E-Mail Usage High, Marketing Spend Low - eMarketer

E-Mail Usage High, Marketing Spend Low - eMarketer: "E-Mail Usage High, Marketing Spend Low OCTOBER 11, 2007 Are e-mail marketers getting shorted on budget? More than one-half of US e-mail marketing executives get 20% or less of their firm's e-mail budgets, according to StrongMail Systems and JupiterResearch’s “Maturation of Email: Controlling Messaging Chaos Through Centralization” report. E-mail marketers appear to get shortchanged when it comes to e-mail budgets, especially considering the medium's wide usage. JupiterResearch found more than one-quarter of the e-mail that consumers received in their inboxes was marketing. But there are reasons why e-mail spending growth will stay moderate in the short term. 'The key reason is cost,' said David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst. 'Because e-mail is a low-cost medium, even relatively large increases in the number of commercial e-mails will not be reflected in large spending increases.' E-mail marketing spending comprises payments to e-mail service providers, list rental and the costs of in-house e-mail. E-mail advertising, on the other hand, is defined as ads running in third-party e-mail newsletters. eMarketer predicts that US e-mail marketing spending will reach $1.65 billion in 2011, up from nearly $1.5 billion in 2007. In essence, the annual growth rate will slow from 5.6% in 2006 to 1.5% in 2011. Moderate "