INTERNET MARKETING FACT

INTERNET MARKETING


On average, 60% of a marketers' time is devoted to digital marketing activities, fuelling demand for digital marketing skills. November 2015 ¹ Maximillion surveyed event organizers about how they use social media for their jobs, and 75% said it was "very important" to use social for event promotion. Facebook was the most popular channel for doing so, at 78%, followed by Twitter (56%) and LinkedIn (49%) June 2015 ² 95% of brands tweet. 82% of brands tweet 1-6 time per day. 48% of brands replied to at least one tweet per day. 68% of brand Tweets are @replies. March 2015 ³ In 2014, 55% of tweets sent contained a photo and accounted for 57% of all engagement.31% of tweets sent contained a link yet were responsible for 26% of @replies, retweets and favorites from brands. 5 billion Vine loops per day according to Twitter. March 2015 ⁴ 83% of consumers reported that they have had a "bad experience with social media marketing." February 2015 ⁵ Marketing professionals are 50% more likely than consumers to like a brand on Facebook, 400% more likely to follow brands on Twitter, 100% more likely to make a purchase as a result of seeing something on Facebook, and 150% more likely to make a purchase as a result of a tweet. February 2015 ⁶ Pinterest grabs 41% of the ecommerce traffic compared to Facebook’s 37%. Food is the top category of content on Pinterest with 57% of its user base sharing food-related content. February 2015 ⁷ 16% of marketers plan to increase efforts on Pinterest in 2015. February 2015 ⁸ There are over 1.39 billion monthly active Facebook users worldwide. 890 million users log on daily. February 2015 ⁹ Every 60 seconds on Facebook, 510 comments are posts, 293,000 statuses are updated and 136,000 photos are uploaded. February 2015 ¹⁰ American companies have the largest subscriber databases with an average of over 500,000 subscribers on their email lists. January 2015 ¹¹ Content marketing generates 3 times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing, but costs 62% less. January 2015 ¹² The majority of marketers (59%) are using social media for 6 hours or more each week. January 2015 ¹³ Every month there are more than 10.3 billion Google searches, with 78% of U.S. internet users researching products and services online. December 2014 ¹⁴ The top three social networks used by B2B marketers are LinkedIn (91%); Twitter (85%); and Facebook (81%). However, just 62% of marketers say that LinkedIn is effective, while 50% say the same for Twitter and only 30% of B2B marketers view Facebook as effective. December 2014 ¹⁵ Twitter traffic achieves a higher conversion rate (2.17%) than the average for all channels combined (1.6%) including organic and paid search. Using Twitter during fundraising events can result in 10 times more money raised online. November 2014 ¹⁶ 71% of internet users are more likely to purchase from a brand that they are following on a social networking site such as Twitter or Facebook. November 2014 ¹⁷ Globally, 46% of consumers with a digital device used social media to help make purchase decisions. November 2014 ¹⁸ 71% of internet users are more likely to purchase from a brand that they are following on a social networking site such as Twitter or Facebook. November 2014 ¹⁹ About 60 percent of all Internet activity in the U.S. originates from mobile devices, and about half of total Internet traffic flows through mobile apps. July 2014 ²⁰ Business-to-consumer (B2C) ecommerce sales worldwide will rise nearly 20% to reach $1.471 trillion in 2014. July 2014 ²¹ Facebook news feed retargeting ads had a click-through rate (CTR) 49 times higher than FB right-hand side ads and 21 times higher than standard web retargeting. April 2014 ²² Online marketing, which includes electronic ads, targeted emails and selling information to brokers, is worth about $62 billion October 2013 ²³ Email volume overall increased 5% in the fourth quarter of last year compared with the year-earlier period, according to the Experian Marketing Services 2012 Q4 email benchmark report. March 2013 ²⁴ The rapid expansion of Latin America’s Internet audience—and the potential for the region boasting 359 million Internet users by 2015. March 2013 ²⁵ 55% of marketers from around the world plan to increase their digital marketing budgets this year, according to results from a Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) survey conducted by Econsultancy. March 2013 ²⁶ Majority of marketers (39% overall) plan to increase their digital budgets without increasing overall marketing spend, effectively reallocating existing budgets into digital channels. March 2013 ²⁷ 39% of marketers plan to increase their digital marketing budgets this year without increasing overall marketing budgets, while 16% will increase digital marketing budgets and overall marketing budgets. Thirty-four percent will keep digital marketing budgets flat, and 11% will decrease digital marketing budgets. March 2013 ²⁸ Nearly 90% of businesses said email marketing was 'very important' or 'important', and yet the DMA also reports that over a third of businesses are unable to calculate ROI from email marketing. February 2013 ²⁹ Despite the limitations, budget allocations for email marketing increased in 2012 by 15%, with over half of marketers expecting another increase in 2013. This is due to a third of the respondents accounting email marketing for 50% - or more - of all digital business revenue. February 2013 ³⁰ eConsultancy's marketing budget report shows that 63% of marketers increased their budget in 2012, with 31% remaining the same and just 6% who said that they would decrease budget. February 2013 ³¹ Just over a third of businesses (34%) are unable to calculate the revenue earned from email marketing, according to a new survey from the DMA. February 2013 ³² A new survey from the DMA stated, only 60% of respondents said that they could calculate the revenue return, despite the fact that a vast majority of businesses (89%) said email marketing was either ‘very important’ or ‘important’. February 2013 ³³ According to the DMA's report, based on an assumption that the average return for the top category is £55, the estimated average return across all organizations is £21.48 for each £1 spent on email marketing. February 2013 ³⁴ According to the DMA's report, more than half (56%) of respondents expect their company’s email budget to increase in 2012, while only 5% said they expect it to decrease. February 2013 ³⁵ Econsultancy Marketing Budgets Report revealed findings – 65% of respondents said their email marketing budget would increase this year, while just 4% said it was likely to decline. February 2013 ³⁶ Another indicator of the value of email marketing is its share of business revenue. The majority of businesses (62%) produce more than a third of their digital business revenue through email. February 2013 ³⁷ Search marketers can expect to process a tsunami of information. The rate of data creation is accelerating as it becomes simpler for businesses and consumers to create, publish, curate, and share data. Mary Meeker expects that the amount of content and data on the Internet will double by 2014. January 2013 ³⁸ Search attracts new customers, but email works best for repeat customers, according to the report. About 4% of new consumers are influenced by an email and use one other tactic to find the product, compared with 17% of repeat customers using email and one other tactic. Some 30% of transactions by repeat shoppers start with a click on an email from retailers. September 2012 ³⁹ Email marketers are focusing on greater use of analytics in order to optimize their communications, with 37% naming this a top 5 priority for improving their email programs this year, according to [download page] a Return Path report released in September 2012, conducted by The Relevancy Group. September 2012 ⁴⁰ 37% also said the same about integrating their email marketing into social channels and converting social fans and followers. Other priorities include improving email inbox delivery and placement of messages, improving transactional email messaging capabilities, improving segmentation and targeting, and increasing relevancy with dynamic email content (each at 35%). September 2012 ⁴¹ A March 2012 report from Econsultancy and Adestra found that only 9% of company marketers surveyed believed that their company’s email activity and social media marketing were well integrated. September 2012 ⁴² 26% of respondents to the Return Path survey said that knowing how to optimize their marketing was a top 10 email marketing challenge, while 24% cited campaign results analysis as a top 10 challenge. Other challenges cited included creative content development (21%), managing frequency across all channels (20%), list turnover (churning subscribers – 20%), and benchmarking email performance to peers (20%). September 2012 ⁴³ 19% said that the lack of a demonstrated email ROI was a top-10 challenge. September 2012 ⁴⁴ Interestingly, many respondents said that they are focused on social media marketing because their email ROI is solid, with 10% saying this is a real pain point holding back email marketing analysis, and a further 55% saying this is somewhat challenging their focus on email metrics. September 2012⁴⁵ Return Path’s “The Email Marketing Measurement Imperative” finds that 1 in 5 respondents say that lacking the staff to dedicate to intelligence is a real paint point inhibiting their email marketing measurement and analysis. Another 47% described this as somewhat challenging. September 2012 ⁴⁶ Similarly, budgets are keeping marketers from making email measurement and analysis a priority: 19% describe budget limitations as a pain point, and an additional 47% say it is somewhat challenging. September 2012 ⁴⁷ In-stream video ads garnered significantly higher click-through-rates (CTRs) than banners and rich media in H1, details a [download page] September 2012 report from MediaMind. In-stream video ad serving template (VAST) impressions saw an average CTR of 2.84%, while the average CTR for player-ad interface definition (VPAID) impressions was 1.63%. By comparison, the standard banner rate stood at 0.1%, and rich media’s at 0.22%. An August 2012 MediaMind study found the same 0.1% CTR for standard banner ads in the US, but, a much higher 0.87% for mobile banners. September 2012 ⁴⁸ Email click rates dropped to 4.4% in Q2, down more than 6% from 4.7% in Q1, and marking the 3rd consecutive quarter-over-quarter drop, according to [download page] Epsilon’s latest benchmarking report September 2012⁴⁹ Click rates have now fallen 20% from from 5.5% in Q3 2011, and are down 15% year-over-year. The report also finds that 59% of new subscribers (who have been on file for less than 3 months, and who represent 11% of an email list on average) are not engaged, neither opening nor clicking on emails. September 2012 ⁵⁰ Email open rates also decreased in Q2, down slightly from 26.2% to 25.6%, the first quarter-over-quarter drop since Q1-Q2 2011. September 2012 ⁵¹ When factoring out triggered and real-time messages, average volume per client was down 6.3% quarter-over-quarter and 29.7% year-over-year. The report suggests this indicates a move by marketers to more triggered and real-time messages rather than business-as-usual (BAU) emails. Even so, in Q2, triggered emails represented just 2.6% of total email volume, though that was up 22% from Q1. September 2012 ⁵² According to Experian CheetahMail’s 2012 Q2 email benchmark report, email volume rose 10.1% year-over-year in Q2, though the quarter-over-quarter rise was more muted, at 2%. September 2012 ⁵³ Click rates on triggered emails, though, dropped for the 3rd consecutive quarter, to 9.8%, on par with Q2 2011, but far lower than Q2 2010′s rate (13.7%). Even so, the average click rate for triggered emails was more than double the rate for BAU emails. September 2012 ⁵⁴ Triggered email non-bounce rates continued to be healthy in Q2, at 95.2%, only slightly below BAU emails’ rate of 95.9%. September 2012 ⁵⁵ Breaking down the overall performance of on an average list by behavior, the report finds that 23% are “super stars” who have opened or clicked emails within the most recent 3 months, an additional 23% are “nappers” (who have opened or clicked more than 3 months ago), and 43% are “dormant” (inactive for the past 12 months). September 2012 ⁵⁶ Breaking the BAU emails down by 11 industry segments, Epsilon reveals that click to open rates (CTORs) fell by more than 5% year-over-year for all but one segment (financial services general). Consumer products CPG sported the highest CTOR (39.4%), while financial services CC/Banks (11.3%) saw the lowest. September 2012 ⁵⁷ In terms of open rates, retail general (35.3%) and travel/hospitality travel services (34.9%) saw the best results, while consumer publishing/media general (15.4%) had the lowest. Consumer products CPG boasted by far the highest click rate (6.9%), followed by retail general (5.2%). September 2012 ⁵⁸ The highest triggered email open rates were in the retail general (69.9%), consumer products pharmaceutical (69%) and travel hospitality (67.2%) categories. The highest triggered email click rates were in the consumer products CPG (18.1%), consumer publishing (16.1%) and consumer products pharmaceutical (15.8%) categories. September 2012 ⁵⁹ Details from Epsilon’s “Q2 2012 Email Trends and Benchmarks” indicate that triggered email messages – deployed as a result of an action, such as Welcome or Abandoned Shopping Cart – continue to vastly outperform BAU emails. Open rates for triggered emails hit 49.8% in Q2, jumping 8.5% from 45.9% in Q1, and almost 95% higher than the BAU rate. September 2012 ⁶⁰ Marketing message CTORs were highest in the retail general (19.4%) category and lowest in the financial services general (5.4%) category. September 2012 ⁶¹ Consumer products CPG (+230.6%), retail apparel (+154.1%), and consumer publishing/media general (+122.5%) showed the largest disparities in open rates between triggered and BAU emails, for the second consecutive quarter. September 2012 ⁶² The retail apparel (+291.9%), consumer services telecom (+258.6%), and consumer publishing/media general (+250) categories demonstrated the most significant differences in click rates between triggered and BAU emails. September 2012 ⁶³ . Among new subscribers, 16% are dubbed “new clickers” (who have opened and clicked), and 25% are “new openers” (who have opened). The figures are slightly better among “mature” subscribers – who have been on a list for longer than 3 months. Among these, 51% have engaged in some way in the past 12 months, including 26% who have either opened or clicked recently. September 2012 ⁶⁴ The analysis of subscriber behavior is based on more than 660 million non-bounced and opted-in email addressed contracted from July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2012, across multiple industries and approximately 150 clients. September 2012 ⁶⁵ In Q2, 63.4% of emails deployed through Epsilon’s email platform were characterized as marketing messages, up from 61.4% in Q1. The open rate for these emails in Q2 was 20.2% (compared to 21.8% in Q1), significantly behind editorial (31.7%) and service (49.1%) messages. Click rates also lagged at 2.6% (compared to 3.2% in Q1), also behind editorial (9%) and service (7.8%) emails. And CTOR for marketing messages in Q2 was 12.7%, down from 14.7% the previous quarter, and lower than all other email categories save for acquisition emails. September 2012 ⁶⁶ Fifty-six percent of parents give their mobile device to their child for entertainment purposes at least once a day -- according to Mojiva, a mobile ad network. September 2012 ⁶⁷ Almost half of parents that had previously purchased products for their child use their mobile device instead of visiting a brick-and-mortar store or using their computer. Another 18% says they do this with some frequency, with 25% having no problem in spending more than $50 on a single item for their child. September 2012 ⁶⁸ Fifty-seven percent of parents have previously downloaded or added an application or a Web page on their mobile device for their child to use. September 2012 ⁶⁹ While roughly three-quarters of companies agree that measuring the impact of social media activity is very important, more than 7 in 10 also agree that measuring the impact of social media marketing is very difficult. September 2012 ⁷⁰ Although larger companies (annual revenue more than $150 million) are more likely than smaller companies (revenue of less than $150 million) to measure performance against social media objectives (42% vs. 28%), they are not much more likely to have clear objectives for their social media activity (38% v. 35%). September 2012 ⁷¹ The majority of companies measure volume of traffic from social media channels (79% of client-side respondents, 78% of agency respondents) and engagement with social networks (68% of clients; 71% of agencies), but they are far less likely to measure hard metrics like increase in sales/leads (26% clients; 38% agencies) or reduction in customer service calls (7% clients; 17% agencies). September 2012 ⁷² Larger businesses are more likely than their smaller counterparts to track revenue generated directly by social media activity (34% vs. 25%) and to measure where social media activity has assisted in generating revenue (23% vs 17%), although these companies are still in the minority. September 2012 ⁷³ Roughly three in four CMOs are at least somewhat confident that their social efforts are having a measurable impact on sales. September 2012 ⁷⁴ Some 43% of all mobile phone users use applications, but 54% of those app users have decided not to install an app due to concerns about sharing or collecting of personal information, and 30% have uninstalled an app for the same reason, according to [pdf] a September 2012 report from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. September 2012⁷⁵ Seventy-three percent of companies with annual revenues of less than $150 million agree that social media is integral to their marketing mix, compared with two-thirds of companies with revenues of more than $150 million. September 2012 ⁷⁶ Seventy-one percent of senior marketers agree that companies can gain competitive advantage by leveraging social media, and 60 percent agree that social media enables businesses to be more successful. September 2012 ⁷⁷ When asked to choose the top two roles for social media, client-side and agency respondents were in general agreement, with 64 percent of the former and 61 percent of the latter choosing social as as a brand/awareness channel. September 2012 ⁷⁸ Email volume rose 10.1% year-over-year in Q2, though the quarter-over-quarter rise was more muted, at 2%, according to [download page] the Experian CheetahMail 2012 Q2 email benchmark report. The travel industry saw standout year-over-year volume growth of 41.3%, with the consumer products and services (19%) and media and entertainment (16.9%) industries also seeing solid volume growth. Multi-channel retailers (6%) saw relatively more modest growth, with catalogers virtually flat, with an 0.3% increase. August 2012 ⁷⁹ The unsubscribe rate also fell, to 0.15% in Q2. The Q1 rate was 0.16%, while the Q2 2011 rate was 0.2%. August 2012 ⁸⁰ For example, Q2 2012’s click-to-open rate of 15.4% was a significant drop from 18.2% a year earlier, but represented a smaller decline when compared to Q1’s 16.3% rate. Similarly, the total click rate of 3.8% in Q2 2012 was down from 4.2% in Q2 2011, but unchanged from Q1. August 2012 ⁸¹ Q2’s unique click rate of 2.5% was down from 2.7% in Q1 and 2.8% in Q2 2011. August 2012 ⁸² The overall transaction rate in Q2 was 0.1%, dropping from 0.11% the previous quarter and previous year. August 2012 ⁸³ Data from Experian’s report reveals mixed results for open rates. The total open rate for Q2 2012 was 21.9%, an improvement from Q2 2011’s 21.6%, but down slightly from Q1 2012’s 22.2%. Similarly, Q2 2012’s unique open rate of 15.2% was up from a year earlier (14.8%), but down from the previous quarter’s 15.5%. August 2012 ⁸⁴ A June report from Epsilon found the benchmark email open rate for Q1 to be 26.2%, up on quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year bases. August 2012 ⁸⁵ 55% of brands had statistically significant year-over-year increases in open rates in Q2. August 2012 ⁸⁶ On a quarter-over-quarter basis, the travel industry was the only one to post faster growth in Q2 2012 (12%) than in Q2 2011 (10%). Consumer products and services boasted the second-fastest quarter-over-quarter growth rate, of 5%. Multi-channel retailers were flat, while email volume declined by 3% for both business products and services and catalogers. August 2012 ⁸⁷ The average revenue per email in Q2 was $0.12, constant from Q1, but down from $0.13 in Q2 2011. August 2012 ⁸⁸ Average order declined to $156.37 from $159.93 in Q1 and $160.27 in Q2 2011. August 2012 ⁸⁹ The bounce rate dropped to 2.6% from 3% in Q1 and 2.8% in Q2 2011. August 2012 ⁹⁰ “While these traditional sources of information are still valuable, they offer little insight into individual customers,” commented IBM. “In contrast, blogs, consumer reviews and other unstructured online sources can reveal customer sentiment at a personal level, in context.” Unfortunately this is a resource relatively few CMOs are exploiting, with only 26 per cent tracking blogs, only 42 per cent tracking third-party reviews and only 48 per cent tracking consumer reviews. August 2012 ⁹¹ CMOs remain enthusiastic about online marketing, projecting an 11.5 percent increase in spending in this area over the next 12 months. August 2012 ⁹² Three-quarters of the CMOs are planning to add at least 2 languages (to regional sites) over the next 12 months. August 2012 ⁹³ 89% of respondents to the Limelight Networks survey are adding at least 2 regional websites in the next 12 months, and 80% are redesigning and/or updating at least that many. August 2012 ⁹⁴ The average CMO indicates that 3.6 people are employed in-house to do social media for their company, a big drop from nine in February 2012. August 2012 ⁹⁵ The vast majority of these users (95.5%) will be checking social sites on a smartphone, and smartphone users are about twice as likely as overall mobile phone users to do so this year. By 2014, eMarketer estimates, nearly half of the total US mobile population will be mobile social networkers. August 2012 ⁹⁶ By the end of this year, nearly 82 million US mobile users will use a social networking site on their phone at least monthly, or more than a quarter of the total US population. August 2012 ⁹⁷ Unsurprisingly, most of these mobile social networkers are hitting up Facebook on their phones. Nearly 70 million people will access Facebook from their phones each month this year, or 85.4% of the overall mobile social networking population. That share will rise to 87.4% by 2014. August 2012 ⁹⁸ Growth in mobile social networking is slowing, from 50% in 2011 to 40% this year. By 2014, the number of mobile social networkers will increase by just 18%—still in the healthy double digits. August 2012 ⁹⁹ The longer the length (in characters) of a B2C email subject line, the higher its open, click, and click-to-open rates, finds Adestra [download page] in a July 2012 study of 932 million emails from more than 40,000 campaigns across 6 sectors, sent over a 6-month period. August 2012 ¹⁰⁰ The results show that B2C emails have a below-average click-to-open rate (CTOR) for subject lines between 20 and 60 characters in length, but after that pick up steam, hitting their peak at 150 characters in length. August 2012 ¹⁰¹ These emails have a CTOR 94.7% above the average (and click and open rates 276.4% and 93.2% above-average, respectively). B2B emails show a similar trend, though not quite as clear cut. Emails with subject line length of 20 characters performed above-average for all 3 metrics, though the rates generally dipped after that until recovering from 90 characters in length and up. August 2012 ¹⁰² The peak for open rate was 20 characters (24.6% above-average), while the peak for click rate was for 140 characters (82.7% above-average) and for CTOR was also 140 characters (72% above-average). August 2012¹⁰³ Data from Adestra’s subject line study indicates that when it comes to the e-commerce sector, the results are fairly mixed. Subject lines 110 characters in length performed best for open rates (122.4% above-average), but those 70-characters-long did best for click rates (91.1% above-average), while those with 30 characters achieved the best CTOR (17.4% above-average), despite the latter having below-average open and click rates. Overall, subject lines with 70 characters appeared to do the best, with above-average performance in each metric. August 2012 ¹⁰⁴ For the events sector, short subject lines (20-30 characters) got the highest open rates, while longer subject lines (120-150 characters) got the best click rates and CTOR. Publishing emails displayed the same pattern as events emails, though for charity emails, short subject lines had the highest open, click, and click-to-open rates. August 2012 ¹⁰⁵ Overall, across the 6 sectors studied, despite an open rate peak for emails with 20 characters, longer subject lines (100+ characters) appeared to deliver better open, click, and click-to-open rates. This compares with recent studies from MailerMailer and Informz, which found shorter subject lines to clearly have the best open rates, though with mixed results for click rates. August 2012 ¹⁰⁶ Looking at the results by sector, some interesting patterns emerge. For e-commerce emails, 1-word subject lines had the highest open rate, but 4-word lines had the best highest CTOR relative to the average. For events emails, shorter word counts (2-5) delivered the best open rates relative to the average, but longer word counts (19 and up) delivered both the best click and click-to-open rates relative to the average. August 2012 ¹⁰⁷ For the publishing sector, the results were clearer: longer subject lines delivered generally higher-than-average open, click, and click-to-open rates, aside from a spike at 2 words. For the charity sector, short subject lines did well for open and click rates, and longer counts (14 words and up) performed worst for click-to-open rates. August 2012 ¹⁰⁸ Notably, the study finds that for the e-commerce sector, the word “coupon” has open rates that are 55.6% below the average for offers emails, with click rates also 85.8% below-average and CTOR 68.1% below-average. This appears to be in direct contradiction to results from an Epsilon study also released in July, which found that the keyword “coupon” was tops for email opens. However, that study only measured the 2011 holiday season, which may explain the discrepancy in results. August 2012 ¹⁰⁹ In the B2B and B2C sectors, open, click, and click-to-open rates were generally better for longer word counts, though 2-word subject lines performed best overall in the B2B sector. August 2012 ¹¹⁰ According to a July 2012 report from Experian, including the word “exclusive” in the subject line can provide a lift of 14% in promotion mailings (15.9% with vs. 14% without). Similarly, subject lines including “top 10″ or “top 5″ deliver open rates 13% higher than promotional emails without them (16.1% vs. 14.3%). August 2012 ¹¹¹ Also per the Experian findings, emails asking customers to rate and review purchased items generate 2 times higher open rates, 39% higher click rates, 22% higher transaction rates, and 32% higher revenue per email. August 2012 ¹¹² This opinion varied widely across industries with over 70 per cent of CEOs in education, telecommunications and retail expecting social media to be a key channel for customer engagement but only 34 per cent of CEOs in industrial products thinking likewise. July 2012 ¹¹³ Email marketing is a significant line-item in those budgets according to the Pardot survey, which revealed that 27% of B2B marketers allocate 26-50% of their budgets to email, and 9% more than half of their budgets. July 2012¹¹⁴ The most popular marketing tactics used by B2B companies are digital, according to [pdf] a survey released in July 2012 by Sagefrog Marketing Group. When asked which of 16 common marketing tactics they use, 94% of B2B marketers pointed to websites, followed by email (76%), social media (68%), and SEO (58%). July 2012 ¹¹⁵ While social media ranked third in popularity among the 16 marketing tactics, the 68% of respondents indicating use of this channel represents 14% point growth from 2011. 58% of companies rated social media as important (42%) or very important (16%), compared to just 10% who rated it unimportant. July 2012 ¹¹⁶ Social media is of course a broad category, and those B2B companies that use social media tactics use several of them. The top five in use are: social networks (79%, up from 66% last year); blogs (48%, up from 34%); micro-blogs (37%, up from 26%); video sharing (35%, up from 29%); and forums and communities (30%, up from 19%). July 2012 ¹¹⁷ Though they also grew in popularity from last year, photo sharing (16%), document sharing (15%), ratings and reviews (13%), and bookmarking/tagging (11%) are not in widespread use. July 2012 ¹¹⁸ 62% of companies in the Sagefrog study spend 5% or more of their revenue on marketing, and 13% companies allocate more than 15%. 44% expect to increase their marketing budgets next year (up from 40% last year), 50% expect to keep those budgets level, and just 6% plan to decrease their budgets. July 2012 ¹¹⁹ The Adyen report also found that 12.6% of daily deal site transactions originate from a mobile device, and 7.2% of retail sector transactions also come from a mobile device. July 2012 ¹²⁰ Despite having lower cost per click (CPC) rates than PCs, tablets offered a 68% higher ROI than PCs for US search advertisers in Q2, based on 20% higher conversion rates, according to a July 2012 report from Adobe. July 2012 ¹²¹ Overall, search spend increased on a year-over-year basis for PCs, tablets, and smartphones, with smartphones offering a slightly higher ROI than PCs. In Q2, for financial services advertisers, conversion rates for tablets were 22% higher than for PCs, while for retail campaigns, they were 19% higher. Smartphone conversion rates were 38% and 43% lower than for PCs, respectively. July 2012 ¹²² When it comes to ROI, tablets scored 55% higher than PCs for financial services advertisers, and 73% higher for retail campaigns. While paid search ROI was 12% lower for smartphones than PCs for the financial services sector, it was 16% higher for the retail sector. July 2012 ¹²³ A new study released in July by the IAB UK also finds tablet owners to be open to advertising: close to two-thirds of the survey respondents said they would prefer tablet applications to have lower upfront costs with more ads, rather than higher upfront costs with fewer ads. July 2012 ¹²⁴ According to the IAB UK study, 55% of tablet owners believe advertising can do things on tablets that it can’t on other devices, although 30% of the respondents have a negative opinion of the ads they have seen on tablets in the past. July 2012 ¹²⁵ Context is important to tablet owners: 95% say it is important that ads are not obtrusive and don’t interfere with their activities, and 82% believe the ads should adapt to the surrounding content. July 2012 ¹²⁶ Further details from the report indicate that a variety of partners provide social data to CMOs, including agencies (50.9%), marketing research teams (45.6%), and marketing communications (45.6%). A significant proportion of CMOs are sharing social data with a diverse array of teams, including brand management (59.6%), sales (36.8%), customer experience/web design (36%), product management/development (35.1%), and HR/recruiting (34.2%). July 2012 ¹²⁷ Despite recurring indications that some marketers are having difficulty measuring the ROI of their social media activities, and that these activities might not be benefiting them from a sales standpoint, roughly 3 in 4 CMOs are at least somewhat confident that their social efforts are having a measurable impact on sales, according to [download page] a Bazaarvoice survey of 100 members of The CMO Club. July 2012 ¹²⁸ Previous research has shown that most marketers believe social media benefits them in terms of brand awareness, and 82.3% of respondents to the Bazaarvoice survey are at least somewhat confident that their social efforts have a measurable impact on this indicator. Additionally, 81.5% show some confidence in social’s ability to have an impact on brand loyalty. July 2012 ¹²⁹ In fact, 89.4% of the CMOs surveyed said that social data has impacted at least some of their decisions, and 21.3% say social data impacts at least 1 in every 5 decisions they make. Close to half have also used social data for forecasting purposes, most commonly for sales projections. July 2012¹³⁰ Americans aren’t engaging with email at the same rate as citizens of other countries, according to a new study. U.S. residents open their email messages at a slightly lower rate (19.9%) than folks in Canada (20.7%) or Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), which recorded an average of 20.9%. July 2012 ¹³¹ Email messages scheduled as the work day begins and progresses see a marked decline in click rates, with rates not picking up again until the afternoon, before peaking overnight, finds MailerMailer in a July 2012 report covering more than 1.2 billion opt-in email newsletters sent in 2011. In H2, average click rates began declining at 6 AM and were lowest at 12 PM (1.3%), but increased steadily to 2.4% at 4 PM, reaching a peak of 5.8% at 12 AM. In H1, while the pattern was similar, click rates were highest overnight, hitting a high of 7.4% at 3 AM. July 2012 ¹³² Email open rates also were found to decline during the workday, before picking up in the afternoon and hitting highs of 18-19% at midnight. July 2012 ¹³³ It is worth noting that the email client samples were obviously different, but also that both the open rates and click rates found in the Informz study were significantly higher than in the MailerMailer study (the former with open rate highs of 39.2% and click rate highs of 21%). July 2012 ¹³⁴ Data from MailerMailer’s “Email Marketing Metrics Report” indicates that open rates in H1 were highest on Monday (11.6%) and Tuesday (11.5%), and lowest on Saturday (9.5%), while in H2, open rates were highest on Sunday (13.8%), Tuesday (12.8%), and Monday (12.7%), while also lowest on Saturday (10.8%). July 2012 ¹³⁵ Click rates were highest on Sunday in both H1 (3.5%) and H2 (6.7%), though there was no clear downward trend as the week went on. In H1, Tuesdays and Thursdays (both at 2.7%) saw the next-highest click rates, while in H2, Thursdays (4%) saw the next-highest. July 2012 ¹³⁶ Overall, open rates averaged 12.3% in H1 and 10.8% in H2, while click rates averaged 3.5% in H1 and 2.5% in H2. Both metrics were up year-over-year in H1, and down in H2. July 2012 ¹³⁷ According to that report, which measured messages sent by 1,124 brands from 20 countries throughout 2011 and Q1 2012, the mean open rate was 20.1% (19.9% in the US), while the median open rate was 15% (14.7% in the US). The top quartile saw an average open rate of 43.7% (44.1% in the US), compared to the bottom quartile’s average rate of 8% (7.8% in the US). July 2012 ¹³⁸ Average click rates in the Silverpop study were also higher: the mean click rate was 5.2% (5.4% in the US), while the median rate was 2.3% (same in the US). The top quartile boasted an average click rate of 16.6% (18.1% in the US), while the bottom quartile’s rate was a pedestrian 0.7% (same in the US). July 2012 ¹³⁹ Further details from the MailerMailer report indicates that personalizing emails may have a negative effect on open and click rates. While emails that were not personalized saw an average open rate of 11.5%, those with the subject line only personalized saw an average open rate of only 5.2%, while those with both subject line and message personalized saw an average rate of 3.2%. The only lift was found in emails where only the message was personalized - to 12.7%. July 2012 ¹⁴⁰ In terms of click rates, emails with only the message personalized (2.5%), only the subject line personalized (1.1%), and both the subject line and message personalized (0.5%) all saw lower average rates than for emails that were not personalized (3%). July 2012 ¹⁴¹ According to the MailerMailer report, the banking (16.8%), non-profit (16.1%), consulting (15.9%), and small business (15.9%) sectors had the highest open rates in 2011, while the medical (6.5%), media (7.5%), and education (8.2%) verticals had the lowest. July 2012 ¹⁴² The Silverpop study found computer software (24.7%), consumer services (22.6%), financial services (22.6%), and non-profits (21.2%) to have the highest average open rate, with education (15%) and healthcare (15.2%) having the lowest. Both travel and leisure (16.2%) and retail (17.1%) also saw among the lowest average open rates. July 2012 ¹⁴³ The MailerMailer report found the consulting (4.5%), consumer (4.3%), and transportation and wholesale (3.8%) sectors to have the highest click rates, with restaurant (0.6%), government (0.7%), and medical (0.8%) having the lowest. July 2012 ¹⁴⁴ According to Silverpop, media and publishing (8.9%), computer software (8.6%), consumer services (5.7%), and non-profits (5.4%) had the highest average click rates, while travel and leisure (2.3%) and real estate and construction (2.9%) occupied the other end of the spectrum. Retail emails saw an average click rate of 3.1%. July 2012 ¹⁴⁵ Data from the MailerMailer study also reveals that customers that sent the most frequent amount of messages - at least a few times a week - saw the lowest bounce rates (0.4%), while those mailing less than once a month saw the highest (4.4%). The average bounce rate for Silverpop clients was 2.1% (2.2% in the US). July 2012 ¹⁴⁶ According to MailerMailer, open rates were highest for emails with subject lines of 4-15 characters (15.2%), and lowest for emails with subject lines of more than 50 characters (10.4%). This trend for shorter subject lines to get the highest open rates was also observed by Informz (see link above). However, MailerMailer found a normal distribution for click rates when segregated by subject line length. July 2012 ¹⁴⁷ MailerMailer also saw click rates increasing alongside the number of links included, to a high of 4.9% for those with more than 20 links. July 2012 ¹⁴⁸ The Silverpop study reveals an average of 1.79 opens by opener, and 1.56 clicks by clicker. July 2012 ¹⁴⁹ The mean click-to-open rate (CTOR) - per Silverpop - was 19.3% (the median was 16.3%). Average CTOR was highest for media and publishing (24.2%), consumer services (20.5%), and non-profits (20.1%), with retail at 18.1%. July 2012 ¹⁵⁰ The average unsubscribe rate was 0.31% (0.27% in the US), while the media rate was 0.13% (same in the US). July 2012 ¹⁵¹ Marketers tend to be comfortable using established metrics for word-of-mouth (W-O-M) and social media measurement, with most currently using click-throughs (93%), daily or monthly active users (83%), and Facebook likes (82%). Many, however, are looking for better definition and clarity on other metrics that are less widely used, such as momentum effect, according to a survey from the Association of National Advertisers released in July. July 2012 ¹⁵² The least-used metric at 11% is the momentum effect, and it tops the list of metrics that require better definition or clarification (at 41% of respondents). Similarly, only 23% of marketers use value of a fan/follower as a metric, while 40% believe it requires clarification. And while 37% are measuring influence, 31% believe this metric needs more clarity. July 2012¹⁵³ Interestingly, only 20% believe that ROI needs to be better defined. Previous research from Wildfire has found that marketers lack a standard social media ROI metric, although they appear to gravitate towards various soft metrics such as presence, fans, and mentions. July 2012 ¹⁵⁴ Further data from ANA’s “2012 Digital/Social Media Survey” indicates that just 60% of respondents are measuring the ROI of their social media efforts, relatively unchanged from 61% last year. July 2012 ¹⁵⁵ By contrast, far larger proportions have processes in place to measure the effectiveness of SEM-paid keyword (90%), websites (89%), email marketing (88%), online ads (88%), SEO-organic (81%), and mobile (70%).s July 2012 ¹⁵⁶ The big movers from last year include: SEO-organic (81% measuring this year compared to 69% in 2011); viral video (50% vs. 58%); blogs (40% vs. 48%); video-on-demand (48% vs. 65%); and location-based apps (46% vs. 67%), among others. The drop in measurement for the latter channels may be in part due to the relative immaturity of marketers’ experience with some of those platforms. July 2012 ¹⁵⁷ Provided with a list of 19 new-media metrics, the highest proportion of marketers responding to the ANA survey rated purchases (67%) as a top-3 box rating on a 10-point scale of effectiveness, up from 53% in 2011. Time spent (54% vs. 39%), would recommend/forward to a friend (51% vs. 39%), and registrations in general (51% vs. 39%) also saw increases in the proportion considering them to be effective July 2012 ¹⁵⁸ New behavioral metrics identified this year included number of shares (49% rating effective) and number of replies (also at 49%), as well as interaction rates (42%), video views (40%), number of re-tweets (39%), and number of uploads (39%). Impressions (31%) and number of likes (30%) were rated as effective by the fewest respondents. July 2012 ¹⁵⁹ Just 6% report using social graph data for personalization, but 88% of those say it has a high impact on both ROI and engagement. By comparison, a plurality (34%) personalize based on personal data such as name and gender, with a relatively smaller 53% saying that this is highly effective for their ROI, and 71% saying it has a high impact on engagement. June 2012 ¹⁶⁰ Data from Econsultancy’s “Quarterly Intelligence Briefing” indicates that most marketers use increased conversions to measure the impact of personalization on ROI (70%) and engagement (61%). June 2012 ¹⁶¹ Other popular ways of measuring personalization’s impact on engagement include increased time spent on site (50%), positive feedback (e.g. social media mentions - 38%), and a lower bounce rate (36%). June 2012 ¹⁶² A similar proportion measure the impact of personalization on ROI via a lower bounce rate (34%) and an uptick in visitors (33%). Interestingly, only one-third measure the impact of personalization on ROI through an absolute ROI figure. June 2012 ¹⁶³ Of note, according to the Econsultancy survey, more agencies than companies are able to personalize an experience without explicit data. 48% of agency respondents said they can personalize an online experience based on anonymous data, compared to 42% of company respondents. By contrast, companies are more reliant on identifying an individual in order to personalize (49% vs. 37%). June 2012 ¹⁶⁴ Client-side marketers are more likely to disagree (36%) than agree (33%) that they use data effectively to maximize conversions. Agency respondents are only slightly more optimistic about their clients’ use of data, with 31% agreeing that they use it effectively to maximize conversions, versus 26% who disagree. June 2012 ¹⁶⁵ Client-side marketers also are more likely to disagree than agree that they run tests to see how different types of personalized content perform (48% vs. 27%). Agencies are largely in agreement (41% vs. 29%). June 2012¹⁶⁶ Respondents are split on whether or not their CMS is an enabler for personalization. 32% agree, compared to 34% who disagree, and 34% who are neutral. June 2012 ¹⁶⁷ According to the IDC's report, minimal growth in the overall mobile phone market is primarily due to the projected 10.0% decline in feature phone shipments this year. Many owners of feature phones, sometimes known as "talk and text" devices, are holding on to their phones in light of uncertain job and economic prospects. June 2012 ¹⁶⁸ According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, the worldwide mobile phone market is forecast to grow slightly more than 4.0% year over year in 2012, the lowest annual growth rate since 2009. The IDC found that the lack of groeth in shipments is due to a sharp decline in the feature phone market and unfavourable economic conditions. June 2012 ¹⁶⁹ Consumers are discussing companies online, offering advice and even criticizing brands, whether or not these brands are active in the social space. In 2011, TNS found that 64% of consumers worldwide wrote about brands online in order to offer advice, and 52% said they did so to criticize a brand. Companies should have processes and tools in place to track what is being said, and a system for following up on comments when it is appropriate. June 2012 ¹⁷⁰ In January 2012, customer experience management software company Satmetrix surveyed over 1,000 B2B and B2C companies worldwide and found that more than half of B2C companies (53%) both tracked mentions and followed up on them, while an additional 25% only tracked and 4% only followed up. This is compared to only 27% of B2B companies that both tracked mentions and followed up on them. Almost half of B2B companies (47%) did not track or follow up on brand mentions on social media. June 2012 ¹⁷¹ Of those companies that have a system in place for tracking and following up, Satmetrix found that the most popular process companies used was having a dedicated team that monitored and responded to customer feedback. In North America, 48% of these companies had a team place, while 49% of companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa had the same. June 2012 ¹⁷² Looking at the differences worldwide, US-based companies were more likely to use social media to track mentions and follow up, with 46% of US companies and 45% of North American companies saying they did both. In Asia, the percentage of companies was lower, at 39%, and in both Latin America and Australia/New Zealand it was 34%. June 2012 ¹⁷³ However, just 28% used that information to go after higher-value sales and repeat purchases. This is indicative that while the majority of companies can market to customers at the group or profile level, only a select handful are able to do so at the individual customer level. June 2012 ¹⁷⁴ Marketers looking to leverage “Big Data” to reach and resonate with customers at the individual level must be able to track, aggregate and analyze all customer-related data throughout the product lifecycle, but CMO Council found few respondents (30%) had a key tool—a customer relationship management (CRM) system—in place to do so. Most marketers did, however, utilize the three critical marketing platforms and applications: email (75%), website analytics and optimization (72%), and social media monitoring (56%). June 2012 ¹⁷⁵ The “Big Data” conversation has gained momentum since late last year. An October 2011 study from McKinsey & Company found the greatest number of marketing executives worldwide (32%) felt the ability to generate and leverage deep customer insights was the most important digital challenge they faced. June 2012 ¹⁷⁶ Unfortunately, most companies are still in the early stages of Big Data integration. A February 2012 survey from DataXu showed just 30% of US executives reported the ability to leverage the value of their customer data. June 2012 ¹⁷⁷ But May findings from CMO Council were more optimistic: 51% of marketers worldwide said they leveraged data moderately well, with 7% reporting that they did so extremely well. June 2012 ¹⁷⁸ The majority of marketers worldwide (65%) used customer profile data to enhance their marketing programs. Social media data and marketing campaign response and engagement data were also used by 61% and 51% of respondents, respectively. June 2012 ¹⁷⁹ Though marketers are making the most of customer-provided information, less than half (40%) had access to purchase history, and just 12% had access to loyalty and rewards information—two data types instrumental for personalizing marketing communications based on past customer actions and anticipated future activities. June 2012 ¹⁸⁰ The study found 72% of marketers worldwide used data to craft more timely, targeted messaging, and 58% of respondents used it to build richer customer segments and profiles, allowing them to create more targeted, nurturing campaigns. June 2012 ¹⁸¹ More than half (52%) also used customer insight and intelligence to directly influence the bottom line by cross-selling or upselling customers. June 2012 ¹⁸² Merchants are allocating 43.4% of their search marketing budgets to PPC, which is an 8.8% rise from last year, and 25.8% to SEO, which represents a 1% point drop. June 2012 ¹⁸³ Email and search engine optimization (SEO) continue to provide the most value to merchants’ online strategies, per a [download page] Multichannel Merchant survey released in June 2012. Respondents gave email a mean rating of 8.42 on a 10-point scale (with 10 being most valuable), up from 8.32 last year. SEO followed with a rating of 7.78, also rising from 7.62 the previous year. Paid search (6.57), social media (6.18) and display ads (5.1) rounded out the top 5. June 2012 ¹⁸⁴ Data from Multichannel Merchant’s “MCM Outlook 2012-2013″ indicates that sales is no longer the most popular metric among merchants for measuring their SEO and search engine marketing (SEM) efforts. This year, 86.1% said they are measuring traffic, representing a 23% increase from 70.2% last year. Traffic overtook sales, which dipped from 80.2% last year to 77.4% of respondents this year. June 2012 ¹⁸⁵ This year, merchants are increasingly examining total conversions (72.2% vs. 52.9% in 2011) and click-throughs (66.1% vs. 50.4%), while social media enters the picture as a metric for 28.7% of respondents. June 2012¹⁸⁶ When it comes to improving search engine rankings, most merchants (62.6%) continue to look at optimizing their landing pages, though the popularity of this method has dropped more than 11% from last year. Last year’s second-most popular way to improve rankings, blogging and links, declined by a relatively smaller margin, falling from 61.3% to 58.3% of respondents. June 2012 ¹⁸⁷ Overtaking blogging and links in popularity this year is analytics, with 3 in 5 merchants saying they are reaching deeper into analytics to improve their rankings, marking a 21% rise from last year. Also jumping in popularity are the use of videos, up 14.5% to 44.3% of respondents, and increasing PPC terms, up 58.4% to 42.6% of respondents. June 2012 ¹⁸⁸ For the second year running, merchants are most likely to be tracking conversion rates (79.3%) for their SEO and pay-per-click (PPC) efforts. Average order value (70.3%) and ROI (57.7%) are also popular to track. June 2012 ¹⁸⁹ SEM budgets now make up 23.5% of merchants’ marketing budgets, representing a 5.59% increase year-over-year. June 2012 ¹⁹⁰ The results below indicate that 44% of companies are currently integrating on-site content management with display advertising, and that this has had a positive effect on conversions, according to 66% of respondents ( as highlighted in Figure 26). June 2012 ¹⁹¹ Unsurprisingly, the website is the primary channel used for marketing, with 94% of responding companies having a website as part of their marketing efforts. This is followed by email, which is utilised by some 89% of companies, while SEO and social are used by 83% of marketers. June 2012 ¹⁹² C-suite executives display a similar attitude towards big data and analytics: roughly half place this trend within their top 10 priorities. One-quarter indicate it to be a top 3 priority, and 9% say it is their top priority. May 2012¹⁹³ This finding comes on the heels of recent research released by IBM, which revealed that a majority of global marketers believe they have the support of their senior management to execute digital marketing campaigns. May 2012 ¹⁹⁴ Key trends in digital business are appearing on C-suite executives’ corporate agendas, finds McKinsey & Company in survey results released in May 2012. 52% of the almost 1,500 executives surveyed said that digital marketing and social tools are at least a top 10 corporate priority, including one-quarter overall indicating this trend to be at least among their top 3 strategic priorities, and 8% saying it is the top priority of their organization. May 2012 ¹⁹⁵ For now, the PC remains the No. 1 digital touchpoint for internet users in Canada. However, as smartphones gain a solid majority of mobile phone users—eMarketer estimates 62% penetration in 2016—they will become a solid and competitive secondary touchpoint. May 2012 ¹⁹⁶ In May 2012, Canadian telecommunications firm Rogers released the “Innovation Report: 2012 Trend Watch,” which indicated that 79% of internet users in Canada agreed with the statement “The internet allows me to connect to people and information in ways that make my life better,” and a majority also expect the internet’s role in their lives to increase over the next five years. May 2012 ¹⁹⁷ Smartphones, which eMarketer expects to be in the hands of more than 50% of mobile phone users in Canada in 2013, are increasingly factoring into the web’s growing influence. May 2012 ¹⁹⁸ According to the survey conducted by market research agency Vision Critical, among internet users who owned a smartphone, 74% of respondents used their device to communicate with friends and family. Other popular smartphone activities included using maps and directions (59%), accessing social networks (52%) and playing games (50%), but these rates still lagged behind PC usage, which were at 86% for communicating with friends and family, 86% for maps and directions, 80% for connecting to social networks and 66% for playing games. May 2012¹⁹⁹ The overwhelming majority of those considering a move from manual site tagging to tag management believe it will increase their marketing agility and speed of marketing activities (both at 86%), and more than 8 in 10 respondents who have implemented a solution agree (81% and 84%, respectively) on these benefits. May 2012 ²⁰⁰ In fact, marketers using a tag management solution are more likely to report benefits such as reduced tagging costs (82%) and increased site speed and performance (76%) than those considering the solution are to expect them (68% and 61%, respectively). May 2012 ²⁰¹ Overall, 87% of respondents agree that managing website tags is fundamental to digital marketing. May 2012 ²⁰² Data from “The ROI of Tag Management” indicates that among those using manual tagging, 54% complain that the tags take too long to be implemented, while 53% say that tagging takes tech resources off other projects. Close to one-third reported that their site tags slowed down their site’s performance. May 2012 ²⁰³ 88% of respondents agree that complexity in digital marketing will continue to increase as more data-driven tools become standard to the marketers’ toolkit. May 2012 ²⁰⁴ Marketers looking to engage with tablet owners will encounter a happy, well-adjusted group, according to the report. Overall, tablet users are 22% more likely than adults in general to say they are excited, and 22% less likely to be overwhelmed. Similarly, they are more likely to be confident, happy, and hopeful, and less likely to be worried, sad, or bored. In fact, while using their tablets, 60% are alert, and 83% are in a good mood. May 2012 ²⁰⁵ Meanwhile, the Media Behavior Institute study finds that browsing the internet (65%) is the most popular tablet activity, followed by emailing (52%), reading the news (37%), gaming (36%), reading magazines and newspapers (34%), and accessing social networks (30%). May 2012 ²⁰⁶ That being said, fleeting attention spans can be channeled into successful campaigns by capitalizing on the fact that 86% of people use their smartphone while consuming other media: 52% watching TV, 51% listening to music on their smartphone, and 34% watching movies. May 2012 ²⁰⁷ Marketers should keep in mind, however, that much like searching on a traditional computer, SEO still plays a crucial role as 61% of smartphone users only look at the first page of results May 2012 ²⁰⁸ Over the same three months, social networking climbed from 24% in February to 25% in March, and then to 37% in April. April 2012 ²⁰⁹ Comparing the average time that smartphone users spent across app categories between the first quarter of 2011 and 2012, Flurry found that gaming dropped by 4% -- down to 24 minutes per day -- while social networking increased by 60% -- up to 24 minutes per day. April 2012 ²¹⁰ For whatever reason, Flurry found that year-over-year growth in social networking app usage has been staggering. Not only has time spent increased by 60%, but also within a growing amount of total time spent in smartphone apps among consumers -- from 68 to 77 minutes -- representing a growth rate of 13%. April 2012 ²¹¹ Flurry also found that ad revenue in apps is being driven primarily by the gaming and social networking categories. For February, March and April, game apps earned 35%, 35% and 36% of total ad revenue in Flurry’s AppCircle ad network, which it says reaches over 300 million unique devices per month. April 2012 ²¹² Stewart believes that email use among teens may increase with the spread of omnipresent smartphones. “We do have this reality that email and mobile are starting to converge in ways that we could not even imagine just a couple of years ago,” he said. He presented data showing 37% of people agree with the statement “I use email more often since getting a smartphone.” Also, 29% say their experience accessing email on a smartphone is “as good as accessing email on a desktop/laptop computer.” April 2012 ²¹³ In a presentation that used data from the Pew Research Center and other sources, Trendline Interactive CEO Morgan Stewart offered research that email marketers might find discouraging, showing that just 6% of teens use email daily and 39% say they never use email. April 2012 ²¹⁴ Looking at various age segments, Stewart said: “The biggest adoption or uptick in the use of email is when people are in that 18- to-24 year-old time frame … they are just starting to use email. Think about that from acquisition, on-boarding standpoint. This is a key seminal point in our ability to acquire and work with and attract new subscribers.” April 2012 ²¹⁵ Only 35 percent of companies have incentives for email subscribers to join their social programs; only 23 percent seek to build subscribers in the other direction. April 2012 ²¹⁶ Agencies report that 60 percent of their clients are in fact increasing their email usage. April 2012 ²¹⁷ One area for improvement is the symbiosis between email and subscribers' social channels. The study found that 69 percent of marketers use sharing icons that link their email and social media, but that is the extent to which most companies integrate these two channels. April 2012 ²¹⁸ 75 percent of respondents describe competition with social media as “somewhat” or “very” challenging. April 2012 ²¹⁹ 69 percent report that young people are abandoning email as a primary channel. April 2012 ²²⁰ 69 percent of companies use sharing icons to link their email with their social media April 2012 ²²¹ 55 percent of client-side marketers are using lead source to personalize/segment their mailings, while 53 percent are using demographic data. April 2012 ²²² Email automation is rated as effective by 80 percent of client-side marketers, with stages of the buying cycle the highest rated trigger. April 2012 ²²³ At the same time, 75 percent of marketers described competition from social media as “somewhat” or “very” challenging, and 69 percent said they believe that young people are abandoning email as a primary channel. April 2012 ²²⁴ 65 percent also report that they have problems getting email budgets that the channel deserves. April 2012 ²²⁵ Roughly 3 in 10 marketers polled by the company cited increased customer loyalty and increased customer engagement as benefits of their social media marketing efforts, while one-quarter pointed to increased traffic to their website and about 1 in 5 attributed an increased sales turnover to their active use. April 2012 ²²⁶ Even so, just 1 in 10 using social media said they are able to effectively measure the benefits of their marketing efforts. April 2012 ²²⁷ Just 24% of the marketers reported being able to update various social media channels using one platform, and only 6% have a centralized dashboard to display their social media activity and results. April 2012 ²²⁸ 77% of the marketers surveyed are running an online community or are planning to do so in the next year, up from 73% last year. 29% set up their social media channels in the last 12 months, while 35% have been actively using social media for more than a year. April 2012 ²²⁹ 28% of social media activities are handled by a marketing executive, 16% by the IT manager, and 14% by a PR executive. Only 3% say that their social media activities are being run by external agencies. April 2012 ²³⁰ Less than one-quarter of respondents said that social media is an integrated part of their online presence. April 2012 ²³¹ Meanwhile, just 22% of the EPiServer survey respondents said they have a dedicated social media or community manager, which is unchanged from a year earlier. Nearly twice as many respondents (40%) said they do not plan to appoint someone dedicated to social media in the next year. And less than half of the marketers surveyed reported monitoring their own forums, communities, or blogs. April 2012 ²³² December 2011 survey results from the CMO Council also found customer engagement to be one of social media’s top benefits, cited by 55% of respondents, with half also saying they were unable to quantify or measure return or impact on their brand. April 2012 ²³³ Data from EPiServer’s “Tackling the Social Challenge” indicates that despite most respondents indicating difficulties with measuring the benefits of social media, a majority have increased the amount of time dedicated to managing the channel, with 20% expecting to further increase their time spent in the next year. And 17% report they are likely to set up more social channels in the next 12 months. April 2012 ²³⁴ Survey results from Social Media Examiner suggest that these marketers may want to up their time investment considerably if they want to boost sales: although only 40% of respondents to the Social Media Examiner survey said that their social media marketing has benefited them by improving their sales, the proportion seeing increased sales rose to a majority among marketers who spend 11 or more hours a week, while nearly two-thirds who spend more than 30 hours weekly said they earn new business through their efforts. April 2012 ²³⁵ Of the nontelevision-derived ads, in 2011, 2% were optimized to be viewed on a mobile device, while 8% took advantage of the web by including some kind of interactivity either within the ad, or by surrounding the ad video with static or interactive branded content. April 2012 ²³⁶ VINDICO’s study compared ads featured in long-form video content, which it defined as having a narrative arc and lasting at least 10 minutes, with those placed in short-form video, described as being 10 minutes or shorter. The company found that ads in short-form content had a CTR of 1.31%, compared with 0.83% for long-form content. April 2012 ²³⁷ However, ads served in long-form video had a higher completion rate, 88%, compared with 76% for ads placed in short-form content. That’s because viewers who have committed to watching a long-form program are more willing to sit through ads, especially mid-roll ads. April 2012 ²³⁸ The research also found that video ads were evolving to take advantage of mobile users and the web’s interactivity. In 2010, 98% of online video ads had simply been repurposed from television campaigns. But in 2011, that figure dipped to 90%. April 2012 ²³⁹ In terms of the worldwide (marketing) staffing component index, recruitment showed a slight dip in April. The global staffing index dropped from 59.8 in March to 58.5 in April, which Warc insight suggests may reflect seasonal factors rather than the start of a trend. April 2012 ²⁴⁰ Sentiment regarding budgets continues to steadily improving among global marketers, finds Warc in its April 2012 Global Marketing Index (GMI). The budget component score of the index moved to 53.7 in April, improving from a level of 51.5 in March, when it first passed the threshold score of 50 that indicates a generally improving environment. April’s score is about 10 points higher than 6 months ago, when the GMI was first launched and it was at a low of 43.9. April was also the first month that the budget index score for Europe passed 50 (50.4). April 2012 ²⁴¹ Warc’s headline Global Marketing Index (GMI), which tracks overall industry opinion as a composite of marketing budgets, staffing, and trading conditions, rose from 57.4 in March to 58.1 in April. Respondents from the Americas were again the most positive, with headline GMI growing from 59.7 to 61.3 (a score over 60 indicates rapid growth). Sentiment among marketers representing the Asia Pacific also showed some growth, up from 57.9 to 58.3. While Europe remained behind in sentiment, it increased marginally from 55 to 55.2. April 2012 ²⁴² As with previous months, digital (excluding mobile) and mobile channels continued to attract global spend in April, with index scores of 78.3 and 70.2, respectively, although both fell slightly from the previous month. April 2012 ²⁴³ Print again experienced the largest reduction in expenditure, with a score of 37.1, although that was a slight increase from 36.1 last month. April 2012²⁴⁴ TV was the only traditional medium to show net growth, rising from 48.8 in March to 51.6 this month. April 2012 ²⁴⁵ However, emails sent in the morning had the lowest click rate (16.5%), behind ones sent at night (18.6%), at midday (19.7%), and in the late afternoon (21%). April 2012 ²⁴⁶ Interestingly, the Knotice “Mobile Email Opens Report 2nd Half 2011″ found that almost all users (96.39%) are opening emails on a single device, a finding with strong implications for marketers who have not yet optimized their emails for mobile devices. April 2012 ²⁴⁷ The share of all email opens occurring on mobile devices continues its ascent, reaching 27.39% in the second half of 2011, representing 35% growth from 20.24% in H1 2011, and more than double the 13.37% share from Q4 2010, according to a report released in April 2012 by Knotice April 2012 ²⁴⁸ Indeed, while desktop-only opens accounted for 71.34% of overall opens, phone-only opens held 18.59% share and tablet-only opens 6.46% share. Only 2.39% of opened emails were a case of an individual opening the email on both a desktop and mobile device, with 70% of those users opening the email first on a mobile and then later on a desktop. April 2012²⁴⁹ For example, when examining click-to-open (CTO) rates by industry, consumer products ranks best among mobile emails with an 15.61% CTO, though that remains behind desktop’s 23.77% CTO for the same industry. April 2012 ²⁵⁰ And while financial services takes the top billing for tablets (18.31%), that still does not match the CTO rate for the industry on desktops (21.38%). April 2012 ²⁵¹ Other industries show similarly lower CTO rates on phones and tablets compared to desktops: association (6.93% and 8.43% vs. 20.02%, respectively), health care (7.92% and 8.68% vs. 19.53%, respectively), and retail (10.07% and 10.32% vs. 20.06%, respectively) show some of the most significant differences. April 2012 ²⁵² Basing its analysis of metrics collected from more than 600 million emails sent by over 700 large and mid-sized associations that used its email marketing platform in 2011, Informz found that morning emails saw an average open rate of 39.2%, ahead of those sent at midday (33.9%), in the late afternoon (32.1%), and at night (32%). April 2012 ²⁵³ Social media is the most popular channel marketers use for driving traffic to content with 96% of respondents currently utilizing. Usage is up from 88% in 2011 April 2012 ²⁵⁴ 82% of brand and agency marketers expect to increase content marketing efforts in 2012. April 2012 ²⁵⁵ One hundred percent of the marketers surveyed utilize content marketing as a part of their overall marketing strategy and are currently creating digital content specifically for informational and/or entertainment value to consumers. April 2012 ²⁵⁶ 87% of marketers create video content, making it the most popular medium. Written content, such as blog posts and articles, also has a place in content marketing strategies. Other visual mediums such as slideshows and photo galleries are used by 44% of respondents. April 2012 ²⁵⁷ Other popular traffic acquisition tactics include paid search marketing, display advertising, and organic search optimization. Paid search saw the biggest increase in adoption over our 2011 survey with an increase of 9%. April 2012 ²⁵⁸ Social media engagement ranked as the most popular factor that marketers use to measure the success of their content marketing efforts, which is unsurprising given that they rely heavily on social media platforms for content distribution. In fact, consideration of social media engagement as a success metric increased drastically from the survey results last year (66%). April 2012 ²⁵⁹ The 2012 survey results found increased emphasis on success metrics that focus on brand awareness and target consumers in the top of the purchase funnel such as social media engagement and organic search referrals. There was also a concurrent drop in direct response metrics such as lead generation, which fell from 69% to 53%. April 2012 ²⁶⁰ From this year’s survey results, it’s clear that marketers are beginning to rely on content marketing as a trusted tool to reach consumers, concludes the report. And, the industry shows no signs of slowing down, with 82% of respondents planning to increase or greatly increase their efforts in the coming year. April 2012 ²⁶¹ In a November 2011 study from Wildfire Interactive, 97% of companies reported that there was value in social media outreach, but until these companies learn to monitor open social networks and incorporate their findings into business results, proving that value will continue to be a challenge. April 2012 ²⁶² However, while nearly half of companies were not monitoring social media, 22% of respondents said they would increase monitoring significantly in the next year, with an additional 37.9% saying they would do so over the next one to two years. April 2012 ²⁶³ Social media allows companies to interact directly with customers, and many of those surveyed took that into consideration as a reason why they monitor social media. When looking at what metrics these companies track on social media, 26.8% of respondents mentioned customer satisfaction and 23.7% said overall buzz. Brand experience was also cited by 21% of respondents. April 2012 ²⁶⁴ As these companies track and monitor social media, they also plan to leverage these findings in their business processes. More than a quarter of respondents said they currently leverage social media metrics in business practices (25.7%), while 28.76% said their companies were giving preliminary consideration to this tactic. Social can help companies understand more about their target customer and better develop products and services to meet their needs. April 2012 ²⁶⁵ Data shows new digital media are experiencing a rapid adoption rate—78 percent of B2B companies, for instance, report using social network marketing—but that marketing measurement is not keeping with the same pace. “In particular,” the study claims, “measurement of digital marketing with financial metrics (such as market share, revenue, profit, or lifetime customer value) is lagging. March 2012 ²⁶⁶ Only 14 percent of those companies using social network marketing are tying it to financial metrics March 2012 ²⁶⁷ Such channel-specific metrics, by extension, prove challenging when it comes to integrating digital and traditional marketing into a single measurement model, as reported by 77 percent of companies surveyed. March 2012 ²⁶⁸ Roughly 2 in 5 respondents believe that they are behind the curve when it comes to digital marketing. March 2012 ²⁶⁹ Social media and search advertising are projected to be the most popular advertising tools this year, each cited by 24% of respondents to a PointRoll survey [pdf] of US marketing professionals, conducted by Kelton Research and released in March 2012. Display advertising followed closely, chosen by 22% of respondents. There was then a significant drop-off to online video (11%), mobile or tablet ads (7%), and mobile or tablet apps (6%). Just 1% chose email, text/SMS, or social gaming. Search advertising is more popular among respondents at director level or above, compared to those in supervisory or managerial positions (30% vs. 19%). March 2012²⁷⁰ In fact, a majority of respondents are planning to up their spend on a variety of digital channels, a position that traditional channels are not slated to share. Among digital channels, the largest proportion say they will increase their spending on social media marketing or ads (79%), closely followed by those who will increase their budgets for mobile marketing or ads (75%). March 2012 ²⁷¹ A comparatively fewer 55% say they will increase spending on search advertising, though this compares favorably to just 7% who will either decrease spending (3%) or not use this tool (4%). March 2012 ²⁷² Conversely, out-of-home marketing or ads will get an increase from just 16% of marketing professionals, on par with the proportion who will decrease spending in this area. March 2012 ²⁷³ Marketing professionals would pay a company an average of $107,500 to manage an integrated digital campaign. March 2012 ²⁷⁴ Almost all respondents predict they will use online video this year. The most popular formats are in-banner (60%), in-stream (49%) and dynamic or customized video ads (42%). March 2012 ²⁷⁵ When measured against a broader base, like mobile phone users (eMarketer estimated 59.1 million mobile phone users in Mexico in 2011, compared to 40.4 million internet users), smartphone penetration drops considerably. The Competitive Intelligence Unit (CIU) found that smartphone penetration among mobile phone users in Mexico was 14% at the end of 2011. March 2012 ²⁷⁶ For comparison, the Interactive Advertising Bureau México (IAB México) survey “Estudio de consumo de medios digitales entre internautas mexicanos 2011,” conducted by Millward Brown in July–August 2011, found that 33% of internet users in Mexico owned a smartphone, up from 14% in 2010. In the same period, tablet ownership went from 4% to 7%. March 2012 ²⁷⁷ In December 2011, a global study by UM (formerly Universal McCann) titled “The Business of Social: Social Media Tracker 2012,” found that smartphone and tablet penetration rates among active internet users in Mexico stood at 45% and 16%, respectively, outpacing those of the US and Canada. March 2012 ²⁷⁸ Responses were similar when it came to social media integration into sales force enablement: 23% had begun doing so some time ago, while one-quarter had no plans to do so. March 2012 ²⁷⁹ Data from “Organize for Success in The Connected World” indicates that almost 3 in 10 senior marketers have no long-term (at least 3 years out) strategy for becoming a social business, and have no plans to begin implementing one. In fact, just one-third said they had started a long-term strategy either some time ago (17%) or this year (16%). March 2012 ²⁸⁰ When asked to what degree various parties owned the social strategy for their business, respondents reported a wide array of partial owners, including sales (45%), corporate communications (41%), marketing (39%), PR agency (39%), the office of the CEO (38%), and a brand agency (35%). Marketing (39%) was most often tabbed for full ownership of the social strategy, followed by corporate communications (30%). March 2012²⁸¹ 59% of senior marketers either agree (39%) or strongly agree (20%) that companies that do not fully embrace social media will not survive, according to [pdf] a recently-released study commissioned by Facebook and conducted by Forrester Consulting. March 2012 ²⁸² The survey of 101 VP- and C-level marketing professionals found 71% of senior marketers agreeing that companies can gain competitive advantage by leveraging social media, and 60% also agreeing that social media enables businesses to be more successful. March 2012 ²⁸³ Despite a majority of respondents believing that their level of social media adoption could put their survival at stake, integration remains at relatively low levels. Just 37% said they started fully integrated social media into their marketing organization some time ago, while an additional 17% said they had begun doing so this year (the survey was conducted in December 2011). March 2012 ²⁸⁴ This means that close to half have not begun fully integrating social media into their marketing organization, including 16% of the respondents who have no plan to do so. This same trend was found in a survey of CMOs by Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, released in February 2012. March 2012²⁸⁵ In fact, 18.4% of respondents rated the extent of their integration of social media a 1 on a 7-point scale, where 1 represents no integration at all. And only 21.1% of the CMOs rated their firm’s integration of social media efforts a top 2 box score. March 2012 ²⁸⁶ Meanwhile, the survey indicates that levels of integration throughout entire companies are even less mature. Only 12% said they had started some time ago to fully integrate social media throughout their company, while 29% had started this year. By comparison, 20% had no plans to do so. March 2012 ²⁸⁷ Globally, only 76.5% of commercial emails reached their intended inbox in the second half of 2011, down from 81% in H1 2011, details ReturnPath in a March 2012 study. March 2012 ²⁸⁸ The remaining roughly 1 in 4 emails that did not reach the inbox wound up either in a spam/junk folder (8.7%) or were blocked by ISP-level filtering (15.1%). March 2012 ²⁸⁹ Regionally, Europe had the highest rate of commercial emails reaching the inbox (85%), followed by North America (79%), Central and Latin America (72%), and Asia-Pacific (67%). March 2012 ²⁹⁰ Commercial emails targeted to B2B recipients had better global success rates than overall commercial emails. 86% reached the intended inbox, up from 80% in H1. Although the proportion winding up in a spam/junk folder increased from 8% to 12%, the proportion blocked by ISP-level filtering declined dramatically, from 12% to 2%. March 2012 ²⁹¹ North America saw a large fall in deliverability in H2, with inbox placement rates falling from 86.5% to 79.3%. US success rates dropped from 86.5% to 80.78%, with a corresponding 30% increase in spam folder delivery (to 9.9%) and 57% increase in blocked or missing emails (to 9.4%). March 2012 ²⁹² US SMBs certainly seemed to notice an increase in spam: according to survey results released in March 2012 by GFI Software, 52% of US SMBs say that the volume of spam their organization receives has increased over the past year, compared to just 16% who say that it has decreased. March 2012 ²⁹³ Breaking down the data by popular industry types, ReturnPath found that the gaming and retail verticals fared comparatively worse than financial services, banking, and daily deal sites. In fact, just 77% of retail emails found their way into inboxes, while only 59% of gaming company emails did so. March 2012 ²⁹⁴ Although retailers suffered more from missing or blocked emails than spam folder deliveries (16% vs. 4%), the opposite was true for gaming companies, with a massive 38% of their emails ending up in spam folders. March 2012 ²⁹⁵ These concerns appear to be prominent in the retail space: a November 2011 report from the e-tailing group, sponsored by Bronto, indicates that just 28% of merchants say their data allows them to currently receive a 360-degree of their customer’s engagement with them. March 2012 ²⁹⁶ 39% of global company marketers say that they view social media and email as complementary channels, while 51% view them as separate, according to [download page] a March 2012 report from Econsultancy in association with Adestra. March 2012 ²⁹⁷ The proportion of respondents not involved with social media dropped 10% points from 2011 to 2012, and that proportion appears to be split on how to view these channels: this year, the percentage viewing them as separate rose 6% points, while the percentage seeing them as complementary rose 4 points. March 2012 ²⁹⁸ The same dynamic exists among agency respondents: the proportion saying their clients view the channels as separate rose 2% points to 49% this year, as did the proportion who viewed them as complementary, to 40%. This increase was offset by a 5% point decrease in those saying their clients are not involved in social media. March 2012 ²⁹⁹ According to a report released in February 2012 by Econsultancy in partnership with the Email Experience Council of the Direct Marketing Association, 75% of US organizations say that competition with social media for recipients’ time and attention is either “very challenging” or “somewhat challenging” to their future success in email. March 2012 ³⁰⁰ Indeed, according to Econsultancy’s latest report, only 9% of company marketers say that their company’s email activity and social media marketing are well integrated, although an additional 41% say some integration exists. Even so, 43% say there is no integration between the two channels, and the proportion saying the areas are well integrated has only risen 2% points in the past year. March 2012 ³⁰¹ Agencies report higher levels of integration for their clients: 12% say their email activity is integrated well with their social media marketing, and a further 56% indicate there is some integration. In fact, the proportion reporting the areas being well integrated rose 7% points over the year. March 2012 ³⁰² Marketers not yet integrating email and social media may be missing an opportunity: according to March 2012 data from VerticalResponse, SMBs using its email marketing service and also engaged in social media marketing for their business (defined as activity on the company’s social media marketing platform) experience a 28% higher open rate on their email marketing campaigns compared to those not using the social media platform. March 2012 ³⁰³ And January 2012 analysis from GetResponse suggests that emails that include social sharing buttons have a click-through rate 115% higher than those do not (5.6% vs. 2.6%). March 2012 ³⁰⁴ 40% of company respondents see email marketing as either not very successful (33%) or unsuccessful (7%) in this regard, while a further 35% are unsure. By comparison, only 1% see their email marketing as very successful in generating social media activity, while 24% say it is quite successful. March 2012 ³⁰⁵ Agencies report a higher satisfaction level: 45% say their clients’ efforts are either very successful (4%) or quite successful (41%), compared to 37% who consider email either not very successful (37%) or unsuccessful (2%). March 2012 ³⁰⁶ Agencies say that incentives to engage (61%) and share-with-network functionality (60%) are the most successful email marketing techniques for generating social media activity. Among company respondents, the leading techniques are share-with-network functionality (51%) and consistent cross-channel content (50%). March 2012 ³⁰⁷ eMarketer estimates that in 2012, Canada will reach 26.4 million internet users and overall online buyer penetration will reach 60.8%. As online marketing channels become increasingly crowded, group deals remain an important touchpoint in a marketer’s repertoire. February 2012 ³⁰⁸ While a lot of the initial hype has been followed by hand-wringing, a December 2011 report from Epsilon found that internet users in Canada were still buying and using group deals as recently as last summer. In August 2011, 42% of respondents said they received group deal emails daily and 9% said they made a purchase every few weeks. February 2012³⁰⁹ Fifty-nine percent of execs believe businesses that do not routinely leverage social media will not survive, according to a Forrester Research survey. And 71 percent said companies taking social media seriously gain a competitive business advantage, the survey found. February 2012 ³¹⁰ Three other interesting data findings: 41 percent of the execs' firms have begun using social media to market products, manage staff, and optimize operations. 40 percent plan to start employing social media as a marketing and operations tool. 76 percent said social media is a brand builder. February 2012 ³¹¹ As of December 2011, eMarketer estimates, just over 1.2 billion people around the world used social networking sites at least once per month. That represented 23.1% growth over 2010, and double-digit growth will continue throughout eMarketer’s forecast period, though the rate of change will decrease as the market matures. February 2012 ³¹² In 2012, the US will have the greatest share of social network users as a percentage of the total population (49.9%), followed by Canada (49.3%), South Korea (46.6%), Australia (44.4%) and Russia (41.9%). February 2012 ³¹³ This suggests that email “share with a friend” programs are not necessarily aimed at directly growing subscriber lists or persuading new prospects to opt in—just 7.4% of respondents said the primary purpose of their social marketing was to get new names for their database. February 2012 ³¹⁴ Humorous marketing emails ran a relatively distant second, with just under 21% of marketers saying these emails got the most shares. And email campaigns with direct incentives for sharing showed no higher success rate in terms of shares than email announcements with new information but no sharing incentive. February 2012 ³¹⁵ One answer, according to an October 2011 survey from Jack Morton Worldwide, may be social media. Social media users in Brazil, China and India were more likely to consider social network sites a good source of word-of-mouth information on brand experiences than were users in the US, at 31%, 23% and 27%, respectively, vs. 18% in the US. February 2012 ³¹⁶ According to a recently-released JiWire report measuring mobile consumer behavior in Q4 2011, 80% of mobile consumers prefer ads that are locally relevant to them, and three-quarters of consumers have taken action in response to a location-specific message. February 2012 ³¹⁷ 52% of mobile-local search ads on the xAd network yielded calls to local businesses following the initial click in Q4 2011, compared to 30% for display ads, according to [download page] a report released in February 2012 by xAd. The leading secondary action for display was accessing maps and/or driving directions (50%), compared to 42% for search ads. The biggest discrepancy between search and display was in the area of accessing more information and/or business reviews: 20% of display-ad users accessed that information, compared to just 5% of search-ad users. February 2012 ³¹⁸ Average click-through rates (CTR) for search ads were 7%, compared to 0.6% for display ads. And among those who clicked, 37% of mobile-local searchers proceeded to access additional information, compared to 5% of mobile-display users. February 2012 ³¹⁹ Meanwhile, mobile-local search requests grew an impressive 60% quarter-over-quarter. Over the year, in-app search access grew 41%, compared to 34% growth in browser access. February 2012 ³²⁰ Social media engagement is the most exciting digital opportunity for global marketers this year, cited by 54% of company respondents to a survey [download page] released in February 2012 by Econsultancy, in partnership with Adobe. Social media is far ahead of other top 3 opportunities company marketers are passionate about, including mobile optimization (38%), content optimization (37%), conversion rate optimization (31%), brand building/viral marketing (27%), and video marketing February 2012 ³²¹ Marketers also indicated social media engagement to be among their top 3 digital-related priorities this year. The area topped the list, cited by 39% of company respondents, on par with the proportion who indicated content optimization to a be a top priority. February 2012 ³²² Other areas marketers will be focusing on this year include conversion rate optimization (34%), brand building/viral marketing (32%), and mobile optimization (29%). And although content marketing (29%) matches mobile optimization as a priority, it is far less stimulating for marketers: only 18% cited the area as among their top 3 most exciting opportunities this year. February 2012 ³²³ Among company and agency respondents, almost half said that social media has added many more programs and goals, but not the revenue to support new hires, indicating this to be a key challenge. By contrast, just 20% of companies and 13% of agencies said that this was not an issue for them. February 2012 ³²⁴ Indeed, according to an Awareness survey released in December 2011, few marketers are tying social media marketing initiatives to lead generation (38%) and sales (26%), with a far greater proportion using soft metrics such as social presence (76%), measured by number of followers and fans, and website traffic (67%) to determine the success of their campaigns. February 2012 ³²⁵ Data from Econsultancy’s “Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing: Digital Trends for 2012″ indicates that companies and agencies are placing far more emphasis on social media engagement than social media analytics. For example, when asked about their digital priorities this year, companies were about twice as likely to cite engagement as analytics (39% vs. 19%), while the disparity among agencies was even higher (54% vs. 19%). Similarly, when asked what excited them the most, companies were far more likely to cite social media engagement than social media analytics (54% vs. 27%), as were agencies (47% vs. 27%). February 2012 ³²⁶ A recent study from Poll Position revealed that viewers found online video ads to be acceptable as long as they lasted no more than 15 seconds. January 2012 ³²⁷ Specifically, 54 percent of respondents believed 15 seconds to be an agreeable amount of time to wait for a video. Only 12 percent thought 30 seconds was okay, while predictably far fewer - 4 percent and 3 percent, respectively - thought 45 seconds or 60 seconds was tolerable. January 2012 ³²⁸ According to a recent study from eMarketer, online advertising is expected to generate $39.5 billion in sales in 2012 - which would result in a 23.3 percent increase over 2011, Mashable reports. January 2012 ³²⁹ Data from “Delivering Positive Impressions During Market Depressions” indicates that 82% of bank marketers are planning to increase their adoption and use of new channels of digital content delivery. January 2012³³⁰ Additional findings from Compete and Google highlight why B2B companies are fighting it out in paid search: 73% of US B2B information-gatherers who went online to conduct purchase research turned to a search engine to do so. January 2012 ³³¹ 97% of the respondents believe social media marketing benefits their business, and three-quarters intend to increase their spending this year. January 2012 ³³² The top metrics used by social media marketers for ROI are increased fans, likes, comments, and interactions (38%), increased revenues (24%), and increased brand awareness (15%). January 2012 ³³³ Results from an Awareness survey released in December 2011 indicated greater agreement among marketers on social media marketing metrics, with social presence, measured by number of followers and fans, also voted the top metric, by 76% of respondents. Other popular metrics included website traffic (67%) and social mentions across platforms (53%), while a growing number of marketers were also found to be tying social initiatives to lead generation (38%) and sales (26%). January 2012 ³³⁴ Among the global marketers surveyed by Wildfire, 88% cited growth in brand awareness as a social media benefit, with the ability to engage in dialogue (85%) close behind. 58% said that social media helped increase sales and partnerships, and about 2 in 5 said it reduced costs. January 2012 ³³⁵ A study released in December 2011 by the CMO Council in partnership with Lithium also found customer engagement to be a top benefit: a leading 55% of senior marketer respondents reported that social media has impacted their marketing operations by improving customer listening, engagement, and conversations. January 2012 ³³⁶ According to a survey released in December 2011 by StrongMail in conjunction with Zoomerang, when asked what channels they are planning to integrate email with in 2012, two-thirds of business leaders cited social media marketing, beating out mobile (44%), search (17%), and display (14%). January 2012 ³³⁷ Emails that include social sharing buttons have a click-through rate 115% higher than those do not (5.6% vs. 2.6%), according to analysis released in January 2012 by GetReponse, which examined more than 2 billion emails sent by its clients. January 2012 ³³⁸ Among emails that included social sharing buttons, the majority (51.9%) included a single sharing icon, although the proportion containing 2 was not far behind (40.6%). There was then a significant drop-off, with only 7.4% including 3 buttons and 0.1% containing 4. January 2012 ³³⁹ 86% of respondents reported being bothered by the need to create new accounts at websites and said they would actually change their behavior: – 54% might leave the site and not return – 26% would go to a different site if possible – 6% would just simply leave or avoid the site – 14% would not complete the registration January 2012 ³⁴⁰ 88% admitted to supplying incorrect information or leaving form fields incomplete (this result should come as no surprise to marketers). This figure is up from 76% in last year’s study January 2012 ³⁴¹ 90% admitted to leaving a website if they couldn’t remember their login details rather than taking the time to recover their login information. This figure is up from 45% in 2010 January 2012 ³⁴² The study also found that even though website visitors are becoming more frustrated with traditional marketing, they are becoming more open to using social identities for website registration. In fact, 77% responded that social login is “a good solution that should be offered,” with 41% preferring social login over creating a new user account or using a guest account. January 2012 ³⁴³ In fact, 77% responded that social login is “a good solution that should be offered,” with 41% preferring social login over creating a new user account or using a guest account. Among that 77%, 78% of social login fans have posted a comment or message to their social networks about a product or service they liked or thought others should know more about January 2012³⁴⁴ In fact, 77% responded that social login is “a good solution that should be offered,” with 41% preferring social login over creating a new user account or using a guest account. Among that 77%, 83% reported being influenced to consider buying new products or services based on positive social media comments January 2012 ³⁴⁵ In fact, 77% responded that social login is “a good solution that should be offered,” with 41% preferring social login over creating a new user account or using a guest account. Among that 77%, 69% report positive reviews might increase their likelihood to purchase a product or service January 2012 ³⁴⁶ In fact, 77% responded that social login is “a good solution that should be offered,” with 41% preferring social login over creating a new user account or using a guest account. Among that 77%, 82% seek out, or avoid, companies based on social media reviews January 2012 ³⁴⁷ With ‘social login,’ consumers are given the choice to have a more personalized experience when they visit a website without needing to re-enter preferences, what they like and what they dislike, at each website they visit. In addition, this capability can eliminate the clutter of receiving ads and promotions for products or services that have no relevance to you. On a scale of one to 10, how attractive is this capability to you? Fifty-one percent responded between seven and 10 on the scale, reporting they found the capability attractive. Twenty-five percent were neutral (five or six on the scale), and 24% reported the capability was not attractive to them (one to four on the scale). January 2012 ³⁴⁸ If a company personalizes your experience and the information on their website by catering to your specific interests/preferences, how much more or less likely, if at all, are you to do the following? 50% – Return to website 46% – Buy products/services from website 38% – Recommend the website to others 33% – Make purchases in-store January 2012 ³⁴⁹ According to email delivery and automation provider Emailvision, 96.51% of online marketers worldwide placed some importance on the ability to send targeted and segmented email marketing communications to their audiences. The majority (68.44%) felt it was very important. January 2012³⁵⁰ More than half (55.16%) of the marketers surveyed were either satisfied or very satisfied with their segmentation and targeting capabilities, suggesting a sizeable audience that is both confident and reportedly adept at reaching the right audience. Just 14.71% said they were dissatisfied with their targeting capabilities. January 2012 ³⁵¹ Still, May 2011 data from The Relevancy Group found only 39% of US email marketers segmented their audiences based on customer and revenue-centric data such as customer profitability or lifetime value. Instead, the majority segmented audiences by demographics (61%) and geography (51%). January 2012 ³⁵² When measuring campaign success, high clickthrough rate was the most-cited metric upon which online marketers worldwide measured their email marketing campaigns. High open rate was mentioned by 23.96% of respondents. Missing from the data are options for revenue-focused metrics such as conversion rate, return on investment or other sales-driven results. January 2012 ³⁵³ Data from Epsilon and Email Experience Council help to benchmark “high” clickthrough and open rates in North America. The average email open rate in Q3 2011 was 23.8%, the highest in two years, with the average clickthrough rate at 5.5%. January 2012 ³⁵⁴ Of those who reported that social media measurement was a high priority, most (65%) said they made it a priority because they needed to improve effectiveness. Additionally, 59% said they needed to improve integration with other marketing. December 2011 ³⁵⁵ In its “2011 Marketing ROI and Measurement Study,” Lenskold Group found that 14% of marketers thought they were very much improved at measuring ROI, 35% said they were somewhat improved and 30% said there was a slight improvement. Only 22% of marketers saw no improvement. December 2011 ³⁵⁶ On a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent), 43% of marketers rated their ability to measure the amount of engagement or participation a 4 or 5. December 2011 ³⁵⁷ Marketers also reported they are good at measuring new names generated (36% rated it 4 or 5), prospects or leads generated (32%) and a change in awareness or perceptions (26%). December 2011 ³⁵⁸ Lenskold also found that around half of marketers consider social media measurement a high priority. Of the 45% who consider social media measurement a low priority, 41% said it was because they were still testing and experimenting on a small scale and 19% said they did not have defined metrics or objectives. December 2011 ³⁵⁹ 47% of bank marketers responding to a survey from the CMO Council say they are using social media network pages and postings to deliver branded marketing content to their key customer, prospect, and partner audiences, according to [download page] a December 2011 report from the Council. December 2011 ³⁶⁰ This (social media network pages) ranks as the second-leading marketing channel behind internet websites (76%), and is followed relatively closely by online or mobile video segments (41%). December 2011 ³⁶¹ Roughly 2 in 5 bank marketers are using social media analytics and conversation monitoring to track the level of their customer anxiety, which the vast majority (89%) rate as moderate to very high. However, just 19% say that they are property equipped to leverage digital channels of customer engagement. December 2011 ³⁶² The majority of respondents see these new channels as effective and beneficial due to their lower production costs (59%), quicker turnaround (56%), better measurement and tracking (53%), and adaptivity and versatility (50%). Other significant benefits include more engaging and compelling content (48%), the ability to localize, version, and personalize (46%), and greater reach, response, and return (45%). December 2011³⁶³ According to December study results from Mr Youth, 36% of social media users trust brands that have a social media presence more than brands that do not, and 52% of users are willing to pay more for brands they trust. December 2011 ³⁶⁴ Overall, 66% of social media users who made a Black Friday / Cyber Monday purchase reported doing so as a direct result of social media interactions with brands and family. December 2011 ³⁶⁵ Click-through rate is the top method of measuring video ad success, cited by 39% of video advertisers in the US and Canada, ahead of actual product sales (38%) and visits to the brand website (35%), according to [pdf] a December 2011 study from Break Media. Data from “Digital Video Advertising Trends: 2012″ indicates that other popular metrics include brand awareness or recall (30%) and video completion rate (29%). December 2011 ³⁶⁶ Roughly 1 in 5 video advertisers use reached target audience (22%), social engagement (20%), time spent watching video (19%), number of times video was viewed (19%), and intent to purchase (19%) as methods of measuring the success of their video ads. December 2011 ³⁶⁷ Advertisers appear to be frustrated by metrics, though: 42% say that difficulty measuring ROI is a hindrance to the use of video ads, ahead of other barriers to adoption including a lack of transparency on ad placement (40%), lack of standardized metrics (38%), and not enough ROI (35%). December 2011 ³⁶⁸ 73% of respondents indicate that they used video ad networks (VANs) in 2011, representing 12% growth from 65% in 2010. Additionally, in 2012, 92% of advertisers plan to use VANs and increase the share of spend placed with those entities from an average of 20% to 41% of total video dollars. December 2011 ³⁶⁹ Almost half of respondents looked to social media to build customer loyalty, while most executives (64%) said social media was most valuable for awareness-building. Awareness-building was the second most-mentioned value for email (51%) and the third most-mentioned for mobile (28%), slightly behind expanding brand footprint (29%). December 2011 ³⁷⁰ According to StrongMail’s annual marketing trends survey, conducted by Zoomerang, the majority (68%) of business executives worldwide said they plan to integrate their social media marketing efforts with email in 2012. In addition, 44% plan to integrate mobile with their email campaigns. December 2011 ³⁷¹ Business executives said email, social media and mobile were all effective marketing channels for building customer loyalty and retention. In fact, 67% of business executives worldwide said email was a valued asset to achieving this goal, with 48% saying the same for social media and 35% for mobile. December 2011 ³⁷² 55% of senior marketers say that social media has impacted their marketing operations by improving customer listening, engagement, and conversations, matched by the proportion who say that the channel has opened new avenues to gather and further market insights, according to [download page] a study released in December 2011 by the CMO Council in partnership with Lithium December 2011 ³⁷³ According to a November 2011 report from Econsultancy in partnership with LBi and bigmouthmedia, 2 in 5 global companies do not have a return-on-investment (ROI) figure for any of the money they spend on social media marketing, while a further 26% say they can only attribute an ROI figure to a tiny amount of the money they spend on social media. December 2011 ³⁷⁴ These results largely mirror findings from a November 2011 McKinsey report studying the benefits of digital marketing overall: according to the survey, more than half of global marketing executives say that over the past 2 years, the increasing prevalence of digital media and tools has changed their companies’ ability to interact with and serve new customers, while roughly 2 in 10 say that digital-related marketing has increased their access to data and insights. December 2011 ³⁷⁵ According to the CMO Council study, 65% of marketers say they leverage social media as a listening post in order to gather insights on preferences, opinions, and reviews. December 2011 ³⁷⁶ Seeding discussion topics to focus conversations for specific market intelligence (51%), distributing special promotions, coupons, and discounts (43%), and collecting competitive intelligence (40%) are also popular uses of social media. December 2011 ³⁷⁷ Marketers’ responses correspond with how they view customers likes: 41% of marketers believe that brand fans want to be heard, while only 33% believe that they are looking for incentives or rewards. The top reason marketers believe customers like their brand is because the content is agreeable (57%). December 2011 ³⁷⁸ 34% of marketers say their existing social media strategy is supportive of their communications, but not fully integrated into their strategies. December 2011 ³⁷⁹ An additional 21% say they have loosely connected channels and are working on getting them aligned and into the overall strategy, while only 17% believe their social media strategies are fully integrated with overall marketing and go-to-market strategies. December 2011 ³⁸⁰ More than half of the marketers responding to the CMO Council survey rate their level of brand influence in social media channels as growing, although very few believe that their brand has excellent (7%) or very good (9%) influence. December 2011 ³⁸¹ More than half of the marketers responding to the CMO Council survey rate their level of brand influence in social media channels as growing, although very few believe that their brand has excellent (7%) or very good (9%) influence. December 2011 ³⁸² Marketers report that the leading reason customers typically reach out to them is to look for service or support (80%). Other reasons cited are to respond to an ad campaign or Web content (43%), to complain about a bad experience (29%), to learn about new and upcoming products (29%), or to give the company feedback or ideas (29%). December 2011 ³⁸³ Email open rates rose to 23.8% in Q3 2011, representing 7.8% growth from 22% in Q3 2010 and 7.1% growth from 22.2% in Q2 2011, according to [download page] a December 2011 report from Epsilon and the Email Experience Council. Data from “Q3 2011 Email Trends and Benchmarks” indicates that click-through rates rose to 5.5% from 5.2% in Q2, but remain in line with rates seen in Q3 2010 (5.4%). December 2011 ³⁸⁴ Among the categories examined, consumer products CPG (8.1%) had the best click rate, joining the financial services general (6.9%), financial services CC/banks (6.1%), and consumer services general (4.8%) categories in posting an increase of at least 5% compared to Q3 2010. The retail general (6.6%), travel/hospitality travel services (4.5%), and retail apparel (3.8%) categories all experienced year-over-year decreases of at least 5%. December 2011 ³⁸⁵ Meanwhile, mobile platforms appear to be gaining ground when it comes to email viewership, earning 23% of views from April 2011 through September 2011, representing a 34% increase compared to the previous 6-month period, according to [download page] a December 2011 report from ReturnPath. Webmail (44%) and desktop (33%) remained more popular platforms for reading email, but decreased by 11% and more than 9% respectively. December 2011 ³⁸⁶ Webmail views were highest among the finance (49%), shopping (48%), and travel industries (45%), while desktop views were highest among the software (48%) and automotive (47%) industries. Mobile views were largely consistent among industries, with the highest rates seen in the entertainment (27%), social networking (27%), and publishing (26%) industries. December 2011 ³⁸⁷ The highest open rates were in the financial services CC/banks (38.6%), financial services general (32.5%), and retail general (27.8%) categories, while the best click to open rates (CTOR) were experienced by the consumer products CPG (43%), consumer publishing/media general (36.9%), and consumer services telecom (31.1%) categories. December 2011 ³⁸⁸ Unlike a decade ago, the majority of internet users worldwide (about 70%) are non-native English speakers and about 98% largely use their native languages to search for specific services or business development? December 2011 ³⁸⁹ Eighty-five percent (85%) of consumers own a desktop computer and 68% own a laptop/netbook computer; 41% access the Internet on their mobile phone. December 2011 ³⁹⁰ According to eMarketer, 221.0 million people, or 71.2% of the U.S. population, were using the Internet at year-end 2010. December 2011 ³⁹¹

No comments :

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments ( Atom )

CONTACT FORM

Please fill contact form in details:

Name and surname:		*
E-mail:		*
Telephone:		*
Arrival:		*
Check out:		*
Number of Persons:		*
Accommodation Type:
Price:
Destination:		*
Business Sector:
Subject:		*

Wishes and comments:

*Must be filled with fields.

I graduated in LUM University (Italy) Ph.D. in Economics and Management of Natural Resources, Ecole de Management, Grenoble (France) in International Business and Technology Management, Technical University (Serbia) in Industrial Management, Faculty for Computer Science in Computer Engineering (Serbia), Faculty of Management in Finance & Banking; Health Care Management (Serbia) and IT College in Telecommunication (Serbia).

I want to make post-PhD at the University of Computer Science. My second thesis which I want to write is: "Multi-sided platforms in the Internet advertising industry - How to gain Monopol Power using Virtual Business Model". Mostly I researched until now new technologies, innovations, and patents in the mobile industry, specific IT technologies, advertising, finance, and banking.

I achieved a high level of expert knowledge in the many successful companies (TeleNet Group, Deutsche Telekom, MyPhone, VeratNet, Telekom Srbija), learning about new products and service (telecommunication, automotive industry, tourism), new technology use (hardware and software), about organization changes, re-engineering, and redesign. During this experience I always achieved my targets, never lost a customer, and this is something of which I`m proud and which demonstrate my commitment to service.

My strengths are:

– Mathematical competence in science and technology. Fuzzy computational and mathematical programming to find a solution through methods of Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM), AHP, TOPSIS.

– Digital competence – Creating and deploying Software as a service (SaaS) in various industries (e-gov, telecom, hotel management, online sales, transport), for the last 9 years.

– Learning to learn – Can achieve a high level of expert knowledge in the company for just a few months. Research and development, operational plan, AIDA concept of re-engineering, reorganization, software development, training.

– A sense of initiative and Entrepreneurship. For the last 20 years, I worked in the family business and successfully ran my own company.

– Disruptive innovation industry. In the period from 2005 to 2011, I led a successful Online Booking system for hotels and competed with companies such as Booking.com, Tripadvisor.com, and Yahoo.com, until Google.com entrance to the marketplace.

– Cultural awareness and expression. Studied in France, Italy, Serbia, plan to continue post-PhD studies in Germany. Also, 5 years a member of the Slovenian Cultural Association “Ivan Cankar”, understand and speak Bulgarian and Polish.

– Successfully combine mathematical and interpersonal skills in the knowledge-based economies.

Informal education:

2013 - 2018 - Slovenska kulturna skupnosti v Srbiji

2012 - 2013. - TeleNet Education Center, License 004/22-06/2011

2011 - 2013. - ECDL Verification Teacher, Test Center Belgrade

2005 - 2007. - ETS TOEFL License 8868 0000 0020 2909

2001 - 2004. - Journalist, Assistant Editor for Management, Innovation and Technology, FMZ, Zajecar

1999 - 2000. - School of journalism (Bata Stojanović, journalist RTZ)

2001 - 2003. - TOC Evening Poetry: Love Poetry, Autumn poetry, a poetry of Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Branko Miljković, "Mladi Maj" Festival, Haiku poetry.

1999 - 2001 - Theater "Zoran Radmilović", Zajecar

1999 - 2001 - President of the Literary Youth - Projects Cultural Life of Zajecar

1999 - 2000. - Belgrade Open School (BOŠ) - Refik Šećibović, Goran Pitić, Ljubomir Tadić ...

1998 - 1999 - School of Fine Speech (Rhetoric and Dramaturgy)

1997 - 1999. - Youth Federation, Zajecar

1998 - 2003. - Memory maps and memory technique, “Finesa” d.o.o.

1989 - 1993 - Red Cross Volunteer, Zajecar

1981 - 1989 - Elementary Music School "Stevan Stojanovic Mokranjac", Zajecar

Scholarships/Grants: LUM University, Megatrend University, Strabag Austria, Telekom Srbija ad., Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, das Zentrum für das Studium der Sozialdemokratie.

Membership in Professional organizations: Association of TT technicians and engineers of Serbia, Belgrade, Association of TT fitters of Serbia, Belgrade.

Sport: Kung Fu Club Zajecar (Coach Filipovic Slobodan), Running - Athletic Lauf auf 400 Meter (Ergebnis: 1:08.40).

I feel, with this experience combined with my educational achievements make me a very good choice for the future job position. I would be happy to attend an interview and discuss more in details with you.

Kind regards,

Darko Milosevic, Ph.D.

Email: darkomi.de@gmail.com

Skype: MyPhone_Schulung

Viber: +381645558581

Phone: +436677821723