Email advertising is not going the way of the dinosaur – or, depending on which day (or hour or minute) you check the stock market, the American economy.  A new report from Borrell Associates predicts that the industry will see reasonable growth next year.

A catch for some people will be that Borrell Associates, which is a research and consulting firm, expects most of the gains to occur on a large scale; think more “McDonald’s and Pizza Hut” than “mom and pop.”  Let’s move on to the stats, though.

Borrell Associates said in an official statement, “Email advertising will see moderately strong growth in 2011, up 9% to $16.0 billion for national and local.  Growth in this format is almost all from national advertisers; only 3% is local.”

Then the press release continued, “White paper marketing is a major contributor to its popularity – especially among B2B advertisers.”

So there’s perhaps a detail or two to help email advertising professionals get ahead of competitors.

Fortunately, if that nine percent estimate holds true, even landing on target will be a pretty good result after what the Dow and Nasdaq have been through over the past couple of years.

Sometimes, I have to stop and look at which online marketing techniques I respond to. I don’t follow many real patterns, but I do know that my responses all center around: strong content that answers questions, informs me, or meets any one of the other needs I might have at any given moment.

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Email, we love to hate it, yet we hate to love it. For better or for worse, we are tethered to our inbox and continue to send messages and respond to those individuals and organizations to which we’re tied or vested. Over the years, I’ve labeled email as the worlds largest untapped social network and even though many services attempted to socialize the inbox over the years, email, for the large part, remains regressive.

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Experian Marketing Services has released new research from its email marketing division, Experian CheetahMail, indicating that almost half (47%) of transactions and three-quarters of opens and clicks occur within one day of the email receipt.
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If you’re not using email marketing to grow your list and stay in touch with clients and prospects, you’re missing out on one of the best, most affordable ways to grow your business. But good e-marketing starts with the right tool

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Yesterday AWeber Communications announced the results from a survey of more than 2,500 small businesses regarding email marketing and social media marketing efforts. Highlights can be found below:

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Link building is a very powerful tool being used by many businesses today in order to reach out to their customers in a more convenient and cost-efficient way. Using the Internet as a means of communication is one of the main strategies that businesses apply today. Many companies have prospered by using the right combination of link building strategies. From inbound links, keyword-rich articles, outbound links, web directories and of course web advertisements, all these elements are being used today to bolster online businesses and entice customers.

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Google, Yahoo and Bing have made setting up pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns fairly easy and painless. Within hours you can have your ads up and running, and delivering traffic to your website for a small fee per click. Unfortunately, the ease in which a campaign can be set up often convinces business owners that they can throw up some PPC ads and the money will start pouring in. I’ve talked to many businesses that think PPC doesn’t work because they tried it once and never made any money.

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I decided to do a little liveblogging at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum and picked this session: Why email CRM and social media have become the tools of modern B2B marketing where a case study was presented by Genworth Financial.

Joel Book from Exact Target introduced the case study:  Creating brand advocates is as important as creating brand awareness. [I would say more important. An advocate proactively shares the brand experience]. Funny, Google “brand tattoos” to see some serious brand advocate activity.

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The idea of using video commercials in email dates all the way back to 2006. The VMBiz system was started in Australia, and now is being launched in South Africa upon increase of broadband speeds in the country. The concept has brought about supporters, and dissenters, but what can’t be denied is the growth of the strategy.

The reasoning behind VMBiz can be found in the company’s slogan: “Giving you the power of TV advertising with the ease of email”. It certainly sounds like a solid premise, and one which could potentially grow as online video awareness increases.

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