• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, October 5, 2009

JetBlue Airways has tapped email marketing services provider e-Dialog to at once improve and better differentiate its email efforts.

Per the new relationship, JetBlue will continue to self-deploy its e-mail campaigns, but with the guidance of e-Dialog in the areas of customer insights and behavioral data in individualized, real-time messaging.

"Each of our customers is unique and valuable, and we want to respect these attributes in our e-mail communications," said Danielle Compitello, e-mail marketing manager for JetBlue. e-Dialog is therefore "helping us create precisely relevant messages," he added.

Along with aiding in the deployment of JetBlue's promotional, transactional, and triggered messages, e-Dialog is also helping to improve the airline's production efficiencies by automating several of its processes, including data integration, content management, segmentation, and dynamic custom publishing.

Email is also expected to play an integral role in JetBlue's revamped TrueBlue loyalty program, to be launched in November, where the airline will have many more relevant offers to communicate to customers.

John Rizzi, president and CEO of e-Dialog, said such services are increasingly in demand among marketers. "As the volume of e-mail continues to grow, now is the time for world-class brands like this to step up the relevance of their programs and earn the right to be let into consumers' mailboxes," he said.

Founded in 1997, Burlington, Mass.-based e-Dialog's clients include American Eagle Outfitters, Avis, British Airways, CBS, Nintendo, the NFL, Reuters, and the Royal Bank of Scotland group of companies. For marketers, email remains an extremely powerful tool. Indeed, the Direct Marketing Association recently projected that email marketing will generate an ROI of $43.52 in 2009 -- twice the return earned by search and other marketing channels. Consumers, meanwhile, aren't showing any signs of retiring their email accounts despite the rapid rise of social networks. To the contrary, Nielsen just released data indicating that the social networking craze has actually increased email usage among consumers.