Oh, for the good ol’ days of email marketing. You remember those days—the ones where customer engagement meant opening, clicking, and forwarding. Back then (okay, it wasn’t that long ago) determining the success or failure of your email campaign was as simple as monitoring a few key metrics. Today, customer engagement is a whole different ball game.

Open rates and click-through rates are still the foundation for gaining an understanding of subscriber engagement with your emails. However, the advent of social media has not only introduced another dimension to the engagement dynamic, but has also subtly shifted subscriber expectations as they interact with your brand. Let’s take a look at what today’s subscribers expect from the emails you send them.

• Human Interaction

Consumers today won’t be impressed by a virtual billboard delivered to their inboxes. They want to feel as though they’re interacting with a real person, someone who cares about their needs and with whom they can discuss and relate. Humanize your emails by occasionally including personal stories and anecdotes, encouraging interaction, and providing timely responses to subscriber questions or feedback.

• Dialogue

Social media has changed the way people view businesses. No longer can advertising focus on one-way communication; people expect the opportunity to respond, share opinions, and provide feedback. If you don’t talk to them, they’ll talk about you to someone else. For email marketing, that means soliciting subscriber responses, promoting social sharing, and demonstrating benefit to the customer rather than spotlighting the company.

• Multi-Channel Communication

Your email subscribers undoubtedly encounter your brand in a multitude of places outside their inboxes including Facebook, blogs, review websites, your company website, and Twitter, not to mention more traditional advertising forums like television and print ads. Consumers today are looking for a cohesive message and they’re looking to be recognized for their loyalty no matter where they encounter you. Capitalize on this tendency by integrating the various prongs of your marketing strategy and by providing opportunities for subscribers to share content over a variety of venues.

• Relevancy

Perhaps the greatest shift in email marketing is the expectation that content by personally relevant to the subscriber who receives it. List segmentation based on subscriber behavior and profile data enables you to target your messages to the people for whom they hold the greatest appeal.

Today’s email subscribers hold their information closer, demonstrate less loyalty to any particular brand, and expect businesses to earn the right to continue communicating with them. eConnect Email can help you create personalized, relevant messages for every subscriber using our advanced list segmentation, dynamic content options, and social sharing capabilities.

As 2011 draws to a close, email marketers should already be planning their strategies for the 2012. While 2011 saw the establishment of new technologies as mainstream, 2012 will enable us to deepen our engagement with these technologies, thereby catering more effectively to an ever more mobile and connected audience. Without further ado, let’s dive into the top email strategies for the new year.

• Deeper Customer Engagement

By engagement, I mean two-way conversation. Email marketers must focus more stringently on involving subscribers in dialogue, speaking with them, rather than at them.

• Relevant Content

List segmentation will take top priority in 2012 as subscribers expect email messages to increasingly reflect their personal preferences and needs. Creating targeted lists based on subscriber behavior such as email clicks, website browsing, and previous purchases will enable businesses to send content that remains high on the subscriber’s priority list.

• Mobile Optimization

As people increasingly use mobile devices to check email, businesses will need to create messages that acknowledge the unique aspects of mobile design. Single columns, larger fonts and buttons, and increased space between clickable elements all make emails easier for mobile users to navigate.

• Automated Campaigns

While many businesses already use triggered responses for email receipts and welcome letters, automation will gain a whole new level of sophistication in 2012. Increase customer engagement with your brand by using automation for cross sell and up sell offers, birthday/anniversary greetings, purchase recommendations, and more. By utilizing multiple triggers for your automation campaign, you can keep loyal subscribers engaged on a consistent basis.

• Social Media Integration

No longer will email and Facebook operate in parallel universes. Social sharing will become an intrinsic part of email marketing strategies in 2012 as businesses seek to create multi-channel communication. Enabling subscribers to share message content via social media icons will increase the likelihood of your message reaching an ever broader audience of targeted prospects.

• Email Marketing Becomes More Important, Not Less

Ultimately, despite speculations that email is dead, email marketing will gain greater importance in 2012 than ever before. Email messages will be more personal and relevant based on subscriber data, making them an integral part of a multi-pronged approach to overall customer engagement.

eConnect Email remains on the cutting edge of email marketing technology and stands ready to help you incorporate these vital elements into your strategy. By starting out on the front edge of evolving email technology, you’ll be ready for whatever new developments 2012 brings your way.

Facebook has been hyped to the point where some marketers have pronounced email to be dead. Of course, it should be intuitive that as long as people still have email addresses, email can’t be dead. Email marketing reaches people where Facebook can’t. Just like Facebook reaches people where email can’t. That’s why the two must work together to reach the broadest possible audience. Facebook reaches the “everyone else” of email marketing, and email marketing reaches the “everyone else” of Facebook. Successful marketing campaigns must learn to integrate the two for greatest effect. Here’s how to get started:

• Provide email signup options on your Facebook page and Facebook like buttons in your emails. Make it possible for people to engage with your company wherever they encounter you. Asking them to sign up for additional marketing options keeps your company in the forefront of their minds as often as possible.

• Promote Facebook contests in email and announce the winners in an email newsletter.  Let your email subscribers know what they’re missing out on by not being a fan on Facebook. You can use Facebook pictures to showcase your winners, but always get permission and give the subscriber an opportunity to choose which picture he wants you to use.

• Promote email marketing contests by asking people to provide their email address on your Facebook page.  Again, let people know they’re missing out by participating in only one of your marketing venues. If you intend to add these addresses to your subscriber list, make sure your viewers know that up front or you could end up with disgruntled subscribers.

• Use the same design in both places for continuity between venues.  People shouldn’t wonder whether the email they got was delivered by the same company who created that awesome Facebook page. It’s important to create brand recognition across multiple venues, so make sure your social media and email follow the same basic design structure.

• Recognize the differences between Facebook and email.  Email remains much more personal than Facebook—perhaps even more so since people don’t have to give their email addresses out in order to stay in touch. Most people guard their email addresses much more closely than their Facebook pages and will unsubscribe quickly if you bombard them with unwanted messages. To remain on the nice list, keep emails on point and make sure each one provides something of value.

Email and Facebook can work together to accomplish the same marketing goals as long as you recognize and respect the differences between them. eConnect Email can help you create opt-in forms, manage subscriber preferences, and create custom email templates that will keep your audience engaged, no matter where they encounter your brand.