• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, December 7, 2008

In an email exchange before the Summit, Message Systems' David Lewis said the economic downturn could validate long-held claims by email marketers -- but that's no slam dunk.

"For years we've been talking about email's higher ROI and the need for companies to shift budget dollars," wrote Lewis, CMO of the Maryland-based email software solutions provider. "This is precisely the environment where we may see that shift finally occur in a substantive way.

"But that's not a foregone conclusion. Companies can be pretty indiscriminate in their slashing when confronted with survival issues. So like all in the marketing profession, email marketers must be able to demonstrate their bottom line (dollars and cents) contribution to their companies."

Lewis added: email marketers must focus on "more tightly targeted, customer-centric and analytics-driven messaging versus the indiscriminate, broad-based and often blind email blasts of the past. That's the only way to ensure that the budgetary shifts to email marketing actually occur ..."