Posted by Doug Caverly

While the exact number of reasons is a little hard to pin down, private equity firm TA Associates provided a whole lot of them this week as it showed that it’s not time to give on the email marketing industry.  TA Associates bought a majority stake in eCircle for about 60 million (or $87 million).

Here’s a little background information about the two parties: eCircle is an email marketing company that is more than ten years old, is headquartered in Munich, and has roughly 200 employees.  It counts both Nintendo and Samsung among its clients.

TA Associates, for its part, is based in Boston, and has put money into AVG, Sophos, and Tempur-Pedic.

A press release also stated, “Email remains a strong marketing channel and represents a growing subset of the 12.9 billion European online advertising market.  Forrester Research estimates that the volume of email messages will double, with the value of the market increasing from 1.5 billion in 2007 to 2.3 billion in 2012, as marketers use more sophisticated on-demand targeting, messaging and analytics to engage the consumer.”

This development represents a piece of good news for just about everyone connected to email marketing, then, as it supports the optimistic figures.

About the Author: Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.