How can we get upper management to understand the value of email marketing?

Hi Sarah - to keep it short, you need to demonstrate how these marketing tactics are influencing pipeline and generating revenue - this is the basis of Revenue Performance Management. To get to RPM requires a combination of the right, people, process and technology that has been covered in other posts here. This whitepaper also can provide greater insight: http://media.eloqua.com/documents/Eloqua_RPM_Re-Engineering_the_Revenue_Cycle...

Therefore, a path exists here to get upper management to understand the value of these marketing initiatives but there isn't an out of the box answer. I know I have a strong bias here but there is data to back to this up. As an example, at Eloqua we have a recent case study where we can tie back our content marketing strategy to $2.5 million in revenue http://www.brafton.com/news/content-marketing-brings-qualified-leads-for-eloqua. This changed the way our organization views our social media efforts. To be able to present this stat required many things including having sales and marketing aligned, ensuring that our company was focuses on measuring the right activities and executive buy-in. Yes, we're a marketing automation company but it still required the right focus and bringing on the right people to get this done and it's evolutionary process that is never complete.