With the rise of social media, people assumed email marketing was dead. I'm assuming that with the number of mobile phone owners increasing, people will again think...email is dying. I can't agree.

In fact, just like there is great potential in email and social media integrating, I think the same is true for mobile and email.

Recently, a HubSpot blog post highlighted effective email list growth tactics based on information from MarketingSherpa. It was encouraging to see that mobile capture was proving to be a valuable tool for B2B companies. I have no doubt that B2C will also soon find the effectiveness of using mobile capture for email lists. There are so many opportunities to engage with your customers via the mobile marketing channel, such as text to subscribe, SMS, and email.

According to one article by Christmas of 2011, 1 in 2 Americans will own a smart phone. With so many people in possession of a mobile device, it's pertinent marketers start to infiltrate this marketing channel. If you haven't started engaging with mobile marketing yet, here are a few quick tips to get you going:

1. Plan. As with most new marketing strategies, it's important to prepare a plan. You have to determine which areas of mobile marketing are the best to implement based on who your audience is and how active they are on mobile devices.

2. Goals. Once you've determined that your audience is, in fact, going to benefit from your company engaging with them via this marketing channel, it's important to figure out what your company's goals are with using mobile strategies.

3. Budget. Next, figure out what available funds you have to incorporate this new tool. Once you have an idea of what you can spend, you can start the implementation process of some of these tactics.

Of course, these are just the very beginning steps to get started implementing mobile marketing. If you are currently working with an ESP to send your email marketing campaigns, you may want to check with them to see if they also provide mobile marketing services as well.  Delivra plans to soon launch the text to subscribe functionality for it's clients, allowing people to text a keyword to a short code number in order to subscribe to your email list.

I think we all agree that mobile marketing is on the rise. Have you seen a mobile marketing campaign that you thought was exceptional? Please share in the comments; I'd love to hear about it!

Lavon Temple | Marketing