A record number of email marketers plan to bridge the gap between online social networks and their email marketing campaigns in 2009, according to new research from Ball State University, the Email Marketer’s Club and ExactTarget.

The study surveyed 351 email marketers in March and found that while only 13 percent leveraged the power of online networks last year to grow their email subscriber list, more than 46 percent plan to use social media and email in tandem in 2009.

“While the global reach, rapid adoption and high engagement found in social media have email marketers salivating at the potential these environments offer to engage with customers and prospects, the real challenge is how best to facilitate meaningful interactions,” said Morgan Stewart, ExactTarget’s director of research and strategy.

Although the demand for the integration between social sites and email is surging, the success with the integration remains largely uncharted, according to the study featured in ExactTarget’s newest whitepaper entitled, “Expanding the Reach of Email Through Social Networks”.

“Consumers are reluctant to invite marketers into social environments, and this is because they don’t want to see the channel overrun with irrelevant commercial messages,” Stewart said. “However, marketers who are able to align their messaging with the distinct mindset of consumers engaging in social networks are posting positive results and building a quality following in these environments.”

The whitepaper features research that highlights how brands such as Carmex, TripAdvisor and Papa John’s have scored success by broadening their communications to include social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg and others to their traditional email-based efforts.

“We want visitors to share the experience with their friends, but we don’t want to force them to use a channel they are uncomfortable with,” said Paul Woelbing, president of Carma Labs, the maker of Carmex (a Bolin Digital client). “By offering visitors choices, we are learning a lot about the dynamics of integrating email, social media and text messaging – namely that they complement each other very well.”

The release of the whitepaper follows Tuesday’s launch of ExactTarget’s Social Forward, its new flexible metrics-driven social sharing solution for email. Debuted at ad:tech San Francisco, the new functionality gives marketers the industry’s first social media integration for email that allows multiple ways to leverage sharing and provides the industry’s most complete solution to enable and track sharing through its Direct to Social capability and through a partnership with social media syndication powerhouse ShareThis.

ExactTarget’s Social Forward will be available to users through its online Innovations Lab starting May 1 and will become an integrated solution for all ExactTarget users worldwide as part of the company’s Summer release.

The whitepaper and an overview of ExactTarget’s Social Forward technology are featured in ExactTarget’s Social Media Kit for Email Marketers. Marketers may download the kit free of charge at www.exacttarget.com/socialmediakit.

Aside from all the news about Apple’s withdrawal from Macworld and tradeshows in general, as well as the questions surrounding the health of Steve Jobs, there’s been a lot of speculation about what Apple’s next Big Deal is.

How about an enhanced, more evolved, touch screen iMac? This is not a stretch. HP has it. Or maybe you just call it the iPhone. Will Apple will roll out some application that is more intuitive, more useful, more sexy, more capable of complex interactions than current devices out there? How quickly will non-keyboard gestural interfaces become part of the lexicon of computer interaction?  We’ve seen how the iphone technology works with current ergonomics of human movement. Here are some foreseeable extensions of the idea:

• POP swiping and account transacting (e-money services have been popular in Asia for some time)
• Mobile health monitoring that tracks human movement and vitals
• ‘Smart’ apparel that collects numerous points of data from and for people that wear it
• Any type of research requiring micro viewing

These applications are not only forseeable, but require sophisticated new devices to handle enhanced human interaction. The moment of truth: How will a company like Apple strike out on this front? The pressure is on.

Snagged this image of a the airplane tray table on the way to Charlotte yesterday.  Couple of thoughts- this Zicam ad was in front of me for a total of 6 hours yesterday with no escape!  Having 6 hours to digest the message, one might think that more than a simple headline could have been employed and consumed.  The ad had no call to action whatsoever – online or mobile.

After paying a dollar for a cup of coffee, I noticed that the napkin had an SMS frequent flyer sign-up through a simple 2 way campaign.

Who would have thought that a napkin advertisement would be higher-tech than a complete airplane tray table takeover?  (ps- what’s with the Rhino?)

Marcus Didion

It has been interesting to see how my mobile phone usage has changed in the last year. Before Twitter, and some other services, I would very rarely crack 100 text messages sent and received. I’ve also noticed not a diminishing number of voice calls, but my average call length has diminished quite noticeably. Let me know what your last month’s usage was like, and feel free to response in the comments or on Seemic.

• 94% of text messages are read.
• 1/3 of the worlds population has mobile internet access, which is twice as many people as access the internet by computer,
• The average person sends 3.8 text messages a day, while making 2.8 voice calls in the same period.
• 46% of the mobile video audience is 35 or older, 54% of that audience is male
• Products sold on a mobile device will generate $63 billion in worldwide revenue by 2010.

Top 10 +1 email Marketing Trends coming out of the MIMA 2008 Summitt

1. 20% of email users continuously changing their address
2. Email on mobile devices a big trend
3. IM, Facebook, Twitter used like email.
4. Email apps integrating with Facebook. See Silverpop.
5. Deliverability and reputation are top concerns for brands. See recent IAB brief.
6. ExactTarget has a new Comsumer Rules campaign.
7. Pivotol Veracity product will help with deliveranility
8. Take non-responders (120 days) out of your lists to avoid spam traps.
9. Read the book: The Numerati. Stephen Baker’s Take on Technology and Life. thenumerati.net
10. Preference centers help get a view of the customer beyond Opens and Clicks. Use surveys too.
11. Be bold. Test and analyze.