Mediaboss Marketing

The survey of more than 2,500 marketers around the globe for ExactTarget's '2014 State of Marketing Survey' found that many marketers plan to increase their investment in digital marketing this year.

In particular, investment will rise in data and analytics (61%), marketing automation (60%), email marketing (58%), social media marketing (57%) and content management (57%).

"We are in the third wave of the internet revolution where everything and everyone is connected; this is the Internet of Customers," said Scott Dorsey, chief executive officer, ExactTarget Marketing Cloud. "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."

Increasing conversion rates (47%), increasing and improving brand awareness (46%) and collecting, measuring and using behavior-based data (29%) were all top priorities for the coming year, found the survey.

In terms of producing a return on investment, email was believed to be the best channel (88%) followed by social (86%) and mobile (80%).

Other findings from the survey include:

- 68% believe email marketing is core to their business; - 57% now have a team dedicated to social media marketing; - 41% are now using holiday or event-based mobile marketing campaigns.

Image via Shutterstock

Tags: big data, content management, email, marketing, ROI, social, survey, trends

Read more:
Two-thirds of marketers to increase digital investment in 2014