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Marketers' 2008 Priorities: Database and Analytics

Marketers are placing an emphasis on increased resources for database and analytics to support marketing efforts, with 67% of them agreeing this is the area that calls for the most investment of additional resources in 2008, according to an Alterian survey.

Additional findings of the fifth Annual Marketing Survey of marketers, agencies, marketing services providers and systems integrators:

• Almost half of marketers (45%) are now spending over $500K on online marketing, compared with 37% in 2006 - an increase of 8%.
• The number of marketers spending less than $100K on offline direct marketing has almost doubled to 30% since 2005 (2005: 18%; 2006: 23%).

• However, 67% of marketers still spend over $1MM on offline direct marketing every year, 25% of which is over $5MM, and almost half of all respondents plan on maintaining their offline budgets over the next 12 months.
• A significant 96% of respondents reported plans to implement marketing process over the next 12 months:
  • 63% said increasing marketing effectiveness was the primary objective behind implementing process into their marketing activities and department
  • Surprisingly, over a quarter of marketers stated that their primary objective for implementing marketing processes is to improve marketing efficiency - implying that understanding of the need for improved marketing operations has increased dramatically over the last 12 months.

• Seven out of ten (69%) use more than three marketing applications to help them complete their day-to-day tasks - to store and analyze marketing and campaign data:
  • Over half use between three and six siloed marketing applications.
  • Some 20% use seven or more separate marketing applications.
  • Despite heightened discussion over the past ten years about maintaining a single view of the customer, the industry is still spending huge amounts of time updating different applications with everyday to do their job.

About the study: The Alterian 2007 Survey polled a total of 852 marketing professionals. The annual survey, now in its fifth year, was conducted in North America and the United Kingdom in October and November 2007 through a dedicated website landing page and hardcopy in-person interviews at the 2007 Direct Marketing Association Conference and Exhibition in Chicago and at ad:tech in New York.