Whether you are looking for up to the minute data on market trends or informative guides on business strategies, you will find it here. 

So far this year we have published a wealth of market data, best practice guides, buyer’s guides, surveys, trend briefings and more.

Here are a few of our key takeaways from the first half of 2015, with links to the respective reports for further insight.

77% of businesses plan to increase digital marketing budgets this year

More than three-quarters of marketers surveyed in our Marketing Budgets 2015 Report indicate their companies plan to increase their digital marketing budgets for 2015.

This is a significant increase of 8% since last year (and 13% since we first carried out this survey six years ago).

Q: What best describes your plans for your digital marketing budget in 2015?

Personalisation leads to a 14% uplift in sales

This comes from our quarterly digital intelligence briefing Why Marketing Should be Personal produced in partnership with Adobe.

As the link between an improved customer experience and better commercial performance has become more obvious, the ability to personalise is rightly seen as something which can help differentiate you from competitors.

We asked our respondents: “How do you (or your clients) measure the benefits of personalisation?”

78% of marketers feel that their job is more stressful compared to five years ago

However marketing is finally getting the respect it deserves by leading the charge in the quest for customer centricity and personalised customer experiences that will take organisations into the next era of profitability.

This is according to our recent report Marketing Pain Points and How to Overcome Them published in association with SmartFocus.

Here are some of the major pain-points discussed and remedied in the report:

Digital marketing salaries are on a par with those of general marketers

According to our Salary Survey 2015 report, if we consider salaries by level of seniority, digital salaries are faring pretty well against those in general marketing.

At marketing assistant level, digital specialists are on average £12,036 better off than those beginning their career in general marketing.

Utilising the single customer view

In our Customer Experience Optimisation report, produced in partnership with Ensighten, we asked more than 600 digital marketers and ecommerce professionals around the globe about their own efforts in building a single customer profile, particularly in regards to how it is activated and optimised.

Creating and utilising a single customer profile across all marketing activity is still a work in progress for most businesses. 

We asked our respondents: “do you or your clients currently use a single customer profile for all marketing applications?”

Less than one in five (18%) of the responding companies are using a single customer profile for most of their marketing applications. In comparison, 45% are not using a single customer profile at all.

Brands think they’re good at resolving consumer conflicts… they’re wrong

The Consumer Conversation report, produced by Econsultancy in partnership with IBM, highlights the gap between marketers’ intentions and their customers’ satisfaction.

Brands are confident they’re doing the right thing, with 89% satisfied or very satisfied in their ability to resolve conflicts that arise. 

Q: How satisfied are you with your ability to resolve customer conflicts?

…but consumers don’t necessarily agree. 48% felt that issues were dealt with somewhat or very ineffectively. 

Q: How effectively did [that company] deal with your issue?

The importance of integration across your customer experience management technologies

Our study, The Retailer’s Imperative: Strategic Approaches to Customer Experience, conducted in partnership with SDL, asked “how important is integration across customer experience management technologies?”

Almost every respondent (97%) said that customer experience management integration was important, with 45% seeing it as vital to their growth.

62% of marketers use programmatic for brand campaigns

Almost two-thirds of marketers (62%) are using programmatic advertising for brand campaigns as opposed to direct response, according to the findings from our Programmatic Branding Report.

So what are the perceived benefits of using programmatic for branding campaigns? 

Our respondents identified efficiency, reduced ad costs and improved targeting as the key benefits…

38% of marketers do not use personalisation

From our Conversion Rate Optimization Report, published in partnership with Redeye, this research looks at the types of conversion strategies and tactics organizations are using, in addition to the tools and processes employed for improving conversion rates.

It shows that 62% of client-side respondents are currently personalising their marketing activity.

Q: Do you (or your clients) undertake any form of personalisation in your (or their) marketing activity?

20% of marketers use behavioural triggers in email marketing

The results from our Email Marketing Census show that a fifth of marketers (20%) currently implement behavioural email marketing based on web activity, a 43% increase year-on-year.

Further to this, 39% of respondents are planning to use behavioural email targeting.

Q: Which of the following practices are a part of your email marketing efforts?

Only 9% of financial services marketers are not personalising the customer experience

In our Digital Trends in the Financial Services and Insurance Sector report, produced in partnership with Adobe, we asked our respondents “which of the following statements best describes your company’s ability to deliver personalised customer experiences?”

The importance of personalisation is clearly reflected in the above chart. Also encouragingly, a third (33%) are employing multichannel personalisation based on digital and offline data.

72% of companies aren’t using telephone call tracking to map the customer journey

Organisations have realised the advantages of sharing data between traditional and digital marketing teams over managing different activities in isolation. The less fragmentation there is the better you can make the custom experience.

In our Understanding the Customer Journey report produced in association with ResponseTap, we asked the respondents “which of the following offline channels are relevant for your business (or for your clients)?”

Mobile-supported ecommerce is seen as the most important functionality

Our second annual Technology for Ecommerce Report, sponsored by Neoworks took a look at the most important aspects of ecommerce functionality and integration, and how companies rate the performance of their solutions in these areas. 

Retailers now recognise the need to optimise for mobile devices, as mobile supported ecommerce is seen as a ‘critical’ function of ecommerce solutions by three in five (59%) companies. An additional 39% regard mobile support as ‘important’.

Q: When selecting an ecommerce solution, how important are the following types of functionality? (company respondents)

30% of revenue and 26% of their revenue growth in 2014 is attributed to innovation initiatives

The “traditional mindset” is the number one obstacle facing mainstream companies in their pursuit of innovation

In our Pursuit of Standard Operating Innovation Report we discovered that for the mainstream, the top challenges share the common thread of fear. Fear of change, fear of leaving the traditional path and a fear of failure.

Innovators on the other hand have long since moved beyond “should we innovate?” to “how do we innovate?” Highlighting that culture is the fundamental advantage highly innovative B2B marketers have over mainstream companies.

Top 100 UK Digital Agencies revealed

The Top 100 UK Digital Agencies 2015 report, sponsored by Telerik Sitefinity, highlights the biggest and brightest across full service and marketing, design and build, technical, creative and media.

SapientNitro and IBM Interactive Experience ranked at the top of the table and well ahead of other agencies, with UK fee incomes from digital hitting £165,433,349 and £142,508,100 respectively. 

Key statistics from the Top 100 Digital Agencies Report 2015: 

  • The top five agencies hold 29% of the fee income of the entire Top 100.
  • The average projected fee income increase for the next 12 months across the Top 100 this year is 21%.
  • More than a quarter of the Top 100 are projecting that their fee income will rise by 30% or more over the coming year.
  • Since 2014, the average fee income across the 100 has increased by 25%, with 77% of agencies saying they were ‘very optimistic’ about the next 12 months.