The results from the annual Unica Marketing Survey shows that the proliferation of marketing channels and the concomitant explosion of data pose a wealth of challenges for marketers in 2011. The survey reveals the following key trends:
1. Marketers will bridge the gap between analysis and action (finally!)
With so much data readily available, it's time to overcome "analysis paralysis" and turn this newly found knowledge into action by integrating data captured across all channels into subsequent campaigns and more personal offers.
2. Marketers will let customers lead the dance by taking advantage of inbound interactions.
Inbound marketing is seizing the momentum: customers are taking the initiative and directing the relationship on their terms - and marketers are getting the message.
3. Marketers will leverage online behavioral data to help turn data into action.
90% of marketers see web data as important to drive campaign decisioning. While only 41% currently use this data in campaign decisioning, another 35% say they will in the next 12 months.
4. To keep email relevant marketers will focus on improving integration, segmentation, and targeting.
Smart marketers are now integrating campaigns with data and triggers from other channels to make email an essential part of an ongoing, evolving dialog with customers and prospects. Looking ahead, email will become the natural integration point with emerging channels such as social and mobile.
5. 'Free' online marketing tools will get expensive.
Like email, web analytics and paid search are contemporary marketing mainstays. But more than half (53%) of marketers rely on "free" tools for Web analytics and more than a third (37%) rely on tolls from the search engines to manage PPC marketing. The savviest marketers are now considering the cost of "free." For starters, a free search tool is limited by its applicability to the search engine that provides it. Worse, neither the search tools nor free web analytics can be incorporated with the marketer's other systems, making it impossible to close the loop and understand the value of the customers that these efforts are delivering. Precisely because the information these tools provide is so valuable, it cannot remain stranded, leaving you incapable of realizing the full potential of search and web data. Investing in web analytics and search bid management solutions will pay short and long term dividends.
6. Channel proliferation will drive the need to nurture new channels.
With social media and mobile, individual channels will come and go; but a solid evaluation process assessing opportunities, testing tactics, measuring results and evaluating further involvement in new channels will be a lasting investment.
7. Social media will experience growing pains.
This year, social media resembles an angst filled adolescent - still immature yet no longer cute - who inspires mixed feelings. Marketers are beginning to think strategically across three major areas of social content: owned (what they create), earned (what customers create) and paid (what marketers spend money for).
8. Marketers will treat mobile as a device with many channels, not a single channel.
Survey results show that marketers are growing ever more bullish on mobile. The real question isn't whether to use mobile or not, but which mobile marketing channels, if any, are relevant to your business and its customers.
9. Interactive marketing will reach the tipping point as a dominant marketing discipline.
Integrating social, mobile and other emerging channels in the marketing mix will play a pivotal role in meaningful crosschannel dialogs. The good news? Half of marketers say they are currently integrating across some channels. Over the next year, savvy marketers will increase their adoption of Interactive Marketing and expand the number of channels they include in this orchestrated strategy.
10. Marketers will get more serious about using cross-channel attribution to understand marketing effectiveness.
It's not enough to coordinate campaigns and deliver results. Marketers must better understand which activities, programs, and campaigns are contributing to those results. In the ranking of top marketing issues, The good news? Those marketers who adopt an Interactive Marketing strategy will already have a centralized view of marketing touches.
11. Adoption of an integrated marketing suite will accelerate.
Marketers remain confident that technology will ease their pain. More than half of marketers said that technology would increase productivity more than additional staff or external agency support. Why the strong interest? Integrated tools mean integrated, interactive marketing, with shared sources of data and real-time behavioral triggers allowing marketers to take communications to the next level.
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