As email marketing continues to evolve, marketers must be prepared for the myriad of changes and developments that go alongside the adoption of new technologies, integration with other channels and shifts in customer behavior. So, we asked marketers …

Q: What new developments will affect your email marketing program in the next 12 months? Please select all that apply.

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With the continued rise in the use of mobile devices as primary email clients, it isn’t surprising the pervasiveness of mobile devices was foremost in marketers’ minds (58%) for 2013.

Social media and webmail engagement metrics were expected to be similarly important, with 57% and 40% of respondents citing these factors, respectively. Notably, as we found in subsequent charts in the Benchmark Report, several business sectors saw social media as having the most potential impact on their future email success.

Also notable is the relatively low number of marketers who indicated regulatory and security concerns as an impactful development. Of the 1,095 marketers surveyed, just 20% cited “modifications to privacy policy regulations” as a key concern for the coming year, while even fewer (5%) thought “Cyber attacks on corporate and ESP subscriber databases” would be a core concern.

Points to Consider

Has consideration of mobile factors affected the way you design your email messages and the campaigns behind them? How about social media integration with email? Given the relative immaturity of both social and mobile as email marketing factors, are you concerned about differences in the levels of regulatory compliance and enterprise-level security in these platforms?

For more information about email marketing, download the free excerpt from the 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report. Be sure to share your own analysis of this chart in the MarketingSherpa LinkedIn Group for a chance to be published in a future blog post.

Useful links related to this research

Email Marketing: 83% of CMOs says social media will affect email programs

SMB Marketing in 2013: 85% of SMBs to increase use of email

2013 Mobile Marketing Trends: 2 key data points to help you understand this growing behavior