• by Jess Nelson , April 4, 2016

Marketers who integrate their email marketing campaigns across additional channels significantly outperform marketers who rely on a single-channel marketing strategy, suggests a recent Salesforce study.

Eighty percent of the nearly 4,000 global marketers polled in Salesforce’s annual State of Marketing Report agree that email is core to their business. Seventy-nine percent of marketers say email generates return on investment, a 48% year-over-year increase.

An additional 49% of respondents say email is directly linked to their business’ primary revenue source -- a jump of 140% year-over-year.

“Email is the workhorse of marketing, and that isn’t changing,” says Vala Afshar, chief digital evangelist at Salesforce. “But what is changing is using more intelligent email.”

Afshar discussed how top-performing email marketers distinguish themselves in a conversation with Email Marketing Daily.

Multichannel marketing and campaign management is far more likely to be described as a key focus for high-performing marketers and, among those polled who identified as high-performing marketers, 95% rate marketing integration as effective or very effective.

Sixty-three percent of marketing teams that self-identify as high-performing say they excel at creating a personalized, omnichannel customer experiences, whereas only 2% of underperforming teams assert the same.  

In addition, 64% of high-performing marketing teams have integrated their email marketing across channels. On the opposite end of the spectrum, only 19% of underperforming marketers abide by an integrated marketing strategy.

“There’s no question that there’s an avalanche of new technologies, capabilities and rapid changes in the marketplace,” states Afshar. “The modern marketer is tech-savvy, and an early adopter.”

Top-performing teams are four more times likely to use predictive intelligence and data science, according to the Salesforce report. High-performing marketers are also far more likely to place customer satisfaction as their ultimate goal, even above revenue.

“Customers have more buy-in, more choices and more power than ever before,” says Afshar.  “Customers have moved to the top of the priority list, and that’s why life cycle and predictive marketing is so important. Universally, they [marketers] all want to know more about their customers. 

Sixty-five percent of high-performing marketing teams have adopted a customer journey strategy and 88% of those same marketers say it is critical to the success of their overall marketing strategy. 

The element of marketing orchestration across channels definitely sets apart high marketing performers from low performers, says Afshar. He hopes the report findings will be a wake-up call to marketers that are still running separate marketing strategies.