Inbox Insider: E-mail enters 2010 in good shape

Looking back over the last year, 2009 was a big year for e-mail. The channel finally got its recognition from c-level executives, as the recession forced marketers to find more cost efficient and effective channels to spend their marketing dollars on.

E-mail's ability to target and measure helped marketers deal with a recession and limited budgets and I expect that e-mail will continue to shine in 2010. I think that we will see more investment in e-mail programs in 2010, not just for campaigns and promotions, but also for fully developed CRM programs, as marketers look more at retaining long term customers.

E-mail marketers have done a good job to keep e-mail on top of new trends and the channel fits right in with social media marketing. I expect more of this social integration in 2010, as sites like MySpace integrate SMTP e-mail protocols into their sites and portals like Yahoo integrate social inboxes with their server, e-mail and social media are merging.

And as more consumers adopt smartphones, e-mail marketers have been creating campaigns specifically for these small screens and on-the-go readers. I expect to see this get even more sophisticated integration of mobile and e-mail in 2010.