More of Budget To Target-Marketing

A new survey has found that more than one in five organizations spend more than 45% of their entire marketing budgets on "target marketing," and an additional two-in-five spend between 15% and 45% on such activity.

According to "2005 Executive Report: Target Marketing Priorities Analysis," underwritten by Harte-Hanks, Inc. and prepared by CSO Insights, Inc., nearly three of four companies plan higher investments in database management this year; three in five companies are planning to spend more on e-mail, web design and data quality initiatives; and more than one in two on search marketing.

A total of 281 companies participated in the survey, reflecting a cross-section of vertical markets among them retail, manufacturing, high-tech and services, among other categories.

According to the study, 43% of respondents have a regular or constant program to support personalization and one-to-one marketing; 33% feel they are "good" or "very good" at calculating customer profitability; but more than a third rate their database management as "poor" or "very poor" (just 12% rate themselves "very good").

Further, 53% of respondents believe that their own customer data are at least 75% accurate-and 40% of respondents believe that less than half their prospect data are correct.

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