Email, while tied to every form of digital marketing, has sunk to fourth among the most effective tactics, according to Marketing Resource Effectiveness, a study by Ascend2.
Email marketing
campaigns are seen as effective by 39%. In contrast, 53% say social media is effective, while 48% feel that way about content marketing and 47% about search engine optimization.
Yet
email is seen as the least difficult activity, identified by only 21%. The most challenging tactic, cited by 49%, is data and AI-driven marketing, followed by content campaigns (38%), programmatic
advertising (34%) and search engine optimization (33%).
In perceived effectiveness, email beats marketing automation campaigns (28%), data and AI-driven marketing (25%) and programmatic
advertising (18%).
Ascend2 and its Researcher Partners surveyed 227 marketers.
Overall, 34% say their strategies are very successful, or best-in-class, while 62% say they are
somewhat successful and 5% say they are not successful.
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Their primary strategic objectives are:
- Increasing leads/sales prospects — 64%
- Improving brand
awareness — 61% - Increasing customer acquisition — 61%
- Improving engagement/nurturing — 34%
- Improving user experience — 20%
- Increasing marketing technology— 15%
- Improving multichannel analytics — 15%
The challenges are in a slightly different order
- Increasing customer acquisition — 53%
- Increasing leads/sales prospects — 48%
- Improving brand awareness — 44%
- Improving engagement/nurturing —
32% - Improving user experience — 30%
- Improving multichannel analytics — 28%
- Increasing marketing technology—25%
Of the companies
surveyed, 75% rely on a combination of outsourced and in-house resources. In addition, 13% outsource to specialists and 12% use in-house resources only.