Most businesses plan to increase or maintain
marketing spend in 2012, with 60% increasing their email marketing budget and
55% increasing spending on social media marketing, according to the 2012
Marketing Trends survey from StrongMail.
The survey found that email
marketing (60%) and social media (55%) were cited as the top two areas for
increased marketing spend. At the same time, 51% of businesses said they planned
to increase their overall marketing budgets, and 41% planned to maintain
existing budgets. Other areas of increased spending included mobile marketing
and Internet search (both 37%).
Direct mail (28%) and trade shows (23%)
were cited as the top targets for decreased spending. Encouragingly, however,
only 8% planned to decrease their overall marketing budget, which is only a
slight increase over the 7% reported one year previously.
The top email
marketing initiatives for 2012 were increasing subscriber engagement (48%),
improving segmentation and targeting (44%) and growing opt-in email lists (32%).
Data integration is key to achieving these top priorities, but it was also
identified as the primary email marketing challenge (45%), followed by lack of
resources (43%) and content management (40%). These opposing findings suggest an
opportunity for email service providers to fill the gap with relevant services.
More than two-thirds of businesses (67%) said they plan to integrate
social media and email, compared to only 44% integrating mobile and email. The
strong ties between email marketing and social media were also emphasized by the
47% of businesses that plan to increase investment in using email to drive
growth in their social media channels, such as corporate Facebook and Twitter
pages.
The next most popular areas of investment were batch promotional
programs (44%) and newsletters (39%), followed by real-time lifecycle marketing
programs (35%), with an emphasis on customer win-back programs (68%) and welcome
programs (59%).
More than one-third of businesses said they plan to
increase their investment in mobile marketing programs, such as mobile apps
(29%) and SMS alerts (20%), but there was a marked lack of consensus about the
primary value of this emerging channel. Building customer loyalty (35%) was
identified as the top benefit, followed by expanded reach (29%) and awareness
building (28%). However, this was offset by a similar percentage still trying to
evaluate it (24%) and a smaller percentage finding no value at all
(7%).
"While email marketing leads the pack in terms of increased
investment, the survey also suggests that marketers need to overcome the twin
challenges of data integration and resource constraints," concluded Christopher
Marriott, vice president of agency services for StrongMail. "Whether managing
and optimizing existing email marketing programs or enabling integration with
social media and mobile, there is a real opportunity for full-service email
marketing providers to help brands get the most out of their interactive
marketing investments."
Source: The Wise Marketer