Have you seen The Customer Experience Factbook?

In this 180+ page report, you'll find all the information and support you need to build a profitable, effective CX Improvement Program that spans every part of your business. You'll be able to implement and manage meaningful and profitable change, and grow your bottom line despite a slowing economy.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)

Email & social marketing 'main priorities' for 2012

The survey found that email marketing (60%) and social media (55%) were cited as the top two areas for increased marketing spend. At the same time, 51% of businesses said they planned to increase their overall marketing budgets, and 41% planned to maintain existing budgets. Other areas of increased spending included mobile marketing and internet search (both 37%).

Direct mail (28%) and trade shows (23%) were cited as the top targets for decreased spending. Encouragingly, however, only 8% planned to decrease their overall marketing budget, which is only a slight increase over the 7% reported one year previously.

The top email marketing initiatives for 2012 were increasing subscriber engagement (48%), improving segmentation and targeting (44%) and growing opt-in email lists (32%). Data integration is key to achieving these top priorities, but it was also identified as the primary email marketing challenge (45%), followed by lack of resources (43%) and content management (40%). These opposing findings suggest an opportunity for email service providers to fill the gap with relevant services.

More than two-thirds of businesses (67%) said they plan to integrate social media and email, compared to only 44% integrating mobile and email. The strong ties between email marketing and social media were also emphasised by the 47% of businesses that plan to increase investment in using email to drive growth in their social media channels, such as corporate Facebook and Twitter pages.

The next most popular areas of investment were batch promotional programmes (44%) and newsletters (39%), followed by real-time lifecycle marketing programmes (35%), with an emphasis on customer winback programmes (68%) and welcome programmes (59%).

More than one-third of businesses said they plan to increase their investment in mobile marketing programmes, such as mobile apps (29%) and SMS alerts (20%), but there was a marked lack of consensus about the primary value of this emerging channel. Building customer and loyalty (35%) was identified as the top benefit, followed by expanded reach (29%) and awareness building (28%). However, this was offset by a similar percentage still trying to evaluate it (24%) and a smaller percentage finding no value at all (7%).

"While email marketing leads the pack in terms of increased of investment, the survey also suggests that marketers need to overcome the twin challenges of data integration and resource constraints," concluded Christopher Marriott, vice president of agency services for StrongMail. "Whether managing and optimising existing email marketing programmes or enabling integration with social media and mobile, there is a real opportunity for full-service email marketing providers to help brands get the most out of their interactive marketing investments."

Have you seen The Customer Experience Factbook?

In this 180+ page report, you'll find all the information and support you need to build a profitable, effective CX Improvement Program that spans every part of your business.

You'll be able to implement and manage meaningful and profitable change, and grow your bottom line despite a slowing economy. Grab this goldmine of easily adaptable and up-to-date strategies, walk-throughs, trends, technologies, research, suppliers and partners, plus all the supporting arguments you need to build a solid CX strategy.

While most marketers could list maybe a dozen key points for improving their brand's Customer Experience (CX), the researchers and writers at The Marketing Factbook have identified FORTY main 'CX Keys' which will help you drive your customers to new levels of delight, loyalty, advocacy and profitability.

The areas in which customers have direct contact with your organization are perhaps the most obvious places in which CX improvements can be made, and this report addresses all 24 of these 'Direct CX Keys', applicable to offline and online businesses alike.

At the same time there are many other areas that indirectly affect CX (such as the supply chain, policies and processes) in which every business can make simple but far-reaching improvements. This report guides you through the problems and solutions for all 16 of these 'Indirect CX Keys', many of which are often forgotten or under-played even in the best CX strategies.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)