Email Marketing in 2010: Integration, Automation and Customer Centricity

Brussels, Belgium, November 19, 2009 --(PR.com)-- Email marketing has been frequently declared dead in this social networking era. However, research shows that in both B2C and B2B marketing customers and marketers still prefer email as the main channel for customer service and communication purposes.

This is clearly visible in preliminary results of an ongoing international email marketing survey by trend watching and research platform Marketing Advisor.

The survey found that some of the main challenges in email marketing are:

• The fact that several companies still see email marketing as a monologue
• A lack of tools to integrate email marketing data with customer relationship and other platforms
• Not enough focus on the customer, as well from the content perspective as the timing viewpoint
• Too much attention for direct result metrics and not enough for the impact of email marketing on sales

Marketing Advisor found that there are important differences per industry and per country. But on one thing most surveyed respondents so far agreed on: email remains a key element in maintaining relationships with the customer and relevancy is crucial in email marketing.

Marketing Advisor found that, especially in B2B environments, several companies don’t see email marketing as an information tool to accompany customers through all the steps of their buying cycle yet.

However, there are clear signs of improvement. And email marketing is not dead at all: most marketers will even increase their email marketing budgets next year.

Marketing Advisor calls upon marketers worldwide to participate at the ongoing survey in order to get a clear understanding on where email marketing is going.

Participants will receive the results to see where they stand compared to their peers. Marketing Advisor is also preparing a special report on the future of email marketing.

For more information on the survey visit www.marketingadvisor.eu or their blog on http://blog.marketingadvisor.eu/

Take the survey here: http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e2m8nxxgg1f1ujws/start

For more questions regarding this press release, please send an email to info[at]marketingadvisor.eu.

About Marketing Advisor

Trend watching and research platform Marketing Advisor is an initiative of Brussels-based i-SCOOP, a company that specializes in digital marketing and customer-centric sales and marketing content and research.

i-SCOOP is also the founder of Belgium's first interactive marketing website that was sold last year to the Belgian affiliate of IDG (International Data Group).

i-SCOOP has served several international customers, mainly agencies and publishers, producing books, white papers and content on a diversity of topics including search engine marketing, return on marketing investment, customer analytics, online copywriting, conversion marketing, content management, CRM, corporate blogging, customer analytics, marketing automation and more.

Contact information: info[at]marketingadvisor.eu.

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