Leveraging customer data is the biggest challenge facing online marketers in 2014 according to the annual StrongView Marketing Trends survey. Accessing and leveraging data are the foremost email marketing challenges and are directly related to the key initiatives of improving engagement and targeting, the survey reveals.
The StrongView survey was conducted with SENSORPRO between Nov. 18-27, 2013, and reflects the attitudes of 387 business leaders regarding their planned marketing budgets, priorities, and challenges for 2014.
According to the survey, marketing budgets will remain healthy in 2014 with 46% of companies increasing and 47% maintaining current levels. Email marketing, social media, search marketing, and display marketing continue to be top areas of investment, with mobile dropping to fifth place.
Leveraging customer data is the No. 1 challenge facing email marketers followed by data quality, latency and lack of strategy being the biggest inhibitors. Of the data that marketers are leveraging, demographic, purchase history, and web behavior are used most often. Sentiment, web, and shopping behavior were identified as the most valuable types of data that marketers would like to, but aren’t currently able, to leverage.
“While we saw a strong desire to engage with customers at a more personal and meaningful level in our survey this year, marketers remain hampered and frustrated by an inability to access and leverage all the data being generated by a growing number of marketing channels,” Shawn Myers, vice president of marketing at StrongView, said in a press release. “Effectively engaging customers with what we call 'Present Tense Marketing' requires an in-depth understanding of the customer’s context at a particular moment in time, and that can only be achieved with the strategic use of all available data.”
The survey results focused on the widely held challenges presented by the plethora of data now available to marketers. While brands are capturing more customer and industry data than ever before, marketers report common problems in accessing and leveraging it in the most meaningful ways. Yet, these challenges haven’t prevented marketers from increasing their spending on customer engagement: A whopping 93% plan to increase or maintain marketing budgets for the year. This is up from 89% in 2013.
Here are some of the survey’s key takeaways:
40% cite accessing and leveraging customer data as biggest email marketing challenge; 36% lack of resources; 32% developing more relevant engagements
44% have goal to improve engagement; 36% to improve segmentation and targeting; 31% to grow opt-in lists
93% plan to increase or maintain marketing budgets in 2014; 46% plan to increase
52% plan to increase email marketing spend; 46% social media; 41% search; 36% display
57% of email lifecycle marketing to be focused on loyalty; 53% on welcome; 50% win-back
59% plan to integrate email with social; 55% with mobile; 23% with display
55% of marketers chose Facebook as the most valuable social channel; 18% LinkedIn; 10%
Twitter; less than 5% named Pinterest, Google+ or Instagram as most valuable
According to the survey, the biggest challenges to leveraging data are quality (22%), latency in its availability to marketers (16%), and lack of strategy (15%). Data access and the ability to specifically leverage web behavior (34%), shopping behavior (25%), and customer sentiment (23%) were particularly difficult for marketers. Demographics (53%), purchase history (49%), and web behavioral data (31%) were used most often in campaigns.
Increasing Engagement through Greater Relevancy is a Major Initiative
Across channels, marketers report that a key objective in 2014 will be to increase engagement with customers, primarily by creating campaigns with higher degrees of relevancy based on contextual clues.
Email Marketing Remains Strong
The stalwart channels of email and search marketing remain principal avenues for marketers to reach customers, with social media marketing continuing to rise in importance. More than 50% of marketers plan budget increases in email and 46% in social marketing in 2014; 41% of marketers plan to increase search spending, up from 39.8% in 2013.
Respondents reported intentions to increase spending for automated email programs such as lifecycle (34%) and triggered events (38%). Of the marketers who plan to increase spend on lifecycle email marketing programs, 57% plan to focus on loyalty programs with 50% indicating a focus on win-back efforts and 53% on welcoming new customers. These and other data support marketers’ plans to make strides in customer engagement in the coming year.
Largest Social Platforms Considered Most Valuable
While the investment in social channels overall to engage customers is set to increase in 2014 (46%), marketers overwhelmingly and, not surprisingly, name the largest social platforms as their most valuable channels.
Facebook ranked among the top three by 81% of marketers, Twitter by 67%, YouTube by 48% and LinkedIn by 44%. Pinterest, for example, though noted as valuable to some degree by more than 85% of respondents, was listed as a top three most valuable channel by less than 13% of marketers. Highly popular Instagram was only ranked in the top three by 10% of marketers, though 86% saw some value.