Social media and e-mail get top marks in digital marketing

A global survey by Salesfore.com of 5,000 marketers finds that corporate web sites are the most commonly used digital marketing tool, but less effective than social media and e-mail.

When Salesforce.com Inc. surveyed marketers worldwide last fall and asked them to name how they market digitally, only one thing was cited by more than half of respondents: a corporate web site, named by 56%.

But when asked to name the most effective of 26 marketing digital marketing tools for reaching and engaging customers, respondents pointed to the corporate web site less often than 17 other tools and methods—including four forms of social media marketing.

The marketing tools cited most often as being either “very effective” or “effective” were social media advertising, social media listening and e-mail marketing. Each was named by 68% of respondents (who could name more than one marketing tool or method). Also high on the list were social media engagement, cited by 67%, and social media marketing, 66%.

Among the least effective forms of digital marketing, respondents said, as were blogs, cited by 58%, and display/banner ads, 59%.

The survey compiled answers from 5,053 respondents to a worldwide survey of more than 6,160 marketers from Oct. 28 to Nov. 25, 2014, for a response rate of 82%. 44% of the respondents were B2B companies; 56% were business-to-consumer. Salesforce.com is a provider of customer relationship management and marketing software applications.

Among the forms of digital marketing that were cited as among the most effective, but among the least used, were mobile text messaging and location-based mobile tracking.

Following are the 26 forms of digital marketing cited in the study with the percentage of respondents who said they were currently using each, followed by the percentage who said each was either very effective or effective:

● Corporate web site, 56%, 64%

● Social media engagement, 44%, 67%

● Social media marketing, 44%, 66%

● Search engine optimization/search engine marketing, 44%, 66%

● Landing pages, 42%, 66%

● E-mail marketing, 41%, 68%

● Display/banner ads, 40%, 59%

● Social media advertising, 39%, 68%

● Blogging, 38%, 58%

● Social media listening, 37%, 68%

● Videos, 35%, 61%

● Native advertising, 32%, 58%

● Web personalization, 31%, 66%

● Content marketing, 31%, 66%

● Recommendations via e-mail, 29%, 62%

● Data targeting and segmentation, 27%, 65%

● Mobile applications, 27%, 65%

● Guided selling, 25%, 67%

● Mobile text messaging, 24%, 65%

● Video advertising, 24%, 64%

● Marketing automation, 22%, 67%

● Offer management, 21%, 64%

● Lead nurturing and scoring, 20%, 66%

● Mobile push notifications, 19%, 66%

● Location-based mobile tracking, 18%, 67%

● Podcasting, 15%, 62%.

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Social media and e-mail get top marks in digital marketing