arcgis desktop - Is exporting to feature class the simplest way to make joins permanent?

I am a new user doing simple tasks with ArcMap 10.1

I have a shapefile and an excel file, and I want the join to be a permanent part of the shapefile. The way I've been going about this is to export the shapefile into a feature class within a database. Is this the most efficient way to go about saving the joined attributes?