The rise of social media has served as a timely reminder to email marketing providers that they must maintain the highest quality standards or risk losing customers, it has been claimed.

Writing for ClickZ, industry expert Stephanie Miller commented that social networking sites have not sounded the death knell for email marketing, but rather helped providers to re-focus on meeting consumer demands.

She noted that social media was expected by many to usurp email marketing altogether, but the more established medium is rising to the challenge once again, as it did when confronted with other previous 'threats' – such as spam, RSS and blogs.

"Social marketing has changed customer expectations and set the stage for deeper subscriber engagement – and email marketers who want to succeed in the long term are stepping up," Ms Miller said.

"Email messages win when they provide helpful, relevant, and interactive content. The other stuff gets ignored from fatigue or swept away via new inbox management tools."

Earlier this month, the Internet Advertising Bureau reported that major brands such as Amazon and Tesco are enjoying great success with their email marketing campaigns.

Source: globalgold.co.uk