1. Work smarter, not harder
"Do more with less" has been the battle cry of CFOs for the past 12 months. However, it's time to put that cliché to rest. Laura Patterson gave a great example of how doing more with less doesn't work in Listrak's webinar Best Practices for Proving Marketing's Valueiv. She said that a family could spend less at the grocery store each week but meals would be less substantial in both quality and quantity and the family wouldn't be as satisfied.
The same is true for your marketing budget. If you simply cut your marketing budget and try to do more with less, less will get done. Instead of focusing on how to stretch the budget, align your strategy with alternatives that are less expensive but yield higher returns. In 2010, work smarter, not harder.
2009 Direct Marketing ROI
| Email |
$43.62 |
| Search |
$21.85 |
| Direct Mail (non catalog) |
$15.22 |
| Catalog |
$ 7.32 |
Image 3 - Stats from DMA's Power of Direct economic impact study
Email still provides the highest ROI across all marketing channels. According to the Direct Marketing Association's Power of Directv economic impact study, email returned $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009. That number is expected to dip to $42.08 in 2010, but it will still return nearly twice as much as the next highest channel, search marketing.
Email drove $26 billion in sales in 2009 and the DMA projects it will grow to nearly $28 billion in 2010. But, surprisingly, email still only accounts for a small percentage of marketing budgets. Email's low cost of entry makes it easy for marketers to put their email marketing strategy on autopilot and still get a return. Because of email's success on autopilot up to this point, marketers haven't felt pressured to optimize it and instead have been spending time fixing what isn't working in their strategies. Next year, when every dollar and every sale counts, be sure you have the right tools to succeed. Many companies are looking to increase their spending in social media and mobile marketing, which in 2009 resulted in sales of $14.3 billion and $2.1 billion respectively according to the DMA. Both channels give your organization a way to engage consumers, but, unlike email, neither are forums where you can directly sell your products and services. If you are overlooking email and relying on social media to increase sales and customer satisfaction, you will be disappointed.