Aiming to garner more customers, Constant Contact, the trusted marketing advisor to more than 400,000 small organizations worldwide, and WeReward, the leading mobile loyalty and incentive platform, announced a collaboration to help merchants and manufacturers connect to customers, and get more customers and build loyalty. WeReward’s mobile application will be merged with Constant Contact’s email marketing tool.

“Consumers are moving away from traditional coupons and using mobile applications that allow them to save money by discovering new places and products the exact moment they need them,” said Steve Johnson, vice president, partners, for Constant Contact. “By teaming up with Constant Contact, WeReward will deliver industry-leading online marketing tools in conjunction with their 21st-century, loyalty solution to help close the loop for businesses seeking to build long-lasting relationships with their customers.”

This next big trend is influenced by the escalating statistics of smartphone users who are the target of mobile marketing. Digital advertising is projected to reach the $1.1 billion mark by the end of the year and over $2.5 billion by 2014. This is an opportunity for businesses to reach all demographic and influence their purchasing decisions, all happening real time.

Location-based ads and marketing are surging, and it’s also the key factor that’s compelling people to shop online on their mobile phones, says Jiwire in their Q4 2010 report. No wonder huge companies are jumping  to take advantage of the trend.  Facebook, for example is a recent supporter of location-based mobile marketing. However, a recent Microsoft survey sees that a part of the location-based trend is an opening to several forms of private data exploitation such as identity theft.

Apart from today’s merger, Constant Contact’s made some purchases to expand its network reach.  Last week they acquired New-York based Bantam Live in an all-cash deal. Constant Contact will benefit from the company’s customer relationship management process that amasses data from social media interface from clicks, to email opens, and even survey responses.  Another win for big data.