The advent of social media marketing continues to provide many opportunities for businesses to make real connections with customers. However, your social networking plans should enhance, rather than replace your email marketing activities. While Facebook's usage figures are impressive for example, they are still blitzed by the number of people that own and use an email address.

An effective email marketing strategy still has a key role to play in the modern marketer's online arsenal, working cohesively with other activities in order to create touch points with customers at a level they are comfortable with. The question then is not 'should I use email as a means to stay in touch with customers?' but instead, 'how do I build a targeted, responsive email list?'

There are a number of techniques...