Study: DM Departments Emerging as Social Media Overseers

Direct marketing departments appear to be emerging as the owners of companies’ social media marketing programs, according to a recent survey by StrongMail.

While 29% of respondents said their firms’ social media marketing initiatives are overseen by multiple departments, 36% said their direct marketing departments owned the channel, according to the e-mail marketing technology provider.

Also, 9% of the survey respondents said their public relations departments owned the social media channel, and 5% said they have a standalone department dedicated to it, according to StrongMail.

Not surprisingly, the survey found that social media is hot with e-mail marketers with 66% saying they plan to integrate the two channels in 2009, according to StrongMail.

Also, of marketers planning to increase budgets in 2009, 83% said will increase spending on e-mail marketing, followed by social media at 62%, StrongMail reported. However, the company did not report what percentage of its survey respondents said they plan to increase budgets in 2009.

Though e-mail marketers are clearly focused on social media, there is apparently widespread confusion on how to capitalize on it.

According to StrongMail, 55% of respondents said one of their biggest challenges with integrating social media and e-mail marketing is determining which metrics to use to measure success. Forty eight percent said establishing business goals for the program is one of their biggest challenges, making it a close second, StrongMail reported.

In the press release announcing the survey results, StrongMail also announced it has developed technology to help its clients integrate social media into the e-mail marketing programs.

According to StrongMail, its new technology will enable clients to allow e-mail recipients to share branded content across the most popular social media sites and blogs, send messages directly to social communities, and integrate the Web, e-mail and social communities to create viral marketing programs.