Affiliate marketers worried about cookies
Only one out of every eight affiliate marketers (12%) believe that businesses will be able to continue to engage consumers as successfully without the use of 'web browser cookies', according to research by affiliate marketing firm Affilinet.
This represents a significant drop from the 23% of marketers that agreed one year before, highlighting a lack of confidence in new anti-cookie laws coming into effect in Europe in 2012.
The survey showed that 32% believe that affiliate marketing is more effective at generating sales than all other forms of marketing. Despite this, almost one in five businesses (19%) are still not using affiliate marketing as part of their overall multi-channel marketing strategy. Only 11% of businesses reported that all of their marketing activities are truly integrated across all online and offline channels.
Data is increasingly important to many businesses, whether this is insight on customers, sales conversion statistics or figures on lead generation. This was highlighted by the 81% of businesses that reported using marketing data to make wider business decisions, such as:
- Optimising marketing activity (93%);
- Understanding consumers (70%);
- Generating more profit (67%
The research also found that 54% said their marketing budgets were set to increase during the coming year, with 35% also reporting that affiliate marketing budgets were set to increase as well.
"There is clearly a need for further communication and education about the enforcement of the new legislation governing the use of web cookies - an issue that is increasingly of concern to many marketers," said Gary Bicker, operations director for Affilinet UK. "It's good to see that affiliate marketing and the overall marketing budgets in many businesses are on the rise, but it's also disappointing to find that one in five companies are still not fully benefiting from affiliate marketing."
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