According to the Direct Marketing Association’s recent “Power of Direct” study, email brought in an average of $40.56 for every dollar spent in 2011, with that number projected to decrease to roughly $39.40 in 2012 as many marketers are “missing out on opportunities to fully capitalize on email’s power.”

“Too many programs fail to incorporate customer data effectively, to deliver more targeted and relevant emails,” says Matthew Kirsch, senior manager of online marketing at DirecTV. “The challenge with social and other new technologies is that an emailer can expend time and money chasing the newest thing and fall further behind on the nuts and bolts that will make meaningful and measurable improvements in his or her program,” he explains.

Email’s decrease in ROI isn’t due to the medium losing its effectiveness, however, in fact email is big business and continually growing.  According to Forrester Research’s “US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011 to 2016,” email is expected to bring in $1.7 billion in revenue in 2012 and grow 10% annually through 2016, hitting $2.5 billion by 2016.

At mobileStorm, we’ve long believed that email marketers need strong guidance in terms of making the most out of their email marketing strategy, which is why we give each and every client a dedicated account rep to provide such guidance and know-how every step of the way.

More on the DMA’s recent study can be found here.