Last year, web analytics company compete.com ranked the top 25 social networking sites by monthly visits.  A year later, they re-ranked those same sites to see how the positions had changed.  Facebook.com took the number one position, pushing myspace.com into second place.  Third in the list was Twitter.com, which jumped up a remarkable 19 places in 12 months.  Another high climber, was the business networking site and one of my favourites, Linked In.

In January 2009, in the US alone, facebook.com had nearly 69 million unique visitors to the site.  Worldwide, it has over 175 million active users and the fastest growing demographic is the over 30’s.  For marketers, the growth of social networks simply can’t be ignored.

The latest research findings from Forrester and Marketing Sherpa show that in 2009, email marketing is expected to rise in popularity.  Low cost, targeted and measurable, it isn’t surprising that so many businesses are planning to use email to communicate with customers and prospects.  However, with so much competition in the inbox, marketers need to get email savvy and ensure they maximise their ROI.

Click through the Beechwood Guide to creating a successful b2b email campaign (below) to find useful research, handy hints and tips for email marketers.