• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer, January 10, 2013

A new StrongMail survey, conducted via SurveyMonkey, reflects the attitudes of business leaders in regards to their planned marketing budgets, priorities and challenges for 2013, as well as data on the top email marketing tactics to be employed for the current 2012 holiday shopping season.

According to the survey, total marketing budgets are set to rise in 2013, with 45% of companies increasing and 44% maintaining current levels. Email marketing, social media and mobile continue to be the top areas of investment; however, data integration challenges continue to plague 45.6% of email marketers – a half-percent increase over last year.

Email, social media, and mobile rank as marketers' top spending priorities for 2013, according to the survey. 55.5% of marketing executives say they plan to increase spending on email campaigns in 2013; 51.8% plan to boost spend on social media; and 42.8% plan to up their spend on mobile marketing.

In addition, 39.8% of surveyed marketing executives plan to increase spending on search marketing in 2013.

By contrast, tactics such public relations and direct mail will likely take a back seat in the coming year, according to the findings. 

Two-thirds of businesses surveyed plan to increase their investment in mobile marketing programs such as mobile apps (39%) and SMS alerts (21%), a combined increase of 11% from last year.  There is a lack of consensus on the primary value of this emerging channel, but building customer loyalty (44%) was identified as the top benefit, followed by expanded reach (34%) and awareness building (33%).
60% of businesses surveyed see Facebook as the most valued social media channel for marketers, followed by Twitter and YouTube. The least valued in order are Yelp, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Google+ and Pinterest fall in the middle with 31% making them as the fifth and sixth most valuable channels for marketers.

Social media is a key focus, even for email campaigns: 46.2% of marketing execs plans to increase spend toward email marketing programs focused on social-media channel growth. In addition, roughly one-third plan to focus on promotional batch campaigns, lifecycle programs, and newsletters:

Two-thirds of businesses plan to integrate social media and email in 2013, and integration of mobile and email increased from 44% in 2012 to 52% in 2013. The strong ties between email marketing and social media are also underscored by the 46% of respondents who plan to increase investment in using email to drive growth in their social media channels, such as corporate Facebook and Twitter pages. 

Tim McQuillen, founder and CIO at StrongMail, concludes that “... integration is a top trend for 2013... accessing an increasing volume and variety of customer data... and integrating messaging across email, mobile, social and other channels... ”

Highlights Summary

• 89% plan to increase or maintain marketing spend in 2013
• 56% plan to increase email marketing budget; 52% social media; 43% mobile; 40% search
• 45.6% cite data integration as primary email marketing challenge in 2013; 39.5% lack of resources/staff; 36% integration with other marketing channels; 34% content management
• 65% plan to integrate email marketing with social media; 52% with mobile
• 50% cite increasing subscriber engagement as top 2013 email marketing initiative; 48% improving segmentation/targeting; 33% growing opt-in email list
• 46% plan to increase email marketing spend on programs that drive social media channel growth
  Full survey data as a PDF file is available here.