Although some may not see email as a ‘sexy’ part of digital marketing, the results from the Email Census have consistently shown that email continues to deliver a great return on investment, and for many businesses remains the workhorse of their customer acquisition and retention efforts.

Econsultancy is no different, with our CEO Ashley Friedlein saying, “I would cut almost everything else before email” in his recent post on 17 digital marketing and ecommerce trends for 2013, despite the fact that many commentators write off email as ‘dead’.

This is in stark contrast to comments such as those from Atos CEO Thierry Breton, who wishes to axe email for internal communication from his company.

Data from our Email Marketing Statistics Compendium shows that the reports of email’s death are greatly exaggerated. Mobile and tablet use of email in particular is rising, while our Content Marketing Survey Report showed that 50% of marketers stated that email was one of their most effective types of content, with no other type of content coming higher.

What are the three most effective types of content for marketing? (respondents were in-house marketers)

This year’s survey will as usual cover areas such as best practice, integration with other marketing efforts and the barriers to success in the discipline, but given its importance we have an increased emphasis on the use of mobile.

We are also looking to find out what attributes are important for clients in their email service provider, and will ask you to share what you love and hate about creating email marketing campaigns.

Of interest will also be whether there continues to be what guest contributor Morgan Stewart described in our last report as the “erosion of the middle class” in email, where the gulf between those conducting best practice and those conducting “batch and blast” continues to widen.

As we found from last year’s report, there is likely to be a strong link between those putting effort in to their email and return on investment.

The deadline for the survey is Thursday 31st January. Please take part to get your free copy of the report.