While many more people are embracing social media marketing outlets, email marketing is still the top dog when it comes to e-commerce. A new report by Econsultancy reveals that more than a third of consumers don’t use a social networking site but do employ email marketing tactics.

The report of US consumers also reveals that increased mobile device use is likely to boost email communication rather than decrease it. Nearly two-thirds of people under 24 check email on a mobile device.
The researchers believe that the winners in e-commerce will be those companies that utilise email marketing to greater effect because this is still the most desired form of communication by consumers, while also engaging with social media networking tactics.

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A recent study has shown that almost half of marketers include “forward to a friend” features in their emails – but only 13 per cent make it easy to share the content on social networks.

Another study reveals that simply including sharing buttons in a marketing e-mail leads to a 25 per cent increase in reader interaction, as well as a surge in inbound traffic from social networking sites.

Clearly with the potential for a great deal of e-marketing via social media sites, more than 50 per cent of marketers are missing a trick.

Here we bring you a few tips about “sharing”:

1) Share buttons are easy to integrate into e-mails. If your e-mail consists of multiple articles, ensure that each points to a page on the internet and that your Facebook or Twitter share buttons are setup to share the URL of each article.

2) Ensure that all e-mails include links to your presence on various social sites. Calls to action in a sidebar or in the header like “Follow Us on Twitter” or “Become a Fan on Facebook” will help people connect with you on social sites.

3) Then you might want to start cross-promoting. Remind your Twitter followers or Facebook fans that you have an e-mail newsletter. Once they sign up, they could be the ones most likely to share content with their own networks on social sites

A new survey has confirmed what many marketing experts have been predicting - that email marketing will play an even bigger role for many businesses in 2010. The research by Silverpop revealed that 40% of firms will increase their email marketing budgets this coming year, while 47% said their budgets would stay the same.

And one of the key components of email marketing for those asked will be “customer loyalty”.
It’s already known that when consumers tightening their belts financially they look for on-line companies and ecommerce sites that they can trust and build up a relationship with.

In this way, it’s predicted that email marketing will not only grow but it will also aim to engage with consumers in a meaningful way.

So now is the time for all ecommerce sites to take a closer look at their email marketing strategy.

Predictions for 2010 are that e-mail marketing will show huge growth – compared to more traditional methods, such as printed advertisements.

Many businesses see on-line marketing tools as a more economical option and they believe this will be one of the main keys for revenue growth during uncertain times.

One recent survey by Campaigner shows that many more small businesses will be homing in on e-mail marketing compared to 2009 – and of these 82% believe such tools will improve revenue over the coming 12 months.

And the best news? On-line marketing is often a great deal cheaper than the traditional form.
A few words of caution though: there is yet to be a full-blown study to show whether on-line or off-line makes for more effective marketing.