Direct email marketing has graduated to higher altitudes in the first quarter of 2011, from a channel condemned by some as facing graceful retirement, to a medium that has reinforced itself as one that can still drum up continental chunks of engagement.

The role-out rate of email marketing messages has skyrocketed by 39% during the January to March 2011 stretch across multiple industries, compared the previous year, according to a new study by Epsilon and the Direct Marketing Association’s Email Experience Council (EEC).

This staggering figure, calculated and observed from the roughly 7.1 billion emails sent by Epsilon alone, shows an increase in open rates as well as a significant flaring in average volume per client. Epsilon and the EEC also found that the average email open rate increased from 19.3% to 23.3%, accompanied by an unalarming 0.1% drop in click-through rates. This shows that the increase in volume didn't come at the expense of open rates, which proves that bulk email continues to grow and is demonstrating even greater future potential. 

It has been suggested that retail marketers used subscriber segmentation and dynamic content to increase the relevancy of their messages, and have also suppressed more inactive users than they have in past years, which leaves no room for doubt and speculation on why the volume of sends have gone into overdrive.

Consumers are burdened with an ever-increasing number of promotional messages, which causes them to be more selective in what they are choosing to click through on. Customer experience is being recognized as playing a leading role in getting face-time for one’s message and marketers are punting harder than ever to get their email newsletters into the inbox trusted zone.

Email programs are about building relationships as much as they are about shining a light on specific promotions, and so shouldn’t necessarily just be focused on sales. There is also value in engaging consumers with educational and supplementary information, to generate genuine interest without taking crack-shots at the recipient’s wallet.

With that said, digital marketing is not a horse race where the winner takes all and so no channel is an island onto itself. For the best results, marketers should still integrate email closely with social media and mobile marketing, to engage clients as far as possible on a one-on-one level with personalized, relevant and well-timed content.