84% of email marketers plan social email marketing for 2010

Here is a last piece about the survey Silverpop conducted among 300 email marketers.

I have split the survey up in three posts because I felt there were 3 different important findings and because I’m having a flu and taking it slow. However, my private life is not what this post is about.

So back to business. I already posted on the spending plans and priorities of the surveyed email marketers and about their main challenges earlier today.

Now it’s time to look at some details about what email marketers plan to do in 2010.

And it will not come as a surprise to you that including social media into email marketing programs, social email marketing, ranks very high with 84% (!) of the surveyed email marketers.

Furthermore, marketers that have the luck to see their budgets increasing for next year, are even making more plans for social email marketing: 89% of them will incorporate social media.

Second comes adding SMS to email marketing programs (38%) and third incorporating behavioral targeting into email campaigns (for the first time). Finally, 26% of respondents will begin to use surveys to gather useful customer data in 2010.

Silverpop CEO Bill Bussey had something to say about integrating social media and email marketing: “linking email to popular social networks can be a very successful strategy”.

That part you know but this is what Nussey thinks about making it a very successful strategy: “if the messages are timely and relevant, recipients will share them with their networks, and the opportunity for additional exposure increases exponentially. And as customers become more mobile, their marketing must reach them in more timely ways and through channels such as SMS.”