Marketers Still Looking to Hook New Customers, Emphasis on Email
This year, marketers still face the same challenge as last year: grabbing new customers and drawing them in with compelling content. Most of them think email is the answer, according to a survey by J2 Global Inc.’s email marketing brand Campaigner. The survey interviewed 506 email marketers in November 2015 and asked what their biggest challenges were last year, and what they plan to do this year.
The Perpetual Task
The most common top challenge for email marketers in 2015 was increasing how many customers opened emails, followed by creating truly compelling content and getting new customers. The fewest respondents viewed adapting to opt-in regulations as one of their top two challenges, indicating that most respondents have already tackled the issue of ensuring that no one is automatically signed up for a mailing list without permission.
For 2016, the marketers still don’t consider opt-in regulations a significant challenge, but again they want to increase open rates, earn new subscribers, and create compelling content. These perennial issues have troubled marketers ever since email marketing first began — maybe this year they’ll find a solution!
New Year’s Marketing Resolutions
No surprise, then, that most marketers included attracting new customers in their top two goals for 2016, followed distantly by customer retention and increased brand awareness.
Their priorities for the coming year are on email marketing, naturally, followed by content marketing and social media marketing. Personalization and localization are less popular priorities. Rather than targeting customers, the respondents would rather find ways to draw in customers from more channels.
Those priorities didn’t exactly align with the categories on which marketers planned to spend money. Top spot went to email, of course, then events and offline direct marketing. Content marketing fits into email marketing, but content and social media are less natural fits in event marketing and direct marketing by mail. Events and direct marketing could receive a lot of spending just because they are comparatively more expensive than social media, though.
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