• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, December 7, 2010

Well, according to Ryan Phelan, vp of strategic services for BlueHornet, at the Email Insider Summit, "communicating email to the C-suite almost has to be at the Twitter level. They're so high in the clouds, we have to condense down the effectiveness of email into manageable chunks."

Others agreed that selling email is all about understanding what C-level execs value most and what they need to succeed in their goals. PepsiCo's Senior Marketing Manager, Digital Engagement/CRM Lawrence DiCapua added that one of the challenges of this is that often times these folks feel like they know the space really well -- even if they're not that close to it.

Andy Nelson, digital personalization manager of Target, pointed out that email now finds itself competing with social and mobile for attention from the C-Suite. "When you look at ROI, social doesn't even come close to email."

To which Pepsi' DiCapua added: "That shiny new object doesn't lose its glimmer over night." He said that for image conscious brands like Nike, email may never get that type of attention.