Research into the way marketers manage brand interaction with customers shows they are falling behind when it comes to social media

Research into the way marketers manage brand interaction with customers shows they are falling behind when it comes to social media

Email still beats social media as the preferred method of interaction and communication between brands and consumers, according to research from email and marketing automation experts Silverpop.

Further to this, despite increased awareness, many of the 500-plus online marketers polled were still failing to manage and integrate social media into their marketing programmes, with nearly one in five marketers not integrating their marketing programmes at all.

The research was conducted to gain a better understanding of how today’s marketers are using – and plan to use – email, mobile and social forms of communication. According to the survey, most marketers were making some progress towards achieving integrated campaigns across channels, however there is still room for improvement, with 80% of UK responders reported them as being ‘somewhat or not at all integrated’.

Marketers missing a trick

In addition to marketers wrestling with integrating their campaigns, the company added that preference centres were still focused solely on offering email, leaving plenty of opportunity for savvy marketers to connect with customers and prospects by providing additional options. According to the survey only 5% of UK companies reported offering email opt-in on their Facebook pages, and only 6% offer email opt-in via SMS text.

The increase in smartphones and tablets had inspired two thirds of UK marketers in Silverpop’s survey to either add a mobile app or plan to do so by the end of 2012. However this interest in mobile hadn’t translated to local check-in campaigns, with only 23% of UK marketers currently using or planning to implement local check-ins.

Richard Evans, Silverpop director of marketing in Europe, Middle East and Africa, commented: “The hundreds of millions of people who use email and social networks together to engage with brands will only continue to increase, and so marketers who integrate these mediums well, thinking more strategically and leveraging each channel to strengthen the other, will profit rather than struggle in the new interactive marketing mix.”