Increasing conversion rates and brand awareness are two of the top priorities for marketers in 2014.
Two thirds of marketers around the world plan to increase investments in digital marketing this year, according to new research from digital marketing company ExactTarget Marketing Cloud.
The survey conducted by the salesforce.com company found marketers plan to increase investments in data and analytics (61%), marketing automation (60%), email marketing (58%), social media marketing (57%) and content management (57%).
The survey featured more than 2600 marketers globally additionally finding 68% of marketers believe email marketing is core to their business, 86% of marketers believe social marketing efforts will or do provide return on investment (ROI) and that 41% of marketers are using holiday or event based mobile campaigns.
"We are in the third wave of the internet revolution where everything and everyone is connected; this is the Internet of Customers," Scott Dorsey, chief executive officer of ExactTarget Marketing Cloud said.
“As the number of connected devices and mobile phones continue to skyrocket, marketers are investing aggressively in digital to connect with their customers in entirely new ways across every channel and every device.”
For more findings download the survey here.
Vivek Sharma, CEO of agile marketing technology company Movable Ink has a few resolutions for marketers this year.
Optimize For Mobile: Marketing on the mobile phone is not at all the same as it is on the desktop and consumers respond differently in each environment. Make sure to create content that is optimized for all of the different devices that your customers might be using.
Now's the Time for Real-Time: 2013 was the year of Big Data and 2014 is the year of Agile Marketing. To best capture customer attention and increase relevancy, personalize and adapt your content in real-time based on each individual recipient's time, location, device, weather and social graph. This helps increase opens, click-throughs and sales.
Faster, Smarter, Measurable: Use technology to create digital marketing campaigns that allow your campaigns to move faster, have smarter customer interactions and measure against business objectives.
ABC – Always Be Creative: While big data may have gone mainstream and analytics and reporting are crucial, there is no replacement for creativity and experimentation. Design campaigns that stand out from the competition and try different iterations of creative that tap into both right-brain and left-brain to maximize customer engagement and click-throughs.
