Test Your Email Marketing Services

WRM-Media - Email Marketing Specialists

Morgan Stewart from Media Post recently advised that mass email marketing success was entirely dependent on prior testing.

Stewart said that the inbox is a ‘phenomenal equaliser’ demanding that brands of all shapes and sizes meet appropriate standards. A fair comment, as it is true that every email fights for a recipient’s attention from the same place with only its brand reputation and a subject line to stand it in good stead.

‘To improve, you need to try new stuff - a lot!’ he said.

‘However, change for the sake of change itself usually just perpetuates mediocrity. Give yourself (or your team) the freedom to push the limits while constantly comparing the results of these new approaches against a control."

Business standards for testing email campaign performance should be compared against their own previous experiences, in order to improve upon their best, as opposed to making a comparison to the rest of the industry.

Measuring Targeted Email Marketing

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A recent study by MarketingSherpa has suggested that many marketers struggle to continually deliver highly relevant content to a specific target audience.

Despite this, email remains one of the most valuable forms of communication in the majority of digital marketing strategies when focus is given to quality over quantity.

Measuring the return on investment of email marketing is notoriously difficult for many. It can be hard to monitor email responses and the rate of opening to sales/lead. Many companies that provide email marketing services will also provide you with a report upon campaign completion, which details the clicks, opens and unsubscribers to name a few.

To minimise the number of unsubscribers, businesses should be patient when building a targeted email list. One typically successful way of growing such a list is to ask website visitors to provide their email address in return for a service that indicates some of their interests. For example, if website visitors have to leave their email address in order to gain access to a downloadable white paper or extra content/news, you can be fairly sure they are interested in the content on offer.

WRM-Media’s consumer site Who-Remembers-Me.com requests that members agree to receive email marketing material in return for free membership to the site and as the site’s purpose is for members to reconnect with old friends, WRM can offer unparalleled data accuracy as well as an ability to measure the results of all email campaigns.

Small Businesses Benefit From Email Marketing

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Georgia Christian of Male Blaze has suggested that small businesses should be able to receive good ROI from email marketing thanks to its cost effectiveness. In an article for Marketing Web, she noted that the channel is an effective way to establish long lasting relationships with a wide audience of consumers.

"With each permission-based email campaign that your recipient opens, you are effectively establishing a trusting relationship with them," said Ms Christian.

"Your email messages will, over time, make your customers feel as though they are an important part of your company."

WRM-Media believe that email marketing can be a valuable tool to small businesses because it allows targeting towards either a very wide audience, which businesses would be unable to attain otherwise; it also enables targeting towards a very niche marketing if appropriate.  Small businesses can benefit from niche targeting if they cannot afford to lose emails sent to uninterested recipients.  Email marketing can be sent both en masse and to a niche market, making it a unique form of communication.

Email Marketing Remains the Main Driver of Website Visitors

 

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According to US magazine Website, a recent study suggests that email is still the most effective way of driving traffic to retail websites. 

Foresee Results carried out the study, which found that ‘19 percent of shoppers surveyed said they visited a top retailer’s online storefront after receiving a promotional email from the company. Eight percent said they were driven there by search engine results, and only five percent said their decision to visit one of the top 40 retail websites was primarily influenced by social media channels such as recommendations on Facebook or Twitter.’

Facebook and Twitter are a valuable resource as the personable aspect of a recommendation provides brand loyalty, but email marketing continues to be more effective in terms of driving visitors to retail websites.

 “Tried-and-true online marketing tactics should not be abandoned or ignored in favor of newer media,” says ForeSee’s VP of retail strategy, Kevin Ertell.

The study by Foresee Results investigated the top 40 US internet retailers and found them to be most keen to use multiple marketing methods. Ertell clarified this by saying “It’s (social media) just not the key driver of sales by any means at this point.”

WRM-Media Email Marketing Predictions for 2011

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There are hundreds of ‘trending’ articles out there at the moment due to the long awaited end to a slow 2010 for many marketers. Fortunately for WRM-Media and others in the direct marketing industry, businesses looked to save money on their marketing strategies and as a result turned to email marketing as a more cost effective means of communicating with consumers.

Along with its cost effectiveness, another key feature of email marketing that has continued to increase in importance is the ability to target consumers based on behaviour, location, age and preferences. In 2011, every form of media has seen predictions differ in whether they will rise or fall; signifying that the uncertainty is yet to subside. However, it is a safe bet that insight in to customer requirements and desires is going to be crucial for 2011.

In order to both maintain current customers and attract the new, marketers will need to offer what others do not – a more bespoke service. Being made to feel special and individual is innate in humans and if marketers can make the consumer feel this way, half the battle is already won.
Consumers have come to expect targeted advertising and if they do receive something entirely unrelated and abstract, are likely to disregard it without consideration as the marketing homework has not been done previously.
The unabating social media train is testament to the power of engagement. 2009 saw a social media frenzy in which companies raced to be involved with the different sites; 2010 saw the trend continue in terms of marketing but 2011 is set to see businesses take social media more seriously than ever. Already this year, fashion site ASOS has launched a fully functional site through its Facebook page, combining shopping with social media.

Support of social media is telling of what email marketers have known for years; engagement is paramount to companies wanting to bridge the gap and form a relationship with their consumers. Email marketing can offer you the opportunity to target customers and, if you have an ongoing relationship with your email marketing company, monitor the results over time. This allows you to adapt every email campaign to suit the recipient and adjust to their typical behaviours.

Planned marketing budget increase

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2011 is forecast to see an increase in marketing budgets following a rise in confidence levels after the recession. Spending channels with secure ROI such as email marketing are likely to see the increase initially as firms ensure their spending increase is safe.

IPA and BDO Bellwether carried out a report recently which found that nearly a quarter of UK marketers cut their budgets in the last quarter of 2010.

With new economic policy enforcements and an uncertain future still hovering over us, the cost cutting was implemented as a safety precaution.

However, the results of 300 firms ranked among the country’s top 1,000 have been distinctly brighter for 2011. The report found that marketing budgets would see an increase, particularly in spending channels that have a proven return on investment such as online marketing, email marketing and paid search.

President of the IPA and vice-chairman of the Ogilvy Group UK, Rory Sutherland said that although the findings were a mixed bag, some comfort could be taken from the fact that “initial budget setting for 2011 is currently higher than the actual 2010 spend".

4% growth in Australian marketing budgets

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Throughout 2010, Australian marketing budgets have increased by 7%. Compare this to next year’s planned marketing budgets and the 4% increase suggests that growth has slowed. However, despite the fact that the average planned rise is lower in 2011, a survey has found that 44% of marketing companies expected a rise of 15% in their marketing budgets.

Key priorities for marketing companies remain unchanged when compared to the last survey carried out. The most important priorities include:

Focusing more on maximising the efficiency of how marketing budgets are spent.

Focusing more on improving and finding new measures to increase sales.

Maintaining brand reputation.

The channels that received the biggest growth in investment in the last year are social networks and applications. Both saw a 10% increase from 2009. Online advertising was next, then viral marketing and direct marketing.

Chief Executive of the Australian Marketing Institute, Mark Crowe said that, ‘Overall, a further increase in budgets is expected, which represents a consolidation of the strong growth that was experienced last year.’

‘Online and new media not surprisingly continue to enjoy high levels of increased usage. However, traditional media can also look forward to increased usage albeit not at the same level.’

The findings were gathered from The Second Annual Senior Marketers Monitor, which is based on 369 responses from senior marketers.

Yahoo Email Service Updates

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In line with Gmail’s new ‘Priority Inbox’ and Hotmail’s recent makeover, email service provider Yahoo has recently updated its own email system with the codename ‘Minty.’

In an attempt to attract current and new users, Yahoo has updated its portal to include social, SMS, photos and videos.  Yahoo email users will now be able to check and post to their Facebook and Twitter profiles so that they don’t even need to leave their inbox to visit different websites. As well as this, Yahoo users are able to use Flickr and Youtube within their email to view videos and photos.

Yahoo is also set to try other communication avenues by including instant messaging and SMS in its services.

The updated portal will have a system which remembers user favourites and will organise email based on what it thinks is most relevant or desirable to each individual. Using cloud based services, Yahoo has claimed the new service is twice as fast with an improved spam filter. 

To minimize the impact this will have on email marketing, marketing lists will need to be segmented based on categories like brand, message type and activity.  

It will be important to try to win back inactive consumers and also remove dead email addresses. A win-back strategy is something that too many marketing companies fail to do but it will help to ensure that emails are not wasted. 

Now that more methods of engagement are possible within email campaigns, it might be an idea to take advantage of this and try using a Youtube video in emails in order to boost response rates. 

Finally, an email marketing strategy that fulfils multichannel requirements will be crucial to user responsiveness and engagement. Providing the option of social media channels within messages by including a “Share this” button in your email campaigns can spread brand awareness and engagement. A study by ‘GetResponse’ showed that there was an increase of 30% click-throughs when these buttons were added.

Yahoo’s changes will create obstacles for email marketing specialists but these can be converted to opportunity for marketing companies who are able to adapt and provide more relevant and consistently engaging content.

105.5M Online Spend Increase in Australia

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Australia’s IAB recently reported that online advertising saw a $105.5 million spending increase in the third quarter of 2010, in comparison to the same time in 2009. 

CEO of IAB Australia, Paul Fisher said:

Feedback from media agencies and advertisers indicates a continued and growing confidence in the online channel as an effective medium to reach, engage and influence consumers, and these expenditure figures demonstrate that investment is indeed following consumer behaviour – online.

Overall, online advertising spending growth was positive with general display seeing an increase of 26%, classifieds of 30% and search and directories by 18%.

Fisher also stated that media feedback indicated that this growth is set to continue as confidence in online and digital channels to reach and influence consumers is on the incline. The spending figures are following consumer behaviour online as well as keeping up with demand.

Thanks to the latest increase in expenditure, the online advertising industry is set to spend over $2.2 billion in 2010, putting them in a better position than ever in the total Australian advertising market. 

Display advertising and classified advertising was said to account for 26.5% and 24.6% of the total advertising spending whilst other mediums made up the other 48.9%.

In general display advertising, email based made up $7.6 million of the advertising spending, which is an increase of 6% compared to the same time last year. 

Dominant industries in the display advertising market include finance, vehicles, computers and communications as they made up 44.3% of the general display expenditure. 

Motor vehicle manufacturers were the largest subcategory, although it was very marginally down in the second quarter of 2010 compared to the same time last year. 

Real estate was found to be the largest category for classified ad spending, followed by recruitment and automotive.

The report by the IAB was said to have collected its advertising data from more than 1000 websites; it was managed by Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

The Pitfalls of International Marketing

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There are many intricacies within international digital marketing, which often encourages marketing companies to remain within the safety net of their own national perimeters.

However, these are exciting times for international email marketing. It has fast become the quickest, most cost-effective way of communicating with consumers. Ideal for expanding internationally, the digital avenue provides the opportunity to reach consumers all over the world, instantly. It has the best global penetration of all direct marketing services but the pitfalls can seem endless if you don’t have a good understanding of international email marketing from the outset.

Companies such as StrongMail, CheetahMail and Datran Media are all US email vendors that have expanded globally, so going global makes sense for the email marketing specialists targeting their consumers. But where do you start if you have yet to dip your toe into international waters?

Communicating internationally involves much more than simply gaining access to email addresses abroad, as so many companies fail to recognise. As the number of different targeted demographics you need to tailor towards suddenly soars, the time zones you work in clash and the behavioural and cultural expectations of your consumers differ, it’s easy to see why some marketing companies fall into the trap of sending international email campaigns using the same strategies as their own national campaigns. 

However, international expansion will be detrimental to the survival of data owners and direct marketers, which means a consideration of the different nuances across geographic location is vital.

The first difficulty in international email marketing is the difference in time zones. This can make a huge difference to the success of campaigns, as emails received at the start of the day are proved to benefit from a much better open and click rate. Not only this, but consider the difficulties encountered by seasonal campaigns when you send out an international email about bikinis – it might be summer in the US but with winter in Australia, your campaign suddenly loses all relevance.

Another, more dangerous issue is that of legislation. Many countries vary in their laws on email marketing, and an awareness of these differences is vital in maintaining good international relations. Laws on privacy regulations and use of personal details vary significantly depending on the country and you could find yourself on the wrong side of the law if you don’t take the time to investigate these differences.

Collecting data in countries that are yet to take full advantage of email marketing will enable you to build brand awareness in a developing industry. Sooner rather than later is the adage here.

For any growing database marketing business, international communication is crucial for sustained success, however, there are several pitfalls to consider before embarking on a global marketing operation. By researching individual country legislation and preference, organisations set themselves up for successful ongoing international communication in the future.

Message from Santa Claus

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WRM-Media have launched an email campaign this week advertising their latest venture; a website set up especially for Christmas offering personalised letters from Father Christmas.

www.message-from-santa-claus.com offers consumers the chance to make their child’s Christmas. By inputting details about the child, a letter can be sent out addressed to them, including personal details individual to each child, such as their hobbies and friends.

Letters are customisable, feature an authentic looking postmark from the North Pole and are guaranteed to be delivered in time for Christmas, depending on order deadlines. There are offers available for multiple orders and we are also offering commission to affiliates looking to market the website and its products.
If this is of interest to you, please get in touch with WRM-Media: 01924 229 200.

Adapting To Suit The Priority Inbox

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Hotmail has advanced its filtering techniques for email marketing recently but Gmail has upped its game with the new Priority Inbox. ESP’s user behaviour will now affect email campaign deliverability.

Emails will now be sorted in to three categories: ‘Priority’, ‘Starred’ and ‘Everything Else’. The content of email campaigns, the sender reputation and how recipients respond to previous email marketing messages from you, will all affect where your email campaign will be directed.

Consumers will be able to specify the kind of email marketing material they want to receive in their Priority Inbox as well as ‘starring’ emails to mark them as important.

This change to ESP layouts will undoubtedly affect the results of email marketing campaigns; therefore the importance of making your email campaigns relevant and targeting your email data will increase even further. Making email campaigns individual is more likely to ensure that they are delivered as priority messages.
The importance of adhering to best practice is now of more importance than ever; non responsive email addresses that are regularly targeted will result in you being marked as spam.

In terms of your creative, it is a good idea to have a text/image ratio that adheres to best practice, as this also enables you to include keywords. You should also consider how the email preview looks as well as the opened email campaign.

Being whitelisted with ESP’s will be crucial for good delivery. If subscribers add your sender address to their address book this also means that your email marketing will not be redirected so inviting them to do this will be beneficial for you.

The increased importance on relevancy means there is a necessity to listen to consumers and target them with appropriate email marketing material. This will enable the new priority inbox to have less of an effect.

Relevant Email Campaigns

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Relevancy is paramount to email marketing campaigns. Without it, customers are much more likely to unsubscribe or make a complaint as the messages they receive are not relevant to them. 

Marketing companies often make the mistake of assuming that because consumers were once interested, they will always be interested. The habit of changing preferences is a common one and can result in complaints if they are not monitored. 

Monitoring what emails consumers do click through on can enable you to build an understanding of what their preferences are and therefore send them only email campaigns relevant to them. Information collected at the data gathering stage can also help to establish what consumer preferences are, if information beyond name and email address is available. 

Every interaction with your marketing company should be as relevant as you can make it. If it is possible to get further information on your data, this can help make email campaigns relevant for each customer. 

When consumers give you personal data, they expect that any marketing material they receive subsequently will be better targeted, so they only receive messages that are of interest to them. Both sending email campaigns that are not targeted and sending to consumers that have subscribed previously, assuming they still want to receive material, can have a negative effect on ROI. 

ISPs have now started to consider campaign engagement with consumers as a measure for sender reputation. So, the less engagement is had, the more likely it is that your reputation will decrease.

£336million email marketing industry

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Research in to the email marketing sector by Econsultancy has found the industry to be worth £336million; a 15% increase compared to last year.

Reasons for this include how cost-effective email marketing is, in addition to the fact that it is much easier to measure the success of email over other advertising types.

Econsultancy found that social media had not detracted from email marketing campaigns; on the contrary, their research suggests that the two forms of media can be used in conjunction with one another to create a more successful media strategy. They have explained that the use of both email marketing and social media can build more significant customer relations as opposed to a one-way relationship intent on a return.

The company also found an increase in email marketing digital spend in 2010 compared to 2009. An increase from 14% to 17% suggests increased trust and reliance on email marketing campaigns. In addition, around 51% of marketing companies spend over £10,000 on email marketing strategies.

The BBC recently reported on research commissioned by Google which said that the internet contributes £100 billion to the British economy, working out as 7.2% of the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP).

B2B and B2C Email Marketing Link

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Despite the fact that B2B and B2C marketing companies target different audiences, each consumer or client should be treated like an individual. B2B marketers can learn from their B2C opponents in the sense that they target their recipients to make relevant email campaigns. 

Many B2B marketing campaigns avoid segmenting their data or using targeted email lists as it is considered one of the biggest challenges when carrying out B2B marketing. In contrast those who work on B2C email marketing view targeting prospects as paramount to delivering successful email campaigns.

It is possible to segment email lists based on previous customer actions, so, sending them email campaigns that relate to something they might previously have clicked through on, with the idea that this is likely to be of relevance to them. 

Using surveys, it is possible to establish which social networks your potential consumers use regularly and then communicate with them via this method. By building content of genuine interest and of relevance to them i.e. that will educate them, you are much more likely to engage with them. This is proven to be more successful that straightforward promotional means of communication. 

Using surveys is an excellent way to gauge what consumers like and require from email campaigns, this then increases engagement in the future as you can be sure you only target responsive prospects.

By targeting customers – whether they are B2B or B2C, you can be sure that you are aiming your content at people who are relevant and more importantly, you are giving them marketing content that they want to hear about, therefore engaging them with your brand.

Use of Third Party Data

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Email database owners using email marketing often find that third party data is a crucial component in building their email database as it offers the opportunity to reach new consumers. However it can be difficult to maximise return on investment especially as data often proves to be costly. In order to make the most of third party data you should:

1. Plan goals for the response of your email campaign
   Third party data gleans the best response from email marketing if you avoid a sales pitch in the first message. The first communication with a customer should focus on response as the primary goal.
2. Offer something in exchange for data
   The amount of information you ask for from recipients should be balanced with what you are offering them – the more data you want to collect, the better reward you should offer.
3. Choose your list carefully
   Ensure marketing list quality by investigating a list’s source, age and collection method. Some data can be captured cheaply and illegally – not only preventing your email campaign from being a success but also landing you the wrong side of the law.
4. Segment wisely
   Use targeted demographics to make the most of your email campaign. A message that is sent towards anyone and everyone is costly without good ROI.
5. Suppress wisely
   By adding competitive domains to your suppression list, you can avoid letting competitors see what your email campaigns are like, and which clients you are working for.

Email List Marketing Issues

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According to ‘Direct Marketing News’, 30% of records in an email database list become inactive or change email address every year. This is often referred to as ‘list churn’. This can reduce email deliverability, click through rates, open rates and email campaign performance, resulting in decreased overall revenue. 


List churn means that you often have to spend money on customer acquisition email campaigns because with a 30% decrease in your email lists, it is necessary to find new consumers elsewhere.
Reasons for list churn include people who move home, move jobs – therefore making their work email address inactive, or they might switch email provider.
There is a need to strike the right balance with your email campaigns: if you send too frequently, you might annoy subscribers. Send them too infrequently and consumers could forget when or why they subscribed. 


The easiest ways to prevent list churn is to check your email list registrations – all records should be opt-in data only and all third parties should be checked thoroughly.
All unsubscribers must be blocked from your email lists straight away – better to do this than to be marked as spam which can have a negative effect on your credibility. You should also test all messages before sending email campaigns to ensure links and the overall creative sends properly through the email provider. 


In order to prevent list churn, it is possible to use something called ECOA (E-mail Change of Address), which updates the records in your email database that are no longer active or that bounce. To engage inactive consumers, you could develop a re-engagement campaign with welcome back offers or incentives to encourage them to start opening emails again. 

A list of active consumers is necessary for a healthy email database and is possible simply by keeping consumers happy and interested in the campaigns offered.

Email Marketing Conversions vs. Clicks

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When a user clicks through from an email campaign and continues to the desired action, i.e. purchases a product, subscribes to a service etc, this is known as a conversion. The conversion rate is the percentage of your traffic that carries out the desired action.


Conversion rate optimisation has become an important strategy in email marketing as companies develop an understanding of the need to increase this percentage. Conversion rate optimisation produces numbers that allow you to analyse precisely what has been achieved, and what needs doing.
 
In order to achieve great return on investment (ROI) from email marketing, marketers should consider how to increase consumer interest in the initial email campaign. A few ways to do this according to ‘Ion Interactive’ are to a) use campaign specific landing pages, b) echo the message on the first landing page and c) employ continuous testing for continuous conversion improvement.

There is a necessity to ensure the overall design of a creative matches the email campaign message, if this isn’t the case, it implies your email marketing strategy has not been properly thought through, which will have a negative impact on your ROI.

In addition, behavioural targeting makes your pages even more relevant – and is much more effective that geographical targeting which depends upon stereotypes.

The moral of the story – focus on conversions is paramount to your email marketing strategy’s success.

Is the send the be all and end all of email marketing?

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Of course having a send schedule for email marketing proves extremely useful in keeping up to date with deadlines, but often email marketing specialists are so focused on getting campaigns out to their marketing lists on time that they forget to consider what they are actually sending. 

More important than whether it gets sent, is whether the email will be effective and whether it will make consumers want to open it and take the appropriate action. If the email doesn’t do this, then it doesn’t matter if you’ve got it out to your email lists on time – it won’t produce results.

To build a successful email campaign you need to start by analysing previous campaigns. By looking at what did and didn’t work, you can make better decisions on future email campaigns. Having analyzed past campaigns and email lists, you should set a qualitative goal for new emails. You need to know what you want to get from the recipient of your emails.

A metrics report on email list marketing from MailerMailer has suggested that open rates for the last half of 2009 were 11.2% on average. This means that the typical email is only opened by approximately 1 in 10 people. The average click through rate went down to 1.6%, meaning that less than two people out of every hundred clicked on at least one link. 

Sending emails that are relevant, anticipated, and personal is the key to getting better click through rates, according to marketing expert, Seth Godin. Instead of working towards deadlines without considering whether the email campaigns you’re sending out will be effective, take the time to rework the message and you will set yourself up for longer-term rewards than just hitting that deadline.

SMEs 'should embrace email marketing'

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Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) should embrace email marketing in the long term, an expert advises.

Chris Lake, editor in chief at Econsultancy, claims that this is something all businesses should plan for in the long term.

He identifies a number of areas where companies can benefit from this approach, suggesting that email marketing allows firms to assess the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Three advantages he highlights are the ability of companies to use this approach to expand into new territories, encourage repeat business and attract new customers.

"[Email marketing] should be part of a multichannel strategy and not placed in a silo, nor adopted because it is perceived as being cheaper or easier," Mr Lake asserts.

He says that choosing online campaigns is an incredibly useful decision from a measurement perspective.

Recent research by Hewlett Packard claims that 31 per cent of SME leaders stated they would be spending more money on marketing in the next 12 months.