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A study of email contact with loyal customers highlights trends to help marketers perfect these communications based on how these customers behave and engage with companies to which they are loyal. That is ever more important today as consumer loyalty wanes in the wake of the struggling economy and the lure at shelf of price promotions.

As an example, the Reilly Group shows a grasp of email marketing that larger, less specialized companies often lack. Email expert and colleague Sherry Chiger lays out the three reasons she was impressed by this email. And she heralds Williams-Sonoma for its stand out subject line in the run up to the holidays. (Read on about other subject lines she loved).

According to a new study by Experian, in comparison to bulk campaigns, emails targeted to current loyalty program members have 40% higher open rates; 22% higher click rates; and transaction rates and revenue per email that are 29% and 11% higher, correspondingly.

Mailings targeting prospects with an invitation to join a loyalty program tend to outperform the promotional mailings for the same businesses with a 28 percent lift in transaction rates and 25 percent higher revenue per email.

"Knowing which customers have a propensity to be loyal brand advocates is critical to every business today," Rachel Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of Experian CheetahMail, a part of Experian Marketing Services, said in a release. "Given the highly competitive nature of the industry, marketers that engage customers with programs that motivate and reward loyalty will yield significant returns."

Interestingly, only 50% of respondents in a separate study reported having a loyalty program.