33 Stats That Paint a Picture of the Future of Marketing

33 Stats That Paint a Picture of the Future of Marketing:from HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog by Anum Hussain

The future of our beloved marketing industry is changing fast -- the good news is, we don't even need a crystal ball to see where it's headed!
HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe, when sharing his story on how he came to be HubSpot's fifth employee, says the problem he faced as a marketer was finding an integrated marketing software solution that allowed him to see how his various marketing efforts impacted his website and revenue. Little did he know when yearning for this marketing system that it was in the process of being built
That was just five years ago, and now our industry is at a place where Mike Volpe's dream has been realized. Now, it's time to tap into the other dreams marketers are having ... so we can solve them! Like true HubSpotters, we turn to the data to let us know what marketers are yearning for. And the statistics in this blog post are screaming it in our faces, telling us exactly where the future of our industry lies. Here are 33 statistics that give you a glimpse into where the future of marketing is headed!

Social Media and Social Lead Nurturing

1) Failure to respond via social channels can lead to up to a 15% increase in churn rate for existing customers. (Source: Gartner) Tweet This Stat!
2) 37% of brands would like to use social media engagement to create customer-tailored marketing campaigns. (Source: Forrester) Tweet This Stat!
3) 75% of B2B companies do not measure or quantify social media engagement. (Source: Satmetrix) Tweet This Stat!
4) 51% of the top 20% of B2B marketers generating leads through social media use social sharing tools, compared to the industry average of 39%. (Source: Aberdeen) Tweet This Stat!
5) 84% of B2B marketers use social media in some form. (Source: Aberdeen) Tweet This Stat!
6) Marketers spend an average of 4-6 hours a week on social media. (Source: Social Media Examiner) Tweet This Stat!
7) Currently, marketers allocate 7.6% of their budgets to social media. CMOs expect that number to reach 18.8% in the next five years. (Source: CMO Survey) Tweet This Stat!
8) 60.2% of marketers are looking for analysis options, as well as other analytics options, in their social media management tools. (Source: SEOmoz) Tweet This Stat!
9) Regardless, marketers still continue to struggle with integrating social media into the company’s overall strategy. On a scale of 1-7, only 6.8% of respondents believe that social media is “very integrated” into their strategy (the highest rank for the question), while 16.7% believe that it's not integrated at all (the lowest rank for the question). (Source: CMO Survey) Tweet This Stat!

What These Social Media Stats Say About the Future of Marketing

There are a few key takeaways from these social media stats. First, marketers are increasingly using social media. It's no longer a matter of "you have to be on social." It's a matter of "we're active on social." The problem with this, however, leads to the second takeaway. Marketers are still in need of a system that will clearly provide social media analytics, indicate where social media users are travelling to and from, and show how their social media efforts are directly impacting their business. Finally, marketers (and CMOs!) want to do all of this with an integrated system. Marketers can't be running from a blogging CMS, to a social publishing tool, to an analytics tool all day. They need these to all be connected in one system that does it all.

Personalization, Relevancy and Dynamic Content

10) Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14%, and conversion rates by 10%.
(Source: Aberdeen) Tweet This Stat!
11) The top reasons for U.S. email users to unsubscribe from a business or non-profit email subscription are too many emails (69%) and content that is no longer relevant (56%). (Source: Chadwick Martin Bailey) Tweet This Stat!
12) 80% of mobile internet users would prefer ads relevant to them locally. (Source: JiWire) Tweet This Stat!
13) A high-impact recommendation from a trusted friend conveying a relevant message is up to 50 times more likely to trigger a purchase than a low-impact recommendation. (Source: McKinsey Quarterly) Tweet This Stat!
14) 62% of adults under 34 are willing to share their location to get more relevant content. (Source: JiWire) Tweet This Stat!
15) 53% of retailers plan to focus on web personalization engines in 2012. (Source: National Retail Federation) Tweet This Stat!
16) 75% of people prefer to receive offers over any other form of call-to-action. (Source: Text Marketer) Tweet This Stat!

17) In a study of 650 multi-channel marketing campaigns, personalized campaigns consistently and overwhelmingly beat out static campaigns in generating a high response rate from recipients. See a breakdown by industry here. (Source: MindFire). Tweet This Stat!  

What These Personalization, Relevancy, & Dynamic Content Stats Say About the Future of Marketing

People want targeted and relevant content. Marketers need to provide it. While marketers already know they should be segmenting their contacts and sharing only what the content that's most valuable to their audience, it's not always happening. The problem is, who has the budget or resources to have multiple marketing managers focus on segmenting out all their email contacts among people at different stages of involvement with the brand? To solve it, marketers need a system that can personalize communication and trigger the right messages to be sent to the right person at the right time.

Email Marketing and Automation

18) 59% of B2B marketers say email is the most effective channel for generating revenue. (Source: BtoB Magazine) Tweet This Stat!
19) 49% of B2B marketers spend more time and resources on email than on other channels. (Source: BtoB Magazine) Tweet This Stat!
20) Triggered email messages get 119% higher click-through rates than "business as usual" messages. (Source: Epsilon) Tweet This Stat!
21) More than 50% of respondents said they had not yet realized the value of their investment in marketing automation. (Source: Genius) Tweet This Stat!
22) 61% of marketing companies plan to increase their email marketing efforts in the next year. (Source: Experian) Tweet This Stat!
23) The adoption of marketing automation technology is expected to increase by 50% by 2015. (Source: Sirius Decisions) Tweet This Stat!

What These Email Marketing & Automation Stats Say About the Future of Marketing

We already understand from the personalization stats that customization is a must. But gone are the days of just that. Marketers need a tool that will trigger their emails by a series of rules set by the marketer to create dynamically evolving segments and automate marketing actions. More than email automation, marketers need to be able to enable campaigns to set off when needed. By doing so, marketers will understand the value of marketing automation -- it's not about blasting out messages. It's about finding a way to improve the targeting of your messages to improve the user experience while benefiting your business.

Marketing Analytics and Integration

24) CMOs report they spend 8% of their marketing budgets on marketing analytics, and expect to increase this level in the next three years. (Source: CMO Survey) Tweet This Stat!
25) Spending on marketing analytics is expected to increase 60% by 2015. (Source: CMO Survey) Tweet This Stat!
26) By 2013, lead management campaigns integrating 4 or more digital channels will outperform single- or dual-channel campaigns by 300%. (Source: Gartner) Tweet This Stat!
27) By 2014, over 40% of large complex marketing organizations will have developed a pace-layered application approach to integrated marketing. (Source: Gartner) Tweet This Stat!

What These Marketing Analytics & Intregration Stats Say About the Future of Marketing

As foreshadowed by Mike Volpe's story in our introduction, integration is a crucial element of a marketing team's success. Marketers need the kind of information you're reading right now: data. Data that provides insights and vision for where your marketing strategies should be headed. And while you can read general statistics through various studies, nothing will benefit your business like looking at specific data reflective of your own efforts. Having an analytics system that integrates every part of your marketing will ensure that you're making the right decisions and allocating budget wisely based off the successes and failures of your marketing efforts.

Mobile Marketing and Apps

28) Worldwide mobile advertising revenue will expand 3.5X its present size by 2016. (Source: Yankee Group) Tweet This Stat!
29) Mobile commerce will account for 24.4% of overall ecommerce revenues by the end of 2017. (Source: ABI Research) Tweet This Stat!
30) Email opens on smartphones and tablets have increased 80% over the last six months. (Source: Litmus) Tweet This Stat!
31) 45% of US businesses are conducting some form of mobile marketing, with mobile websites (70%), mobile applications (55%), and QR codes (49%) being the most common tactics. (Source: StrongMail) Tweet This Stat!
32) 47% of marketing companies plan to increase their efforts in mobile apps in the next year. (Source: Experian) Tweet This Stat!
33) 59% of U.S. marketing companies collect mobile contact information. (Source: Experian) Tweet This Stat!

What These Mobile Marketing & Apps Stats Say About the Future of Marketing

Everyone has a smartphone! Yes, we know. We also know that more people are seeing ads on their phones, and that websites need to be mobile optimized. But that's just the consumer experience. What about the business experience? What about the marketers who need to understand how people are interacting with them on mobile? Or what about marketers who are running around planning and implementing strategies, and need a mobile app tied to their analytics and automation software to see exactly how their strategies are playing out? Marketers need an application that enables them to keep tabs on their lead generation and customer conversions on the go.
All in all, marketing is undergoing a powerful transformation. There are needs to be met, ideas to be created, and revolutions coming out way. Once upon a time, we discussed how social media was a shiny new toy, email marketing was reincarnating into something valuable, and mobile apps were fun to click on. Now it's time to connect all these different parts. It's time to see how each supports one another to execute the perfect marketing campaign -- and watch how it does so by reveiwing the metrics in an integrated analytics platform. Easy. Powerful. Integrated. That's what marketing needs.
Where do you see the future of marketing going? Where do you want it to go?
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