Only one in four companies would consider going to an external provider for managed hosting services, even though online marketing now plays an important role in the communication strategies of most businesses.

A poll conducted by managed hosting provider NetBenefit at the recent Technology for Marketing and Advertising show in London asked attendees a series of questions about online marketing campaigns.

Over three quarters of respondents run a monthly or quarterly online campaign, of which 86 per cent run email marketing campaigns, 78 per cent website banners and 75 per cent specific landing pages for particular campaigns.

However, many enterprises fail to ensure that the hosting platform behind their online marketing activity is reliable, robust and able to stand up to the inevitable peaks and troughs in traffic.

Jonathan Robinson, chief operating officer at NetBenefit, said: "Online marketing campaigns will continue to increase in popularity and levels of sophistication.

"Those companies that do not take hosting seriously enough risk issues such as slow loading pages or even downtime."

Robinson warned that this can lead to considerable damage to brand reputation or revenue generation.

"Marketing departments need to give consideration to the relationship between brand and revenue protection and a truly robust managed hosting platform that can provide guaranteed availability backed up by 24x7 support," he said.