Datran Media Announces Third Annual Marketing Survey Results
Marketers Share Perspectives and Plans for the Year Ahead and Beyond
NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - January 27, 2009) - Datran Media, an industry-leading digital marketing technology company, today released the results of its third annual survey of online marketing professionals. Conducted in December 2008, the survey reached over 3,000 marketing executives across Fortune 500 brands, top publishers and leading advertising and media agencies through a variety of channels, including both the Direct Marketing Association Email Experience Council's member base and Media Life Magazine's readership. The results summarized below and available in detail on Datran Media's Web site reveal marketers' plans to shift available budgets to what they consider to be the strongest performing channels of online advertising. Marketers are also increasingly interested in emerging advertising channels, particularly social media, according to the survey results.
Overall, email, search and display continue to pace far ahead of offline media, direct mail and mobile as the strongest performing advertising channels. Email secured the number one rank by more than 80 percent of marketers. Correspondingly, marketers revealed that available budgets will be allocated towards email, search and display, while they are anticipating at-pace or reduced spending across offline advertising and direct mail. The one inconsistency in budget allocation responses was the percentage increase in social media budget plans. While inconsistent with present performance responses to the first survey question, the growth expectations are in line with analyst predictions and market forecasts that social media advertising will continue to grow as the model matures. According to a recent report by eMarketer, marketers still need to be where their customers are, and consumers remain heavily involved in social networks.
New customer acquisition and increased customer retention far outrank increasing brand awareness and brand favorability for 2009. Not surprisingly, in order of importance, marketers will reportedly focus on CRM tactics like newsletters while they also employ behavioral targeting, list growth, ad inventory monetization and affiliate marketing strategies.
This year's survey also revealed that most marketers plan to employ display advertising (59.2 percent), behavioral targeting (65.1 percent), audience analytics (76.1 percent), targeted email campaigns (80.8 percent) and ad networks (63.2 percent). Most marketers also believe that email advertising helps boost sales through other channels (82.4 percent), employ analytics to evaluate their email campaigns (83.9 percent) and plan to integrate marketing messages into their transactional emails (69.3 percent).
Other multi-channel trends that seem to be emerging include marketer interest in formatting messages for smart phones (36.4 percent), mobile advertising (34 percent) and social media advertising (72.8 percent). Again, interest in social media is greater than marketers' perception of the channel as an effective advertising medium (49.2 percent).
So, what do these marketers specifically have on their minds and agendas for 2009? While respondents had the opportunity to remain anonymous, some spoke up.
"What do you think is the most important online marketing decision that you will make in 2009?"
"Finding the most cost effective ways to acquire new customers, and keeping our current customers engaged by increasing relevancy in our email program." Kelsey Lowitz, director of CRM, Art.com
"How to maximize behavioral targeting in our email and display marketing efforts." Kyle Martin, product manager, Belo Interactive Media
"How to utilize the budget dollars for clients to provide them with more 'bang for the buck' as everyone is very concerned about the economy." Michele Melson, senior interactive producer, G2 direct and digital
"Monetizing conversation monitoring through life streams, blogs and micro-blogs." Tim Hayden, chief executive officer, GamePlan Live-Mobile-Online
"How to pro-forma model channel priorities for brands, so that the right resources are brought to bear for solutions-oriented programs." Andy Goldman, vice president group planning director/ solutions lead, RAPP
"How to allocate limited sales and dev resources to maximize revenue impact." Ernesto Burden, vice president of digital media, The Telegraph
"What tracking technology to implement." Terry Fung, director of advertising, Trouve Media
For a complete view of survey results, please visit Datran Media Success -- http://www.datranmediasurvey2009.com.
