A recent StrongMail survey, conducted by Zoomerang in November, reflects the attitudes of business leaders about their planned marketing budgets, priorities and challenges for 2012, revealing a healthy outlook for marketing budgets with 51% of companies increasing and 41% maintaining current levels.
For the third year in a row, email marketing and social media marketing remain the top targets for increased spend. For the 2011 holiday shopping season, email marketers plan to focus on cross/upsell offers and promotion of in-store events.
Survey Highlights
Email marketing and social media were cited as the top two areas for increased marketing spend. According to the survey, 51% of businesses plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2012, and another 41% plan to maintain current levels. Only 8% of respondents plan to decrease marketing budgets. Other areas of increased spend included mobile and search. Direct mail and tradeshows are top targets for decreased spend.
Plans For Increased Spending in 2012 | |
Program | % of Respondents |
Email marketing | 60% |
Social Media | 55 |
Mobile | 37 |
Search | 37 |
Advertising | 28 |
Direct mail | 18 |
Tradeshows/events | 18 |
Public relations | 16 |
Source: Strongmail, November 2011 |
The top email marketing initiatives for 2012 are increasing subscriber engagement, improving segmentation and targeting, and growing opt-in email lists.
Top Email Marketing Initiatives for 2012 (% of Respondents Selecting Top 3) | |
Email Marketing Initiative | % of Respondents |
Increasing subscriber engagement | 48% |
Improve segmentation & targeting | 44 |
Growing opt-in email list | 32 |
Integrating social media & social marketing | 24 |
Implementing lifecycle messaging | 20 |
Re-engaging inactive subscribers | 19 |
Source: Strongmail, November 2011 |
Data integration is key to achieving these top priorities, but it is also identified as the primary email marketing challenge in 2012, followed by lack of resources and content management. These opposing data points represent an opportunity for email service providers to fill the gap, says the report.
Top Email Marketing Challenges for 2012 (% of Respondents) | |
Challenge | % of Respondents |
Integration with customer data | 45% |
Lack of resources/staff | 43 |
Content management | 40 |
Maintaining high deliverability | 33 |
Managing send cadence & frequency | 29 |
Source: Strongmail, November 2011 |
More than two-thirds of businesses plan to integrate social media and email in 2012, versus 44% integrating mobile and email. The strong ties between email marketing and social media are also emphasized by the businesses that plan to increase investment in using email to drive growth in their social media channels, such as corporate Facebook and Twitter pages.
Channels Planned for Integration With Email in 2012 | |
Channel | % of Respondents |
Social media marketing | 68% |
Mobile | 44 |
Search | 17 |
Display | 14 |
Source: Strongmail, November 2011 |
More than a third of businesses plan to increase their investment in mobile marketing programs such as mobile apps and SMS alerts, but there is a lack of consensus on the primary value of this emerging channel. Building customer and loyalty was identified as the top benefit, followed by expanded reach and awareness building.
Primary Values of Marketing Channels (% of Respondents) | |||
| % of Respondents Considering Valuable | ||
Marketing Channel | Social | Mobile | |
Awareness building | 51% | 64% | 29% |
New customer acquisition | 38 | 36 | 23 |
Customer loyalty and retention | 67 | 48 | 35 |
Reach new audiences | 26 | 44 | 29 |
Driving revenue | 44 | 14 | 26 |
Lead generation (B2B) | 29 | 19 | 12 |
Not sure | 3 | 11 | 24 |
Source: Strongmail, November 2011 |
Christopher Marriott, vice president of agency services at StrongMail, concludes that, “... while email marketing leads... in terms of increased investment in 2012... marketers need to overcome key challenges around data integration and resource constraints..."
For more information from Strongmail, please visit here, or to access the report PDF file, go here.