Digital Marketing Decisions Focus on Lead Generation and Brand Awareness The Digital Marketing Dialog, a North American online survey conducted by the CMO Council, BtoB Magazine, USA TODAY, and Responsys, received responses from over 400 top marketing decision-makers regarding the impact, influence, role, value and uptake of digital marketing technologies and programs across all industry sectors. The Digital Marketing Dialog poll showed that the use of digital marketing techniques for engaging in successful and sustained campaigns and communications is becoming increasingly popular due to the speed, cost, and effectiveness advantages of the digital channel. In fact, the total number of email messages sent daily will exceed 60 billion worldwide by 2006, according to an IDC forecast. This compares with 31 billion email messages sent daily during 2002. Three-quarters of respondents said they planned to increase their digital marketing budgets in 2004. Spending on digital marketing is expected to jump in 2004 with the biggest year-to- year increase expected in the 11- 20 percent of total marketing budget category. Nearly 40 percent of those who forecast spending for 2004 said they would spend more than 20 percent of their marketing budget on digital marketing. Over 70 percent of respondents said brand awareness and recognition is a key use of digital marketing, second only to bottom line concerns as nearly 85 percent of those surveyed noted new customer lead generation as the key reason why digital marketing is used. Measurement weighed in as the number one improvement area, as customer segmentation and analytics capabilities ranked the highest. Over half of all respondents are currently focused on bottom line measurement with emphasis on customer leads, website visits, click through rates. What are the top three challenges your company faces in delivering email marketing today? (% or respondents. Multiple responses) Spam and other email filters 63.7% Email inbox clutter 60.5 Qualified email lists 53.1 Not well integrated with other customer communications 20.4 Ineffective customer segmentation 16.9 Lack of personalization 17.1 Too few customers choose to opt in 16.6 Low click through rates 13.5 Low content appeal 11.6 Hard to handle campaign responses 7.1 For what purpose is digital marketing being employed in your company? New customer lead generation 84.5% Brand awareness and recognition 70.7 Improved customer relationships 67.7 Cross-sell and up-sell to existing customers 60.8 Website traffic generation 59.8 Customer education 54.4 Customer support 46.8 Content distribution 45.8 Event promotion 45.1 Product sales 41.6 What are the top three drivers and imperatives for digital marketing in your company? Low cost of implementation 64.7% Speed of delivery and customer response 58.3 Measurable ROI 58.1 Reach to large target audience with single campaign 34.3 Effective way to create a dialog with customer 33.8 Simple to implement 30.4 Ease of personalized messaging 21.3 Allows dynamic modification 18.6 Able to integrate with other online programs 17.4 Facilitates customer profiling 15.4 Source: Responsys, Inc. Find out more here.