Has your faith in e-mail marketing been shaken? It’s tough, to say the least. You’re competing for eyeballs in the inbox — and a lot of companies are, too. E-mail is easy to develop, cheap to execute and fantastic for tracking, but the crowds realizing this have led to degraded results — and frustrated IT solution provider marketers. The problem isn’t in the medium … it’s in the method. As with any other marketing technique, how you execute plays a significant role in the results you realize.

MarketingSherpa’s latest research shows that e-mail marketing remains strong and is still considered effective by B2B marketing professionals. Since 2006, the number of marketers believing that e-mail marketing effectiveness is declining has remained fairly static, peaking at 4 percent last year and settling at 3 percent last year, the same level as in 2007. Those feeling that the effectiveness of e-mail marketing is decreasing a little have grown steadily from 12 percent in 2006 to 16 percent in 2009.

Support for the technique, however, remains robust. Last year, 22 percent of marketers said that the effectiveness of e-mail marketing had not changed noticeably — the same as 2008 and up from 13 percent in 2006 — and the number claiming that effectiveness increased a little was 38 percent, slightly lower than the 2007 level of 39 percent and 2008 level of 41 percent.

Marketers claiming that e-mail effectiveness is increasing a lot, according to MarketingSherpa’s data, stayed at 21 percent last year, but the result is well off the 2006 high of 38 percent.

Keep in mind that economic factors are likely to have contributed to attitudes toward e-mail marketing last year. Though the financial crisis struck in 2008, it came at the end of the third quarter, with the aftermath experienced mostly in 2009.

[Source: MarketingSherpa]