StrongMail Marketing Survey: The Breakdown

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Dec 15, 2011 

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DM Confidential  |

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DM CONFIDENTIAL – According to the "2012 Marketing Trends Survey” from StrongMail, conducted by Zoomerang, email marketing and social media are set to see the biggest budget increases by marketers in 2012.  The survey was conducted from Nov. 16-29, and got responses from 939 business leaders regarding their planned marketing budgets, priorities and challenges for next year. It also looked at the top email marketing tactics to be used this holiday season.

According to the survey, 51 percent of respondents expect their marketing budgets to increase in 2012, while 8 percent expect them to decrease and 41 percent expect to maintain current spend levels.

When asked to indicate the programs for which they plan to increase spend, 60 percent pointed to email marketing and 55 percent said social media. Search (SEO/PPC) followed with 37 percent, while mobile also had 37 percent of the response and advertising had 28 percent of the response. Direct mail (18 percent), tradeshows and events (18 percent), public relations (16 percent) and "other” (8 percent) rounded out the list.

When asked which email marketing programs would receive increased spend in 2012, 47 percent answered social media channel growth (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), 44 percent answered promotional (batch), 39 percent answered newsletter (batch), 35 percent answered lifecycle programs, 14 percent answered referral programs, 12 percent answered none, 6 percent answered progressive polling profiles and 4 percent answered other.

For lifecycle email marketing programs specifically, 68 percent said they plan on increasing spend on win-back/re-engagement and 59 percent plan on increasing spend on welcoming. For social media marketing program investments, 39 percent of respondents said they plan on increasing spend on Facebook marketing programs, while 25 percent said they would increase spend on social media management technology.

When it came to mobile programs, 29 percent of respondents said they plan on increasing spend on building an application for the Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, etc. Meanwhile, 28 percent of respondents said they plan on decreasing spend on direct mail programs, while 23 percent said they plan on decreasing spend on tradeshows and events.

The biggest email marketing initiative in 2012 is increasing subscriber engagement (48 percent), followed by improving segmentation and targeting (44 percent).

The survey also found that 67 percent of respondents see building customer loyalty and retention as the primary value of email marketing as a marketing channel, followed by 51 percent who said awareness building. Another finding was that 37 percent are employing integrated cross/upsell offers during the 2011 holiday season, followed by 34 percent who are employing promotion of in-store sales events and 31 percent employing post-purchase programs.