Business executives around the world are optimistic about next year, according to the “2010 Marketing Trends Survey” from StrongMail. Nearly nine in 10 plan to increase or maintain their marketing budgets, and one-half expect their customers to be spending more in the coming year.

E-mail and social media top the list of marketing tactics respondents will increase spending on in 2010. Search came in third.

Combining social media and e-mail marketing is a growing trend. More than four in 10 business executives said integrating the two tactics was one of their most important e-mail marketing initiatives for 2010, just after improving performance and targeting and growing opt-in lists.

Around one-quarter of respondents had already implemented an integrated strategy, and another 24% had formulated a strategy and were researching how to put it in practice. But 18% of business executives wanted to add social components into their e-mail campaigns and did not know where to begin.

Even after getting initiatives off the ground, success can be difficult to achieve—and measure. Although 42% of executives reported a lift in campaign performance after integrating social and e-mail, 35% saw no improvement, and 23% did not know how to measure their results.

“While an unprecedented number of companies look to integrate email and social media in 2010, the data shows that companies need to adopt new tools and strategies to properly measure and monetize their efforts,” cautioned Bill Wagner, executive vice president of business operations at StrongMail, in a statement.