No Surprise Here - Email & Search Are Near Universal Business Marketing Channels

eMarketer reports that nearly all interactive marketers send email. According to a recent Forrester Research report, "Interactive Marketing Channels to Watch in 2006," 93 percent of the 259 respondents cited email as a marketing channel they use or plan to use to reach consumers. At 13 percentage points more than even highly touted search marketing, that makes email as universal as a marketing method can be.

Email is extremely important in the B2B realm, too. This was indicated by the 60 percent of marketing executives at U.S.-based manufacturing companies who said they planned to increase email usage in 2006 (12 percentage points over search engine marketing) in an April 2006 survey by SVM E-Business Solutions.

Increasingly, to make the most of their existing opt-in email lists and to grow those lists even further, companies look to blend word of mouth into their email marketing mix.

The timing of this report is fantastic as email marketing seems to be making a resurgence among all online marketers. Always less hyped than other "flavors of the month", email obviously works wonders for busineses, or you would not see more dollars to flow into this channel.

Good stuff to read headed into the weekend.