Budgetting

A survey done by StrongMail reflects the attitudes of over 900 business leaders in regards to their planned marketing budgets, priorities and challenges for 2012.

The survey shows that more than 50% of the companies will increase their marketing budgets for the upcoming year. Another 41% says that they will maintain current marketing budgets.

The top targets of these budgets are both email marketing and social marketing, which is hardly a surprise because it has been so for the past three years. Runners up are mobile marketing and search engine marketing.

Relevance

Relevant content is of key importance in 2012. Many companies are using multi channel marketing to reach their target groups now that online marketing is maturing. The challenge has transformed from spreading information to actual personal conversation with your customers. Sending the right information at the right time to the right person. It doesn’t matter which channel is used in this process.

Marketing automation technology that has emerged over the last few years allow you to "intelligently" adapt the message based on the recipient’s behavior (whether they open, click, don’t click, purchase, or other behavior).

In 2012, this technology will become more mainstream. This allows email to be more relevant for the recipient, making it more effective for the sender. It’s a win-win scenario, according to Business Insider.

Social media integration

No doubt, social media is here to stay. It’s a very effective medium to engage with prospects and customers, drive website traffic, and build lasting relationships. Facebook started the crossover of email and social with the release of their messaging platform. During 2012, you will see the lines between these two mediums blurred even further. At a simple level, email will allow for social connections and social platforms will include messaging platforms that are basically email with a different wrapper.

Mobile

Mobile commerce is heating up. The latest comScore numbers said 38% of people had bought something on their phone. Also big sites, such as news site Nu.nl in the Netherlands are read more on mobile phones and tablets than on a computer. Right now, most sites are based on the desktop versions. As some users primarily use tablets and phones, how will that affect site design, conversions, and payments?

According to a report released by Experian Marketing Services this year, 52% of consumers access email via their smartphones. Many people read email on their mobile devices. That means email needs to continue to be more mobile. Readers will demand that email is legible natively on their mobile devices.

Inbound marketing

As consumers continue to flock to the internet, the internet marketing industry continues to evolve. As marketers used to push products or services on their customers, nowadays marketing should rely on earning people’s interest instead of buying it.

The decline of outbound marketing is a response to a recent and fundamental shift in consumer behavior. People are more in control of what information they receive and how. Therefore, inbound marketing is focusing on getting found by customers.

The more popular inbound marketing tactics involve content marketing and social media. Think of blogs and vlogs, white papers and e-books, podcasts, infographics. When this content is useful it will spread through social channels so the reach of the content can grow virally. As content gets spread, link building to the company website or blog grows and these links can significantly improve the overall visibility in search engines.

2012

Take these things into consideration when finalizing your marketing plans. Web Power wishes you all the best in 2012!

Sources
Emailmonday
Business insider
Volter Digital
Clickz
Strongmail
Email Vendor Selection