Commentary

Email and Social Marketing Top Budgets

A new StrongMail survey in late November, conducted by Zoomerang, reflects the attitudes of  business leaders in regards to their planned marketing budgets, priorities and challenges for 2011. The data reveals an optimistic marketing outlook, with half of businesses planning to increase marketing budgets, and another 43% keeping them steady. And, for the second year in a row, email marketing and social media marketing remain the top targets for increased spend.

Survey Highlights

  • 93% of businesses plan to increase or maintain marketing spend in 2010
  •  41% of business cite lack of resources/staff as primary email marketing challenge in 2011; 41% data integration; 36% email deliverability
  • 52% of businesses cite increasing subscriber engagement as top 2011 email marketing initiative; 49% improving segmentation/targeting; 43% integrating email and social media
  •  65% of businesses plan to increase marketing budget for email; 57% social media; 41% search
  • 71% of businesses plan to integrate email and social media in 2010

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.

 

1 comment about "Email and Social Marketing Top Budgets".
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  1. Doug Garnett from Protonik, LLC, December 13, 2010 at 2:57 p.m.

    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

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