Online shopping via mobile terminal devices will be the norm in the medium term, according to 60.1 % of German retail companies questioned in artegic’s current study “Online Dialogue Marketing in Retail 2016”. More than half of the companies believe that the turnovers from m-commerce and e-commerce will equalise. Front runner among the online channels continues to be email marketing, currently used by 70.2 % of retail companies and soon by 83.1 %. The Online Dialogue Marketing in Retail 2016 study deals with the current use and future developments in online dialogue marketing for retail, as well as the evaluation of trend topics, such as mobile and Big Data.
Over a third (34.8 %) of German retail companies – B2C as well as B2B in our survey – already use mobile marketing, another third (32 %) is planning its use. This comes to no surprise, as 68 % of companies questioned attribute growing significance to mobile marketing over the next two years. Mobile is a clear multichannel tool. 69.8 % of retail companies view mobile marketing important for e-commerce, 57.8 % for stationary trade. Among companies, which already use mobile marketing, this is even 84.5 % and 77.7 %, respectively. 70.9 % believe that companies without a mobile shop will be noticed less by buyers in the medium term. Mobile will therefore become a real challenge for retail businesses. The most used mobile tool (apart from mobile websites) is currently mobile email marketing, which is employed by 68 % of mobile marketing users. This is followed by QR codes (62.9 %) and mobile apps (57.7%). Surprisingly, at the rear is mobile advertising with only 18.6 % use.
Email Marketing Remains the Most Important Tool
Email marketing is used by 70.2 % of retail companies, which makes it the most important online marketing tool, followed by SEO (56.1 %) and facebook (51.7 %). Interesting fact: Google+ (29.8 %) has overtaken Twitter (24.5 %). The importance of email marketing is expected to continue. 63.3 % of companies see an increase in the importance of email marketing for retail over the next two years, 61.1 % even want to increase their budgets. The degree of maturity of email marketing use is also increasing continuously. Currently, transaction emails (81.5 % of email marketing users) and segmented mass emails (67.7 %) are still the most commonly used email marketing tools, however, other more modern measures are strongly on the increase. 50.3 % are planning the use of mobile optimised emails, 48.7 % the use of emails, which include extended data from the user behaviour and customer lifecycle, and 46.6 % the use of completely individualised emails..