Email, Social, and Your 2012 Web Budget

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 23:15:00 GMT

Marketing solutions provider StrongMail has analyzed how businesses plan to budget and prioritize marketing spend in the coming year, announcing the results of its "2012 Marketing Trends" survey today.

Perhaps most heartening is that marketing budgets will remain healthy next year, with 51% of responding companies increasing and 41% maintaing their current marketing budgets. The survey also indicates that email (60%) and social media (55%) will attract increased investment.

The top email marketing initiatives for 2012, according to Strongmail respondents, are 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 is also identified as the primary email marketing challenge in 2012 (45%), followed by lack of resources (43%) and content management (40%).

"While email marketing leads the pack in terms of increased investment in 2012, the data also reveals that marketers need to overcome key challenges around data integration and resource constraints," said Christopher Marriott, vice president of agency services at StrongMail. "Whether managing and optimizing existing email marketing programs or enabling integration with social media and mobile, there is a real opportunity for full-service email marketing providers like StrongMail to help companies get the most out of their interactive marketing investments in 2012."

'Net Features : 2012 marketing

Email, Social, and Your 2012 Web Budget