Marketing Research Chart: Marketing channel email integration

Near the end of the 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Survey, we asked an open-ended, free response question, in hope of obtaining some honest, unique, unprompted thoughts about this channel. We noticed one of the predominant themes we found was email integration with other marketing channels. Earlier in the survey, we asked …

Q: Which marketing channels does your organization integrate with your email program? Select all that apply.

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One anonymous marketer quoted in the survey considered integration an area of need, saying, "[A] big concern is lack of integration with other marketing channels. Many isolated islands of activity rather than a coordinated, integrated and consistent strategy."

Overwhelmingly, 75% of surveyed marketers indicated they integrated their websites with email, nearly 20 percentage points greater than the second-most selected option, "social media" (56%).

Surprisingly, mobile — many users' primary source for receiving and responding to email — was only integrated by 21% of respondents. This places mobile eight fewer percentage points behind what many would consider a somewhat dated tactic, "direct mail."

What makes this even more perplexing is how, in a separate survey question, our respondents estimated 25% of their subscribers read email on mobile devices.

Points to Consider

Are you surprised by how poorly mobile integration placed in this chart, when compared to other tactics? How has mobile integration affected your email programs? If you haven't yet integrated with mobile efforts, what is preventing you from doing so?

For more information about email marketing, download the free excerpt from the 2013 Email Marketing Benchmark Report. Be sure to share your own analysis of this chart in the MarketingSherpa LinkedIn Group for a chance to be published in a future blog post.

Useful links related to this research

Marketing Research Chart: Email marketing ROI

Mobile Marketing: 31% of marketers don’t know their mobile email open rate

Email Marketing: 58% of marketers see mobile smartphones and tablets most impacting email

Email Marketing: Factors that influence open rate