More than half of budgeted marketing expenditure among the UK's top one thousand companies is now directed at existing customers, claims a new report.
In a survey conducted by global mail management specialist Pitney-Bowes, it emerges that 53% of marketing budgets within major British companies is directed at customer retention - an increase of 9.5% since the last survey in 2003.
Key points from the survey are:
- The retail and hotel industries lead the way, allocating about 57% of their spend to existing customers.
- Charities still spend less than half their budgets on attempting to minimise churn rates, but the figure has risen to 47% from 39% in 2003.
- Increases in other sectors have been consistent across the board, with two exceptions: mail order and travel. In 2003 the former spent 56% of its marketing budgets on customer retention - the highest proportion across all industries. This has now fallen to 42%. Travel too has fallen, from 52% to 47%.
Mollett also believes that Britain's 200,000-plus charities are suffering from a "declining propensity to give" - an environment in which existing donors are more valuable to charities than ever before.
Data sourced from BrandRepublic (UK); additional content by WARC staff