Small Business Newz reports that marketers plan to increase their budgets for e-mail marketing in 2010. This doesn’t surprise me. The big question is, Will it go social?

Social marketing has climbed up from the gutter in the last couple of years. E-mail marketing has always been popular, and effective, so there is no surprise that is will see a surge in the coming year. In many ways, small businesses will be able to leverage greater returns on a smaller budget.

We’ve seen the melding of social media and other Internet marketing mainstays, such as SEO. So my bet is there will likely be a social component to e-mail marketing. What that will look like, I’m not sure. But I can see how e-mail marketing can become more social. Would you welcome that in 2010?