Salesforce Delivers 2015 State of Marketing Report, Reveals Top Priorities for Marketers

Insights from more than 5,000 marketers globally highlight investment priorities in social, mobile and email marketing to create cohesive customer journeys

Second annual report finds 84 percent of marketers worldwide plan to increase or maintain spend in 2015

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Salesforce

Jan 13, 2015, 08:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 13, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce [NYSE:CRM], the Customer Success Platform and world's No. 1 CRM company, today delivered the 2015 State of Marketing report. Based on a survey of more than 5,000 marketers globally, the second annual report found marketers plan to increase investments in social media advertising, social media marketing, location-based mobile tracking, mobile apps and email marketing in an effort to create cohesive customer journeys. In addition, 84 percent of respondents reported they plan to increase or maintain marketing budgets in 2015 with social and mobile marketing topping the priorities list. To download the Salesforce Marketing Cloud 2015 State of Marketing report, click here.

2015 State of Marketing Report Key Findings

The customer journey is now critical to business success. There is a massive shift from campaign-focused marketing to personalized 1:1 customer journeys. According to recent research from Salesforce and LinkedIn, 86 percent of senior-level marketers say it is critical to create a cohesive customer journey across all touchpoints and channels. In the 2015 State of Marketing report, respondents cited mobile apps, marketing analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) tools as the technologies that are most effective at creating a cohesive customer journey.
Budgets for social are growing more than any other digital marketing channel. There is a major shift in how marketers view social: 64 percent of marketers now view social as a critical enabler of products and services, up from 25 percent in the 2014 State of Marketing report. Seventy percent of marketers said they would increase spending on social media advertising.
Marketers are integrating mobile into their overall marketing strategy. Marketers are increasingly focused on ensuring they are reaching their customers with 1:1 interactions in real-time via mobile devices. Sixty-eight percent report they have integrated mobile into their overall marketing strategy, up from 48 percent in last year's report. Sixty-five percent plan to spend more on mobile push notifications, a 32 percent year-over-year increase. Fifty-eight percent now have a dedicated mobile marketing team, up from 35 percent in 2014.
Email reigns as the digital marketing engine. Seventy-three percent of marketers agree that email is core to their business, and 92 percent report that email produces a return on investment (ROI). Forty-seven percent of survey participants cited click-through rates as the key metric for measuring email marketing success, while 43 percent identified conversion rate as the key metric.

Comment on the News

"The future of marketing is building cohesive customer journeys across sales, service and marketing interactions. It is more important than ever to connect with each person interacting with your brand, and personalize journeys based on their actions and preferences," said Scott McCorkle, CEO, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce. "Our 2015 State of Marketing report shows that this will be the year that businesses connect the dots accordingly and implement a truly multi-channel approach to personalize each customer's engagement."

Additional resources

For more information on the 2015 State of Marketing report, including an infographic of key findings, read the Salesforce blog.
Watch the Salesforce Marketing Cloud demo video.
Like Salesforce Marketing Cloud on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/exacttarget
Follow @salesforce and @marketingcloud on Twitter.

About Salesforce
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