One of the biggest shifts in marketing in 60 years

Over the next year 98% of marketers plan to increase or maintain their spend, with the top five areas focusing on digital and data elements.

The new report by ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, 2014 State of Marketing, shows some of the top trends, objectives and priorities for marketers this year, with Derek Laney, director of product marketing and management at APAC, believing marketing is seeing the biggest shift in the past 60 years.

Laney addressed the room of clients yesterday at the Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud iFly event, detailing some of the key findings of the report.

“What we’ve seen in that report is 65% of marketers have really shifted their focus from trying to acquire customers constantly and repetitively to actually starting to think about customer engagement,” he said.

“The thing that they’re investing in is a solution for that…and how we invest in automation to make sure we don’t require a team of hundreds of people to actually execute.”

The top five areas for increase spending this year are data and analytics (61%), marketing automation (60%), email marketing (58%), social media marketing (57%) and content management (57%).

Talking to the 2,500 respondents in order to compile the report, Laney notes how there are three key aspects the customers are asking for in order to prepare for this future.

“The first is that they need all their information about their customers together," he said.

“[Secondly] they need to understand where customers are at in this engagement journey to make it relevant for them, they need to create customer journeys.

“And thirdly, every interaction that they have with customers needs to be highly personalised, regardless of whether it’s an email or txt, or engaging people on social media. It needs to be highly relevant and targeted. So that’s what’s keeping them up at night."

In celebration of the "Year of the Marketer", around 30 Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud customers and media took “to the cloud” at the iFly Indoor Skydiving Centre, falling into 100km+ winds pushing them upwards, reminiscent of a free fall in skydiving.

Without the daunting task of jumping out of a plane, being able to feel the weightlessness is a once (or twice) in a lifetime experience.

iFly Down Under officially opens April 26, check out some of the photos from the day below.

Download the full ExactTarget Marketing Cloud 2014 State of Marketing report here.

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