New research backs up what marketers already know about email and sheds light on the other tactics their peers find effective.

Most email marketing campaigns should focus on three important elements: Content, personalization and segmentation. Brafton has reported on the importance of these attributes before, but it’s worth remembering that customers will appreciate when you provide them with valuable information tailored to their demographic profiles and needs.

A study from Ascend2 supports this model. According to the research, 80 percent of marketers have created relevant and compelling content for marketing purposes. Additionally, 72 percent have personalized email messages and 61 percent have segmented their email marketing lists for greater engagement. However, what may be most interesting and useful for web marketing goals are the other, less heralded tactics companies use for promotional emails.

Keep email marketing in sync

The next most-popular email strategies were integrating email with other tactics (55 percent) and engaging subscribers via social media (42 percent). These two actions are closely intertwined and can be seen as one overarching category: not conducting email marketing in a vacuum.

Email is only one part of the entire engagement process that begins with consumer interest and ends with a new client.

What does this mean? Essentially, it shows that email content is not an isolated aspect of a content marketing campaign. Email is certainly an excellent way to garner new customers, but it is only one part of the entire engagement process that begins with consumer interest and ends with a new client.

So when it comes to email and social media, remember that the whole is often more effective than its parts.Email marketing should contain content related to information shared on social media presences and a company’s website. The direct mail campaigns of the past were less effective than email marketing is today because they weren’t connected to more information. Today, a single click can bring contacts even more content, so make sure email copy is paired up with relevant content for a true cross-channel experience.

To learn more, check out these related articles:

It pays to get up close & personal with email marketing
Listen to your customers to create email marketing they’ll love
Short & sweet subject lines get more opens [study]

Alex Butzbach is a Marketing Writer at Brafton. He studied Communications at Boston College, and after a brief stint teaching English in Japan, he entered the world of content marketing. When he isn't writing and researching, he can be found on a bike somewhere in Metro Boston.