More than two-thirds of business leaders (68%) say they plan to integrate social media with their email marketing efforts in 2012, and 44% plan to integrate mobile with email, according to a survey from StrongMail.
Some 17% of surveyed business leaders say they plan to integrate search marketing with email, and 14% plan to integrate display.
Below, other findings from StrongMail's 2012 Marketing Trends Survey.
Such strong ties between email and social media marketing are also evidenced by the 47% of businesses planning to increase investment in email to drive growth in social media channels.
After social media, the next most popular areas of investment are batch-promotional (44%) and newsletter (39%) programs, followed by real-time lifecycle marketing programs (35%).
2012 Marketing Budgets Remain Healthy
Overall, more than nine in ten business leaders plan to increase or maintain marketing budgets in 2012: 51% plan to increase their marketing budgets over 2011 levels and 41% plan to maintain current levels.
Email and Social Media Top Areas for Increased Spend
Email marketing (60%) and social media (55%) are cited as the top two areas for increased marketing spend in 2012, followed by mobile (37%) and search (37%).
Only 18% of business leaders plan to increase spending on direct mail and tradeshows in the coming year.
Other email-related findings among surveyed business leaders:
- Priorities: 48% cite increasing subscriber engagement as a top goal in 2012; 44% cite improving segmentation/targeting and 32% cite growing opt-in email lists.
- Challenges: 45% cite data integration as a primary email marketing challenge in 2012; 43% cite lack of resources/staff and 40% cite content management.
- Value: 64% cite customer loyalty and retention as the primary benefit of email marketing, followed by awareness building (51%), driving revenue (44%), new customer acquisition (38%), and lead generation (B2B) (29%).
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Value of Mobile Marketing Unclear
Less than a third of businesses plan to increase their investment in mobile marketing programs such as mobile apps (29%) and SMS alerts (20%) in 2012.
Moreover, there is a lack of consensus on the primary value of the channel.
Building customer loyalty (35%) is cited as the top benefit of mobile marketing, followed by expanded reach (29%) and awareness building (28%). However, that is offset by a similar proportion still trying to determine the value of mobile (24%) and a smaller proportion citing no value at all (7%).
About the data: Findings from StrongMail's 2012 Marketing Trends Report are based on a survey of 939 business leaders from a wide range of industries, conducted by Zoomerang, Nov 16-29, 2011.
