Email spending on the rise for 2012

While pundits and economic forecasters predict uncertainty in the coming year, advertisers and marketers can rest assured that they'll still have decent budgets with which to work. According to a recent survey by StrongMail, 92 percent of marketers plan to maintain or expand their budgets in 2012. Email advertising is one ad category where marketers will increase their spending for 2012, reports Direct Marketing Magazine.

Of the 939 executives surveyed, 60 percent indicated they were planning to increase spending on email campaigns over the following year. That's in comparison to 54 percent who said they would increase spending on social media and 37 percent who plan to increase their spending on mobile and search.

Respondents also indicated that they were considering reducing spending on direct mail, tradeshows and other events in 2012 to make room for spending increases in other areas.

Kara Trivunovic, the global director of strategy at StrongMail, says it isn't at all surprising that some forms of advertising will draw additional investment. "In order for companies to get out of their economic troubles, they need to invest in marketing efforts to drive revenue," she told Direct Marketing Magazine.

Email campaigns are a favorite strategy for marketers because they are cost-effective to implement and success is easier to measure than many other types of campaigns. Even though social media is gaining popularity, marketers struggle to gauge the effectiveness social platforms.

The success of email campaigns is easily judged by the number of emails sent versus the investment return. In order to make the most of an email campaign, marketers need to know that the right consumers receive the emails they send out. That means they need a way to pinpoint the most highly qualified audience for every individual campaign.

On-Demand Targeting by Semcasting can help. On-Demand Targeting works by using advanced predictive modeling techniques to identify prospects who are most likely to respond to a given offer. By calculating hundreds of demographic and psychographic data points, On-Demand creates a look-alike model of a company's current customers and then uses Semcasting's proprietary database to match these with other consumers who fit the same mold. By using this method, marketers will be able to make the most of their email campaigns and see the highest return on their email advertising investments.