• by Ray Schultz , January 11, 2019

Email, while tied to every form of digital marketing, has sunk to fourth among the most effective tactics, according to Marketing Resource Effectiveness, a study by Ascend2.

Email marketing campaigns are seen as effective by 39%. In contrast, 53% say social media is effective, while 48% feel that way about content marketing and 47% about search engine optimization.  

Yet email is seen as the least difficult activity, identified by only 21%. The most challenging tactic, cited by 49%, is data and AI-driven marketing, followed by content campaigns (38%), programmatic advertising (34%) and search engine optimization (33%).

In perceived effectiveness, email beats marketing automation campaigns (28%), data and AI-driven marketing (25%) and programmatic advertising (18%).

Ascend2 and its Researcher Partners surveyed 227 marketers. 

Overall, 34% say their strategies are very successful, or best-in-class, while 62% say they are somewhat successful and 5% say they are not successful.

Their primary strategic objectives are:

• Increasing leads/sales prospects —  64%
• Improving brand awareness — 61% 
• Increasing customer acquisition — 61%
• Improving engagement/nurturing — 34%
• Improving user experience — 20%
• Increasing marketing technology—  15% 
• Improving multichannel analytics — 15%

The challenges are in a slightly different order 

• Increasing customer acquisition — 53%
• Increasing leads/sales prospects — 48%
• Improving brand awareness — 44%
• Improving engagement/nurturing — 32%
• Improving user experience — 30%
• Improving multichannel analytics — 28%
• Increasing marketing technology—25%

Of the companies surveyed, 75% rely on a combination of outsourced and in-house resources.  In addition, 13% outsource to specialists and 12% use in-house resources only.