There's a lot to be said about email in the new world of 1-to-1 relationship marketing. And at the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) conference held in Chicago this past Fall, there was no shortage of conversation on the topic. In fact, there was so much information shared in the form of statistics and sound bytes from industry experts that we can only present a Reader's Digest version of it here.

All in all, the consensus was clear: email remains at the center of digital marketing efforts. Some presenters contended that email marketing has seen more innovation in the past few years than other types of marketing have in the past decade. That's a powerful notion, even if it's only half true.

So let's get to it. Here are some of the most useful and interesting nuggets from the conference:

According to a recent Forrester Research report, 41% of consumers say that most emails they receive from brands or companies don't contain anything that interests them. Comment: First of all, segment your lists. And second, regardless of whether you are soliciting your current opt-in email database or using email as a new customer acquisition tool, you should be leveraging every piece of data and insights available (past purchase data, browsing data, social media activity, etc.) in order to make your emails relevant to your target audience.

Experian reports that for every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment. That adds up to a subscriber value based on solid metrics like growth, open rates, click rates, unsubscribes, etc. Comment: If you ever had doubts about your ROI, now you know. 'Nuff said.

According to Epsilon research, 44% of customers say they receive just the right amount of marketing emails. Comment: Hopefully, your company is closely managing the total amount of outbound emails and monitoring your opt-out rates in particular.

Nielsen's 2013 "The Mobile Consumer: A Global Snapshot" showed that 75% of U.S. Smartphone users read email on their smartphones. And according to a Litmus study from June 2013, mobile devices account for 44% of all email opens. Comment: This is a wakeup call. If you haven't recently, it's time to rethink your email design and layout to be sure they're optimized for mobile. Moreover, do you have a mobile strategy that takes into consideration that your emails may be seen at anytime and anywhere (other than at one's desk)?

Best Practices Revisited

When it comes to email marketing, the term, "best practices" is a time sensitive term. What was a best practice a year or six months ago, may not be today. To be sure you're doing everything you can to optimize the effectiveness of your efforts, one best practice you can follow is to keep doing your research to see what the latest best practices are, and make adjustments accordingly.

Here are some of the very latest best practices picked up at the DMA conference:

• Time of Day – The earlier the better; and don't send after 4pm EST
• Expiration of Offers – If you present a time sensitive offer, consider extending it for 30-60 days to capture "laggers" – folks who don't open emails (or open but don't respond) for many days or even weeks; this group has a higher conversion rate than those who open/respond in the first 48 hours, and can represent an incremental 10-20% in sales
• Personalization – For B2C, use first name only; for B2B, use the company name
• Frequency of Offers – It's ok to send multiple emails with the same offer during a 14-day period to try and boost response rates; but don't send multiple emails each with differing offers in that same period

In summary, no matter what your approach to email marketing may be, timing and relevance are key. Likewise, it pays to be strategic (and choosy) with your email content. And lastly, give proper consideration to context given the growing impact mobile devices have on when and where your target audiences may be reading their emails.