Digital Marketing Trends In Australia

We recently published an article on Inbound Marketing In Your Marketing Mix where we discussed the importance of customer engagement and the need to focus more attention on earning the interest of customers and not just relying on being able to buy it through traditional marketing. However, for many of us, digital marketing is still somewhat of an untamed beast. The good news out this week is we’re not alone.

Responsys got in touch with us and kindly shared their annual Big Australia Report which discusses and benchmarks the practices of digital marketing in Australia based on interviews they conducted with 125 digital marketers around Australia in July and August of this year.

The study highlighted that marketers really feel burdened by a lack of digital knowledge and expertise, with more than half indicating that there is a digital knowledge gap in their organisation.

This report has some fascinating insights and we wanted to share a few other take aways with you:

What is the 2012 digital marketing landscape in Australia?

• Emphasis on customer engagement – Responsys highlighted that Australian businesses are acknowledging the need for relevant and “valuable communications that aim to engage rather than sell”.
• Digital execution being managed in house – Despite the digital knowledge gap many felt within their organisation, digital marketers are becoming more confident in managing digital execution in house compared to 2011 (28% outsource in 2012 vs 57% in 2011). This really highlights a need for digital marketing training and employing data specialists to adequately analyse the customer data.
• More work for marketers – While the study found that around 5 in 10 Australian marketers expect marketing budgets to increase over the next year, however, only 4 in 10 organisations are looking to hire more digital staff. These increased pressures mean that we as marketers are going to need to find ways to work smarter not harder.

What is the approach to digital marketing?

• Cross channel approach – Businesses are using a cross channel approach with email the main channel. This is followed closely by social and traditional web. This further highlights the need for marketers to up skill in a variety of digital marketing approaches to be effective.
• Performance metrics = success of a digital campaign – Responsys found businesses are using performance metrics (namely click rate and open rate) rather than growing their database to determine the success of email campaigns. We found these performance metrics quite interesting: overall unique open rate – 22.9% and unique click rate at 5.2%. Don’t mind us while we toot our own horn but we’re pretty happy we’re above average (thanks for your support) if you haven’t already, why not subscribe to our weekly email updates.
• Mobile is becoming critical, fast – This might be a bit of a no brainer but it was interesting that Apple iPhone and Apple Mail contribute towards 27% of Australians’ email client usage.
• Focus on continual improvement – The study indicated that marketers are evaluating and modifying campaigns more frequently than a year ago (40% are doing this monthly). By reviewing your performance metrics you can evaluate which campaigns worked best and why, as well as using these insights to help you build more successful future campaigns.

What is in store for digital marketing in Australia?

Responsys have identified that email, social, web and mobile are the four biggest priorities to Australian marketers moving forward into this next year. In fact, digital channels like email and social are 6 times more of a priority than print media and in-store marketing.

Simon O’Day Vice President of Responsys Asia Pacific said “It’s clear that the next generation of talent is hot on the heels of those in more senior positions. Unless Australian marketers start moving with the times, in a few more years we may see the younger, savvier digital marketers landing the top strategic marketing jobs in favour of their counterparts with more years on the clock.”

Responsys have kindly allowed us to share this report with you so click here to view the Big Annual Report.

We’d also love to know your thoughts as always in the comments section below.

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Calie Salter

Managing Director at Marketing.com.au

Calie is passionate about all things psychology, marketing, web, social and research. She is also the Managing Director and Co-founder of the Melbourne based digital agency Clickify.

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