In a blog post titled “Email Marketing: ‘I am not dead yet‘,” email marketing consultant Jeanne S. Jennings offers some fairly compelling reasons for getting serious about email marketing.

Each year, the Direct Marketing Association ranks marketing channels by the ROI generated. Email has lead their rankings for a number of years; in 2010 they project that email marketing will return an average of $42 for each dollar spent, down from more than $43 in 2009. Email is the leader by more than a nose; the #2 channel was Internet search advertising, which returned just under $22 per dollar spent in 2009.

Getting the right strategy in place, however, is not easy. Exact Target offers a 60-second quiz to help get you started.