Last week, my marketing team reminded me that I haven't been very good about blogging lately. (Well, if you call a four month lapse "lately.") So, somewhere in your mind's eye, please envision the apologetic look on my face as I type this message.

Although 2007 was a year of impressive growth for our company (and particularly our sales and marketing teams), all macroeconomic signs seemed to point toward a more conservative 2008. That has not been the case at all. Our Q1 numbers for 2008 were well above our objective (our fifth quarter in a row over our projections), and Q2 is looking like it will be significantly stronger than Q1. I certainly don't think that the e-communications industry is recession-proof (yes, I just used the "R Word" in public), but I don't expect this particular economic downturn to negatively effect us.

There are two reasons for this belief (no, neither of the reasons have to do with the bias I carry by being a member of this industry):

1. I have no doubt that marketing budgets will be impacted in this type of economy. But, when faced with a stagnant or shrinking budget, marketers will need to trim their low-ROI strategies and rely on their high-ROI activities. It has been a few years since I have seen an ROI study that doesn't place e-communications as one of the top two online marketing strategies (and the top loyalty marketing vehicle). We expect cost-conscious companies to bring more of their offline budget online and they will forego some of their direct communications in lieu of targeted e-communications.
2. On-premise solutions have continued to gain traction in this industry because they clearly save marketers money. When presented with two options that are equal in features, service and deliverability performance, high volume marketers are getting more comfortable with "buying" the solution rather than "renting" it. As the only leading company in the industry with both a hosted (SaaS/ASP) platform and an on-premise (pre-configured hardware and software appliance) solution, we have noticed a lot of cost-conscious organizations choosing the latter option to improve their long-term ROI.

So, if you're wondering which types of companies will be thriving during this year's recession (while guessing why I may be too busy to blog regularly), look no further than WhatCounts. I hope to post a message sometime in July about another strong quarter in Q2 (but I'll be blogging about other topics along the way).