Abstracts: July 9th, 2008

Central and local government and the NHS are at the bottom of the league table for marketing multi-channels according to a survey by Marketing UK sponsored by CDMS.

Public bodies have invested heavily in developing new access channels for their services, particularly by providing online facilities to allow customers to download information, submit forms and carry out financial transactions. There has only been a modest investment in encouraging people to use the new channels.

The research canvassed the opinion of marketers from UK’s top 1000 companies regarding the industry’s ability to combine different marketing media to achieve significantly higher response rates. Central and local government are a fraction ahead of the NHS which comes bottom of the table, with only 32 per cent of respondents rating them effective at multi-channel messaging. The Travel industry was found to be the most able at multi-channel marketing, with around 67 per cent of respondents rating them as very effective.

The survey report suggests that the lack of public sector success in multi channel marketing results from a focus on targets concerned with setting up online facilities and from a lack of marketing expertise.

The report is available from: