Posted by Gareth Cutter on 22nd October 2008 to
Marketplace The eMetrics Marketing Optimisation Summit in Washington D.C. is only halfway through it's five day programme and has already turned heads with the findings of a recent poll. It has been revealed that 83.6% of firms are intending on maintaining or increasing email marketing spend in the near future. Basically, that's four out of every five businesses.
This bodes well for the growth of email marketing: e-consultancy have already estimated that on-line marketing spend in the UK will reach £274 million by the end of 2008. However, there's one question still to answer: what are the remaining 16.4% of businesses going to do?
Surprisingly, the poll revealed two thirds of respondants were yet to see the economic downturn reflected in reduced marketing budgets, which means despite consumers having less disposable income to spend, marketers still have plenty of money to churn into aggressive advertising campaigns as they try to squeeze every last penny out of a shrinking market. Maybe that's why the remainder of businesses have yet to take the advantages of email marketing onboard.
Though it's cheering to hear that companies are still enjoying the healthy marketing budgets of yesteryear, money spent without a return on investment is always money wasted. Email marketing is less expensive than traditional channels and a sensible investment for all businesses, regardless of size.
