Survey Highlights
According to the survey, half of businesses plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2011, and another 43% plan to maintain current levels. Only 7% of respondents plan to decrease marketing budgets, a significant improvement over the 11% reported in last year's survey. Despite budget increases, respondents indicated a lack of resources/staff to be the biggest email marketing challenge in 2011, representing a potential demand for outsourced marketing services. Integration with customer data and email deliverability rounded out the top three email marketing challenges for 2011.
Anticipated Marketing Budget Change for 2011 | |
Expectation | % Planning |
Increase | 50% |
Decrease | 7 |
Maintain current levels | 43 |
Source: Strongmail, December 2010 |
Email marketing and social media will be the top areas of investment in 2011, followed by Search, Direct Mail and Tradeshows/Events are the top targets for decreased spend. This is a marked improvement over last year's survey, says the report, which found marketers reducing spend in these areas by 42% and 44% respectively.
Spending Plans For 2011 (% of Respondents) | ||
Program | Increasing Spending | Decreasing Spending |
Email marketing | 65% | 4% |
Social Media | 57 | 3 |
Search (SEO/PPC) | 41 | 5 |
Mobile | 35 | 4 |
Advertising | 25 | 24 |
Tradeshows & events | 18 | 33 |
Direct mail | 18 | 36 |
Public Relations | 16 | 10 |
Other | 9 | 21 |
Source: Strongmail, December 2010 |
The most important email marketing initiatives for 2011 are increasing subscriber engagement, improving segmentation and targeting, and integrating social media and email marketing. On the latter point, a full 71% have already integrated email and social, or plan to 2011.
Most Important Email Initiatives For 2011 (Multiple Response) | |
Initiative | % of Respondents |
Increasing subscriber engagement | 52% |
Improve segmentation & targeting | 49 |
Integrating social media & email | 43 |
Growing opt-in email list | 42 |
Re-engaging inactive subscribers | 27 |
Integrating email & mobile | 21 |
Source: Strongmail, December 2010 |
Biggest Email Marketing Challenges For 2011 (Multiple Response) | |
Challenge | % of Respondents |
Lack of resources/staff | 44% |
Integration with customer data | 41 |
Maintaining high email deliverability | 36 |
Content management | 29 |
Managing frequency | 26 |
Interfacing with other departments | 22 |
Source: Strongmail, December 2010 |
Among social media initiatives, Facebook is the biggest priority, followed by viral/referral marketing programs. Marketing via Twitter and implementing social media management technology tied for third place. Awareness building is the primary goal for social media marketing initiatives, followed by loyalty acquisition and reaching new audiences. As is the case with any new channel, social media marketing is seen as least effective at generating leads and revenue.
Planned Social Media Budget for 2011 (% choosing as "top 3") | |
Planned Budget | % Saying Among Top 3 |
Facebook marketing | 35% |
Viral/referral campaigns | 22 |
Twitter marketing | 21 |
Social media management technology | 21 |
Listening platforms | 15 |
Staff | 15 |
Training | 12 |
Don't know | 23 |
Source: Strongmail, December 2010 |
Primary Value of Social Marketing (multiple response) | |
Value | % Responding |
Awareness building | 63% |
Building customer loyalty & retention | 54 |
Expanded reach to new audience | 42 |
New customer acquisition | 41 |
Lead generation | 22 |
Driving revenue | 16 |
Not sure | 12 |
Source: Strongmail, December 2010 |
Ryan Deutsch, vice president of strategic services at StrongMail, concludes that
"... marketers... are focused on increasing subscriber engagement through increased relevancy and automating lifecycle communications (in 2011)... though struggling with insufficient resources, this challenge can be overcome with the right marketing partner... "
To review the release, please visit Strongmail here, or full survey data in PDF format may be found here.
Interesting data. But really poor choice of headline.
In fact, that headline is actually "Largest Number of Companies Say They Will Increase Email and Social Bugets in 2011".
It means NOTHING about the relative value of those media's - other than it's the new toy box that companies are filling.
Take the case of a company with a $600M TV budget. All this means is that they might have a 4% ($24M) increase in TV budget and while they might triple their $500K budget for social media. But TV still gets the buik of the money.
I hate the way new media studies like this love to mis-lead with apparent statistics.
And I make this comment because it's clear from the data above that companies are searching for the MEANING social and email add to their marketing mix. A bland "brand awareness" ranking for social means is concerning.
...Doug Garnett