It's that time of year again. People everywhere get sentimental and begin to review the past year and its accomplishments (and not-so-accomplishments), and then eagerly start to make New Year's resolutions. Email marketers are no different.  Come late November and early December, the email marketing industry starts buzzing with "year in review" reports and predictions for the next year.

You'll see a common denominator in these reports and that is the realization that 2010 has been the year of social media. While email marketing may seem to be overshadowed by this new and shiny toy, the truth  is that the two go hand in hand quite nicely and work best under equal lighting. ExactTarget, a leading ESP, totally gets this as is evidenced by their brilliant whitepaper series, "Subscribers, Fans, and Followers" as well as their purchase of CoTweet, a top social media management tool.

As far as predictions for 2011 go, it is likely consumers will become more and more "channel-choosy." They will want more control of what messages they want and where they want them (Facebook, mobile, and email). The result will be a more defined role for email marketers within the whole media mix. 

On a side note, email marketers should also keep an eye on the new Facebook Messages and watch their lists closely to see how many of their subscribers adapt this new email service. Because Facebook Messages shows the plain-text version by default, they should fine-tune plain-text versions of their emails accordingly.

As always, it's a great time to learn and grow.