eCircle has just presented the third part of the study ‘ Social Networks and E-mail in Europe ‘ where decision makers and marketing heads of companies have participated in six reference countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain.
The study reveals interesting facts and highlights some important questions such as: What are the most used online marketing tools in Europe?
In the six countries participating in the survey, e-mail is confirmed as the most used online marketing tool by companies (66%). Social networks occupy the third place in the ‘ranking’ of the digital tools preferred by those responsible for marketing (44%).
Facebook is the leading social network in use, both by companies and by Internet users
It is not surprising that the landscape of social networks in Europe is dark blue – between 78% and 90% of those responsible for digital marketing include Facebook among the most used communication channels. Companies do not take into account some local networks, although they register considerable numbers of users (eg VZ Group in Germany or Hyves.nl in the Netherlands).
The advertising format most used in social networks – display – is not well perceived by the community of users.
60% of those responsible for marketing have already used pages and / or profiles on social networks that are very appreciated by users.
Why do companies use social networks?
The objectives that push companies to use social networks are many and very different among them. Promotion of new products, Increase of brand recognition, Increase of loyalty, Acquisition of new contacts / customers, Market studies …
More than 50% of those responsible for marketing have indicated among the main objectives: promotion of new products, increased brand recognition and increased customer loyalty.
Social networks and e-mail work perfectly together – although there are still few companies that combine the two channels
75% of marketing managers confirm that they know the tools of Social Marketing by E-mail, but despite this, only 30% of companies already actively use the combination of the two communication channels. The data confirms that there is still a lot of room for optimizing the strategies and that the activities currently undertaken are only experimental.
Newsletters, segmentation and transactional e-mail: these are the most effective e-mail marketing tools
The news bulletins sent to the database itself, together with the segmentation of the messages and the transactional e-mails, represent the most effective e-mail marketing tools according to the European marketing managers. Very interesting result: even without advanced data usage for personalization, the standard newsletter still guarantees clicks, conversions and sales.