Adobe's Digital Marketing Summit opens today and with 5,000 attendees anticipated you might have guessed that there will be a lot to talk about. There are several important announcements of improved products, particularly in mobile, but their top-flight research arm is also announcing results from a recent (February 2014) survey of digital marketers.
First and perhaps most important is that digital has gone way past the pilot stage, and, for the best companies, it has become fully operational, even in compliant-heavy industries such as financial services. Moreover, the survey reports that for the most successful marketers, the so-called "Best of the Best," the hiring, restructuring and technology investments that have been made in the past two years have begun to pay off. The top 20 percent of digital marketers in financial, retail, technology, travel and media, measured in terms of their reach and conversion rates across mobile and the web, report:
- 70% higher smartphone traffic, 55% more page views (Financial Services)
- 68% higher tablet traffic (Tech)
- 51% better "stickiness" (visitor engagement) (Retail)
- 35% more time spent (Media)
- 100% higher conversion rate (Travel & Retail)
(All percentages are compared to 2012 survey results.)
All in all, however, in a separate recent survey conducted this past February, over half of marketers assess themselves as, frankly, deer caught in the headlights. Some of you seem to need more counseling than technology:
"Asked to describe the ideal, successful marketer 12 months from now, 54% of marketers said they should take more risks, and 45% hope to take more risks themselves. On the topic of new technologies, marketers are generally playing it safe, with 65% saying they are more comfortable adopting new technologies once they become mainstream."
Not surprisingly, most marketers are confounded by how to turn the enormous amount of data they can now retrieve into action:
"A majority of marketers (76%) agreed they need to be more data-focused to succeed, but 49% report "trusting my gut" to guide decisions on where to invest their marketing budgets. Seventy-two percent of marketers agree their long-term success is tied to proving marketing return on investment.
Seventy-four percent of marketers say that capturing and applying data to inform and drive marketing activities is the new reality, and 69% agree on the need to embrace "hyper personalization" (i.e., using data to provide the right products, services and content at the right time). Yet only 39% of marketers report using consumer data and behavior patterns to shape marketing strategy in the past 12 months; 45% plan to use more consumer data and behavior in the next 12 months."
We'll link to a synopsis of the survey when it becomes available. We're following our bloggers who are at the Summit, and will be bringing you the best of the best from the event here. Stay tuned.