This report discusses the findings of a survey of over 250 FastStats® software users working within marketing and technology disciplines across a variety of industries. Read on to discover what other organisations are doing with their data in the challenging areas of social media, real time and multi-channel campaigning. Uncover trends in the adoption of marketing automation, growing data volumes and cloud hosting, as well as learning what others plan to confront or dismiss over the coming year.

Key findings

• The majority of respondents use social media within their organisations. Only 6% of respondents have connected their social media data into their main customer database illustrating the challenges and complexities this entails. 24% of respondents manually track social media engagements, illustrating that reporting and automation in this area isn’t utilised. Nearly a quarter of respondents don’t analyse their social media response at all.
• Email was the dominant marketing channel for 63% of respondents during 2014, followed by direct mail for only 29%. Interestingly, only 0.82% of respondents rated social media as their dominant marketing channel. Retention and upselling was the overwhelming dominant purpose of email marketing for the majority of respondents. Direct mail and call centres were identified as the most reduced channels in 2014.
• Most respondents cited campaign data and response data as data sources for their FastStats® data analysis and campaign management systems. This was followed by website visitor data and smaller numbers holding advertising, cookie and social data.
• The demand for real-time data is high to enable businesses to use this information for timely analysis and communication. Only 12% of respondents already include live data in campaigns but the majority confirmed that they want this ability now or think it would be useful.
• 33% of respondents have already implemented marketing automation software within their businesses and half of all respondents plan, or aspire, to do so. Marketing automation is a highly discussed topic for marketers and the results in this survey clearly show that it is high on the agenda for many marketers.
• Nearly 45% of respondents are managing transactional data volumes in the 10’s and 100’s of millions. However, data volumes range from one extreme to the other – less than 100K to billions. 27% of respondents expect their data to grow moderately over the next year, however almost half of all respondents expect more dramatic increases.
• 27% of respondents are already deploying marketing systems in the cloud. 30% plan to start using the cloud or aspire to in the future, however just over 20% don’t plan to deploy marketing systems in the cloud at all.
• The most popular number of campaignssent per week is five or less. Interestingly 12% of respondents send over 50 campaigns a week, perhaps due to the increased use of automation, which makes highly targeted messages across many different campaigns possible. Respondents send a mixed variety of communication volumes per week, ranging from below 10 thousand to over 5 million.

About the respondents

This survey was carried out at the 2014 annual FastStats® User Group Conference on 7th November at The Crystal, London. Apteco partners and their FastStats® clients were provided with voting handsets so they could immediately respond to a range of quick-fire questions about their current and future marketing communication channels, data volumes and sources, automation strategy, social media usage, real time data and cloud hosting requirements.

Respondents by industry

Survey respondents came from a range of industries including charity, retail, publishing, financial, leisure, technology, travel and insurance. In particular, marketing services providers, data owners and bureaus account for nearly 40% of respondents as these organisations offer FastStats® solutions to their clients.

Respondents by country

Most respondents are from organisations in the UK, however FastStats® users from Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Australia, the USA and Switzerland also took part in the survey.

Respondents by job titles & roles

A range of job titles and roles are represented across marketing and technology disciplines within the fields of data analytics, data, CRM, insight, database solutions campaign management and sales.

Social Media

Does your organisation do social media marketing? The majority of respondents use social media (nearly 80%) within their organisations. Rather comically 33% of respondents selected the “…all we do is tweet, post & comment!” option.

Where is your social media data?

Only 6% of respondents have connected their social media data into their main customer database, illustrating the challenges and complexities this entails. 25% manage the data using a separate social media system and 40% hold the data directly on each individual social network

How do you currently measure your social media marketing activity?

15% of respondents are using specialist social media software to measure activity. 24% of respondents manually track social media engagements, illustrating that reporting and automation in this area isn’t utilised. Nearly 25% of respondents don’t analyse their social media response at all.

Which social network should we integrate with FastStats® next?

Twitter is by far the most important social media channel for respondents, with over 65% of users selecting it as the next FastStats® integration.

Marketing Channels

Which is the dominant marketing channel you have used this year? Email was the dominant marketing channel for 63% of respondents during 2014, followed by direct mail for only 29%. Reliance on call centres seems particularly low, with less than 3% of respondents selecting this as their main channel. Interestingly, only 0.82% of respondents rated social media as their dominant marketing channel. Multiple response answers were allowed for this question

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What is the dominant purpose of email used in your marketing? Retention and upselling was the overwhelming dominant purpose of email marketing for the majority of respondents (68%). Acquisition (15%) and customer service (7%) are also important to some respondents.

Which channel is most reduced this year? Direct mail and call centres were identified as the most reduced channels for 48% of respondents in 2014. Interestingly, social media and email were cited as the most reduced channels by 2% and 3% of respondents respectively. Multiple response answers were allowed for this question.

Data Sources

What data do you have in FastStats®?

When asked what data is held within their FastStats® data analysis and campaign management systems, most respondents cited campaign data and response data, 36% and 32% respectively. This was followed by website visitor data (16%) and smaller numbers holding cookie, social and advertising data. Website visitor data has only recently become a key data source for FastStats® systems and it illustrates that website statistics are becoming more important for analysts to get a complete picture of their customers’ and prospects’ behaviour. It might also indicate that website data, along with cookie, social and display ads data, is starting to become easier to integrate into a single customer view, as more organisations see this information as key to their analytics solution. Multiple response answers were allowed for this question.

Real-Time

Do you need to include live data in campaigns?

The demand for real-time data is high to enable businesses to use this information for timely analysis and communication. Only 12% of respondents already include live data in campaigns but 31% confirmed that they want this ability now. 37% thought it would be useful, however 17% are happy with daily updates for their campaigning requirements.

Marketing Automation

Do you plan to implement marketing automation software?

33% of respondents have already implemented marketing automation software within their businesses and half of all respondents plan, or aspire, to do so. 11% plan to implement marketing automation immediately and 19% within the next year. Marketing automation is a highly discussed topic for marketers and these results clearly show that it is high on the agenda for many organisations. Only a few respondents said they weren’t (3%), or were unlikely (5%) to implement marketing automation software.

Data Volumes

How big is your data in total?

Nearly 45% of respondents are managing transactional data volumes in the 10’s and 100’s of millions. Data volumes range from one extreme to the other with 15% of respondents managing billions of transactions and 13% managing smaller volumes of 100’s of thousands or less.

How do you expect your data to grow in the next year?

27% of respondents expect their data to grow by 10% over the next year, however almost half of all respondents expect more dramatic increases of 50% (21%), double (14%) or many fold (12%).

Cloud Computing

Does your organisation deploy marketing systems in the cloud?

27% of respondents are already deploying marketing systems in the cloud. 11% plan to start using the cloud during 2015 and 20% aspire to at some point in the future. 23% however don’t plan to deploy marketing systems in the cloud at all, perhaps showing a slight reluctance to move to this type of hosting environment.

Campaign Dynamics

How many campaigns do you run per week?

The most popular number of campaigns sent per week by 28% of respondents is five or less. 11% of respondents send 5-10 campaigns per week, 11% send 10-20 and 10% send 20-50. Interestingly 12% of respondents send over 50 campaigns a week, perhaps due to the increased use of automation which makes highly targeted messages across many different campaigns possible. 13% of respondents run less than 1 campaign per week.

What volume of communications do you send per week?

Respondents send a mixed variety of communication volumes per week, ranging from below 10 thousand to over 5 million. 28% of respondents send about ½ -1 million communications per week and 13% send about 5 million and over.