Europe tops e-marketing list

Consumers opened more e-mail marketing messages sent from Europe than messages sent from other continents, according to a review of more than 1.65 billion e-mails sent via Poland-based e-marketing firm Implix between July and December 2009, says Internet Retailer.

The total open rate for e-mail marketing messages sent from Europe stood at 13.04%, says Implix, which based the study on e-mail marketing campaigns hosted by its GetResponse service.

South America held second place, with a 12.51% total open rate, followed by Africa, at 11.03%, Asia, at 10.78%, North America, at 10.76%, and Australia and Oceania, at 8.08%. The company calculated open rates by taking the number of e-mails opened by recipients and dividing that by the total number of e-mails sent.

The fourth quarter of 2009 brought more growth in the search engine marketing industry, reports Internet Newsroom.

Figures from Efficient Frontier show that, in the US, there was a 6% increase in both year-on-year and month-on-month growth, with the retail sector seeing a notable increase. Shops spent 46% more quarter-on-quarter on their strategies, which may include approaches such as managed e-marketing or search engine optimisation.

Efficient Frontier president and CEO, David Karnstedt, observed that although search engine marketing spend in some industries, such as travel, will continue to be low, the firm predicts overall growth for 2010 to be at least 15%. The company also forecast the Microsoft-owned Bing will return to growth in the coming months, after stalling in the latter stages of 2010.

Ten South-east Asian countries have started a new tourism campaign, with an interactive Web site called SoutheastAsia.org being created as the primary marketing tool, says Taiwan News.

The new campaign, officially supported by the 10 ASEAN tourism ministers at the ASEAN Tourism Forum in Brunei, will immediately target tourists in medium and long-haul markets such as the UK, Australia, India, North America and Hong Kong.

Pehin Dato Yahya, Brunei's minister of industry and primary resources, says the new campaign had been built on four principles. Among them is the trust that online consumers now put in meta-search tools and user-generated content.