If underscoring was needed, MarketingProfs in its February 2010 piece echos Nikos point in its headline “Email is Integral to Social Communications”. With all the social hype it seems appropriate to put a twist on the old Mark Twain quote “The news of email’s death have been greatly exaggerated.&#. At a recent Gartner briefing Nikos Drakos gave a presentation on social software for the enterprise. The leading social software he was cited was email. The question Jeff addresses in his whitepaper is if email is alive (and growing with 1.9 Take a look. Tweet This! Digg this! MORE >>

Wrapping up my series on email marketing I wanted to leave you with my list of individuals who are defining the space with leading edge thinking and practices. While not exhaustive, here are five folks that I look to as leaders: Mark Brownlow ( @MarkatEMR ). Mark Brownlow publishes the Email Marketing Reports , a great collection of email marketing best practices. On his site you’ll find an intro to email marketing, an email marketing blog, and many articles ranging from mobile email marketing to email deliverability. Simms Jenkins ( @SimmsJenkins ). Tamara Gielen ( @tamaragielen ). MORE >>

Content mapping is the process of understanding and organizing the flow of content for your website, nurturing campaigns or blog, so it can be presented to your audience ( personas ) based on their needs and stage in the buying cycle. Content means web copy, blog posts, videos, interactive presentations, social elements, diagrams or other pieces of information used to engaged users / visitors. Content mapping is closely related to Information Architecture and UI (user interface) design. Tweet This! Share this on Linkedin. Share this on Facebook. Stumble upon something good? Digg this! MORE >>

B2B marketers are still getting their arms around measuring the impact of Social Media. Everyone’s doing it, but few are able to attach hard metrics. Here’s 3 important reasons marketers need to figure out how to track Social Media lead generation : Social Media is not free. Far from it, Social Media takes up lots of time of at least one (if not many) team members and involves the extremely important art and science of content creation. Social Media drives high quality leads. Social Media is in constant flux. What’s hot today may not be tomorrow. Tweet This! Digg this! MORE >>

Drip campaigns are an effective way to educate new leads in an automated and consistent manner. Sending a series of emails can provide them with the information they need to make the right purchase decision. Drip campaigns don’t replace skilled sales people, they complement them. With current lead volumes, it’s often impossible for sales people to provide detailed follow-up with each new lead. Now they can focus on those leads who responded favorably to the drip campaign. As a result, more leads turn into opportunities, and sales productivity increases dramatically. Drip Too Fast. MORE >>