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ExactTarget released a study last week which indicates marketers plan to increase spending related to email, social media, and other non-traditional outbound channels this year. The study of 1,000-plus marketers shows 54% of marketers said they will boost budgets for email marketing, and about 66% in social media (even though about 80% of those acknowledged [...]

A recent study from VerticalResponse found that a vast majority of small US business plan to increase their use of both email marketing and social media in 2010, while more than half won’t be buying banner ads and a fourth won’t spend any money on search engine marketing (SEM). The study, based on a survey [...]

Epsilon’s Global Consumer Email Study (PDF) finds that e-mail is still cited by an overwhelming majority of individuals as their primary online communication tool, however it is becoming ever more difficult for marketers to break through in-box clutter.

Jeanniey Mullen, using data gathered by the Email Marketing Council, has written a short article for ClickZ that is a must read. Every year an average of 30 percent of the people who signed up for your e-mail marketing list will not get your e-mails because their ISP will incorrectly block them. 85 percent of [...]

Talk to any e-mail marketing professional and they will all tell you deliverability is primary key to success. If your message, no matter how important and/or relevant doesn’t make it to your prospects in-box, it has zero chance to be successful. It is just that stupid simple. However, once delivered the message has to cut [...]

Campaign Monitor analyzed six months of data covering more than 250 million opens. The result—a detailed analysis of e-mail client popularity and usage trends over time. I still find it stunning that only 6.1% are using Outlook ’07. You can review the entire analysis with a lot of valuable information and charts here.

Just a few things to think about this Friday morning and before you send out your next campaign. Success is all about making your message relevant to your subscribers. Be relevant. Don’t be self-serving. Keep it short and to the point so subscribers read the e-mail immediately. The “I’ll get to it later” mindset is [...]