Fragmented campaign approach relinquishing competitive advantage

Maidenhead, UK, 23 April 2009 – Businesses are failing to market themselves competitively in the current climate, a survey by SDL Tridion, leader in global Web Content Management (WCM) has found. The survey of 113 marketing, communications and branding decision makers across Europe found that 70 per cent of businesses take two weeks or longer to roll out new marketing campaigns. The delay is restricting flexible marketing strategies which respond to specific, time-sensitive market conditions.

As best practice marketing models continue to develop, marketers are slow to adopt proven strategies which can convert to campaign success. The survey found that only 23 per cent of respondents are communicating with their target audience in a highly personalised manner, building a relationship through understanding the prospective customer’s preferences and interests. Half of respondents went as far as personalising content with basic information, such as addressing emails directly to the recipient, while over a quarter (26 per cent) did not personalise content at all. This, despite a fifth of respondents having the campaign objective to enrich their customer database, and a further 20 per cent wishing to generate commercial appointments.

Businesses also appear to have conflicting opinions regarding measuring campaign effectiveness. Half of respondents (53 per cent) always measure the return on investment (ROI) of their campaigns and 13 per cent admit to never analysing the results of their investment. However, 62 per cent list web analytics solutions as critical to the roll out of their campaigns, leaving a disconnect between those which always measure ROI and those which sporadically do so.

Tim Norman, sales director of northern Europe, commented on the findings: “Every organisation is feeling the pinch at the moment, so it is surprising that marketers are not using every weapon in their armoury to ensure campaign success. The slow time to market for campaigns (for some of the respondents) can only be providing a competitive disadvantage, while the lack of personalisation will fail to impress prospects. Companies are relying on their marketing departments to maintain existing customer relationships and build new ones. Without a comprehensive strategy in place to do this, they will struggle.”