Salesforce has asked a bunch of Australian marketers about a bunch of things to determine the state of marketing in Australia in 2014. Conversion rates, brand awareness and data emerged as marketers' top priorities but mobile was identified as an area that needs more attention.
It claims 97% of marketers plan to increase or maintain their spend this year and the areas that will see the benefit of that increase are data and analytics, email marketing, automated systems, SMS marketing and content marketing.
Increasing conversion rates is top of the agenda for almost half (49%) of the marketers surveyed, 41% cited improving brand awareness as their number one and 31% said data acquisition.
Email marketing is core to the business for 71% of marketers and nearly two thirds of business surveyed send more than 500,000 emails every year. More than half (51%) marketers said between 31 and 50% of their subscribers open emails on mobile devices but a third of marketers don't use responsive design, which means opportunities across mobile devices are being missed.
Mobile integration into overall marketing programs will be crucial to future success says Salesforce, but only 41% of marketers have done so. Bringing email and mobile together can be one of the easiest ways to start integrating mobile and see a return.
The report claims many organisations are dedicating equal resources to email and social marketing with around two thirds having dedicated teams for each, despite social being a much younger discipline. Only 20% have a dedicated mobile team however.
Thirty-nine percent say social marketing is core to their business. But only 18% say social marketing currently delivers a return - 66% say it will in the future.
Google+ and blogs are the social channels expected to see the largest increase in use by marketers and brands with 19% of marketers plotting an increase in both this year as content marketing becomes more influential. Google is offering what Salesforce calls “extra search juice” to content creators that share posts on Google+ which could explain the rise in adoption of the social network.
Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud surveyed 219 marketers in the region on their objectives and priorities for the year in March.
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