example, instead of linking to a general product or service landing page from your email, link to a page on your site from your triggered emails that highlights the accessories directly related to a recently purchased product.

Want more? Check out this month’s complete newsletter here.