• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 28, 2010

Marketers will pay more attention to video email, social media integration and the war to unclutter the inbox this year. About 64% of the 200 email marketers who participated in the study plan to use video email marketing in 2010 -- up from nearly 12% last year, according to a study Implix will release Monday.

More than 65% of marketers participating in the study believe video emails can have a moderate or significant influence on conversion rates. And more than half of responders claim that video emails can increase click-through rates and drive customers onto landing pages. Only 4.7% of email marketers do not see any benefits from using video emails.

When it comes to different uses of video email by small businesses, nearly 29% consider training courses the most effective use of video email, followed by product demonstrations, 22%; product offers, 19%; and customer testimonials, nearly 18%, respectively.

The survey also analyzed how email marketers integrate social media with email marketing and what tactics they leverage to create a competitive marketing advantage. When asked the importance of integrating email marketing and social media, nearly 48% of marketers admitted that integrating social media and email marketing is extremely important. Thirty-one percent said rather important; followed by 12.1, not that important; 6.9%, not sure; and 2.2%, absolutely not important.

Marketers said the most popular social media integration tool in email marketing is placing Follow Us links into email messages, but only one in four do so. In fact, more than 37% of responders didn't use any social media integration tools last year.

Nearly 90% of respondents claimed that they planned to integrate social media into their email campaigns this year. The most popular use of social media integration tools in 2010 will be adding sign-up forms on Facebook and other social media sites. Nearly 65% of marketers surveyed hope to gain new subscribers via social media subscription forms.

Placing links in new messages on social media pages will increase by 113.2%, according to the study. And nearly 90% of marketers intend to add "share" options to their email messages.

Fifty-four percent of small- and medium-sized businesses said they intent to focus on personalizing email messages in 2010. More than half also intend to improve message titles and subject lines. Only one of every four marketers believe spilt testing can improve response rates.

Simon Grabowski -- chief executive officer at Implix, which makes email marketing package GetResponse -- points to "email fatigue" as one of the major problems, defining it as simply having too many emails in the in-box to open and read.

And 75% of marketers said behavioral targeting and segmenting can result in significant or moderate email marketing effectiveness.