Whether you’re an email skeptic or a loyal fan, there’s no denying that when it comes to direct marketing communications, email not only has what it takes – it is what it takes to successfully message your audience.

According to the 2012 Channel Preference Survey by ExactTarget, the six factors used to determine consumers’ channel preferences are:

1. Content – Is this a marketing or personal message?
2. Privacy – Will conversations be protected?
3. Immediacy – Is the message urgent in nature?
4. Formality – Is professionalism required with this message?
5. Accessibility – Should this message be saved for reference later?
6. Initiation – Who started the conversation? And how?

The results crowned email as the clear winner, which we’ve known since the last study of this kind in 2008. But the amazing thing is to see by how much email is winning.

First, a key takeaway for marketers: The personal communication channels that respondents preferred don’t automatically carry over for marketing messages. And it’s no more simply understood than by examining the way email and text messaging each ranked.

Those two communication channels were the top two preferred for personal use: Email ranks first with 45% of respondents in all age categories expressing this preference. Text messaging came in second with 36% in favor. But watch what happens when the question asks about the preferred marketing communication channel:

1. Email preferred by 77% of respondents
2. Direct mail preferred by 9%
3. Text message preferred by 5%

Despite the proliferation of text messaging and social media as personal communication channels, not only is email the #1 preferred direct communications channel by consumers, beating out every other channel by an enormous margin, but it’s actually growing: email has increased in this capacity by 5% since 2008 as more and more marketers are catching on to the power of email.

Most savvy brands and companies now offer a newsletter as part of their communications and marketing strategy, but that also means that email marketers need to work harder to engage their customers in order to set themselves apart from their competitors, who are all vying for the same subscribers’ limited attention in the inbox. It’s those email marketers who are looking for cutting edge innovations in email and catering for today’s rich media-hungry audience, who will set themselves apart.

Sure, that may mean having to do things a little differently, and even investing some resources to get the ball rolling for this inevitable shift, but as the #1 preferred marketing communication channel, email has proven (again and again) that it’s worth it.

For marketers, the shift means refreshing not only the way their emails are created, but also their content offering. The era of marketing emails based purely on text, images and hyperlinks is fast becoming as distant as the Ice Age. Rich media and interactive emails are where the future of email is at. All marketers need to do to evolve is resist the convenience of sticking with the familiar (and boring) and take that first small step (but giant leap) for email kind.