• 57% of B2B marketers have seen increased revenues over the last 12 months
• 67% reported a greater number of new business enquiries over the last six months
• 51% are seeing improvement in quality of enquiries
• 73% of agencies report a confident outlook for the next 12 months
• 70% of client-side marketers highlighted the customer as one of their highest priorities
• 64% of marketing companies are now developing and implementing social media strategies

1. Marketers do consider content to be key to their marketing mix: 9 in 10 organisations use content as a tactic.
   
   
2.  51% of marketers plan to increase their spend in content marketing over the next 12 months - the picture of course varies by industry. For example, 63% of respondents from the software industry use content marketing for lead nurturing, versus 37% on average.
   
   
3. Marketers on average spend over 25% of their budgets on content marketing

You can access the full report: B2B Content Marketing: 2010 Benchmarking, Budgets and Trends report here

Here is a great guide from Lyris on how to write compelling subject lines. The subject line is a huge factor behind a recipients decision to first open, then read and act on an email. As the whitepaper points out there is no sure-fire formula, you need to stand out yet remain familiar, it pays to spend time getting the 50 characters right.

View guide here >> Email Subject Lines: 15 Rules to Right Them Write

I recently read one of MarketingSherpa's guides on integrating social media and email strategies to improve results.

The special report  features two case studies, one B2B and one B2C, which clearly show what they did and the staggering (in some cases) results they got.

View this article by Lawrence Mitchell (RBI-UK) at:
http://blogs.rbi.co.uk/information-marketing/2010/08/13-essential-b2b-b2c-social-ma.html

Forrester recently released their new email marketing review (EMR) methodology. It is a great tool for diagnosing where your email programs are performing well and where they might need improvement.

The best part of the review is the scorecard. A snippet of which is shown below. Begin at home and first score yourself on questions relating to the key dimensions of your business process; governance, strategy, analytics, process and data. Then score the user- facing elements of your messages and campaigns; subscription, value, presentation and trust.

As the review quite rightly states, email is still a 'fundamental part of the interactive marketing toolkit'. It is important for marketers to take the time to properly evaluate their email programs objectively. You should be striving for strong passes (+2) in every department.

So without further ado... new_email_marketing_review[1].pdf

The report includes detail of UK time spent online and latest audience stats, media category updates and updates on mobile, video, advertising effectiveness and ROI measurement. 

DigitalLandscapeReportIssue16May2010.ppt

Article by Heather McLeod (RBI-UK)

The stats are staggering - online video is clearly revolutionising media consumption, with 1 in 35 UK internet visits going to an online video site. YouTube is at the core and Google, in association with the IDM B2B Marketing Council, have produced a short paper outlining practical steps that B2B marketers can take to really make the most of video and YouTube.

Click here: GOOGLE_Layout 1.pdf

View the article by Lawrence Mitchell (RBI-UK) at:
http://blogs.rbi.co.uk/information-marketing/2010/04/the-rise-and-rise-of-video.html