Marketers Say Email, Websites Well Integrated; Mobile Not So Much

June 29, 2012

This article is included in these additional categories:

Agency Business | Digital | Mobile Phone | Paid Search | Search Engine Optimization | Social Media

econsultancy-channel-integration-june2012.pngMarketers appear to have a solid sense of how to integrate their email marketing and websites into their overall marketing activity, but are not quite there yet with mobile, according to [download page] results from a survey released in June 2012 by Econsultancy, in association with Responsys. Roughly half of the company respondents said that their email and website efforts are very well integrated, but far fewer could say the same about mobile messaging (16%), mobile apps (14%), or the mobile web (13%).

Agencies by and large are in agreement with this assessment: websites (61%) and email (47%) topped the list of very integrated channels within their clients’ overall marketing activity. Mobile channels – web (15%), apps (11%), or messaging (6%) – were seen to be the least integrated.

This challenge for mobile was also recently found in IBM research also released this month: according to those survey results, only 1 in 5 global marketers currently run mobile marketing tactics as part of integrated campaigns, with the remainder running their mobile programs discretely and on an ad hoc basis.

Mobile Difficult to Ingrate With Other Activities

The Econsultancy survey respondents are not yet fully integrating their mobile efforts because they don’t find them to be as straightforward as some other channels. When asked how straightforward or difficult it is to integrate various channels, 61% of company marketers said that integrating mobile apps was either quite (43%) or very (18%) difficult. Roughly half said the same about mobile messaging, and 42% about the mobile web.

Of note, almost 3 in 5 respondents said they find social media marketing either quite (47%) or very (10%) difficult to integrate with the rest of their digital marketing activity, leading to just 26% feeling that it is very well integrated.

Ease of Integration Doesn’t Always Translate in Practice

There were some interesting disparities between company marketers’ views regarding the ease of integration and the actual extent of their integration. For example, while three-quarters believe it is straightforward to integrate online display advertising into the rest of their digital marketing activity, just 29% feel that this channel is very integrated into their overall marketing activities. Similarly, 72% said paid search integration is straightforward, but only 37% believe it is very well integrated.

Agencies showed similar patterns. They were twice as likely to say that paid search is straightforward for their clients to integrate as they were to say that it is very well integrated (70% vs. 35%). A similar discrepancy emerged for online display advertising (68% vs. 31%).

Websites, Social Biggest Priorities

Econsultancy’s “Cross Channel Marketing Report” also looks at priorities over the coming year, and the results suggest that company marketers will be focusing on some channels which are already a strength – in terms of integration – but also will be pushing forward with channels that they find to be relatively difficult to integrate. When asked which 3 marketing channels were their biggest priorities, half of company marketers identified their websites, ahead of email and social (each at 39%) and SEO (34%).

Agencies see slightly different priorities for their clients, pointing to social (53%) first, with websites (47%) not far behind and email (31%) and SEO (28%) trailing. While they perceive social and SEO to be fairly difficult to integrate, email and websites are seen as the most straightforward.

About the Data: The Econsultancy data is based on an online survey conducted in April and May 2012 that received 669 responses: 337 said they were client-side or in-house marketers, while 332 said they were an agency/consultant or vendor.

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