According to the Marketing Trends Survey, that was released last year by ‘The Chartered Institute of Marketing’ and conducted by Ipsos MORI, 21% of UK marketers think CRM activities deliver the best Return on Investment.

The ROI benefits of Customer Relationship Management activities are particularly noted among those working in financial services/other services firms (27%), the institute said.

Second highest overall for ROI, is online advertising with 12%, followed by email and public relations (with both 11%). Advertising, excluding of course online that ranked second as we just saw, is seen as delivering the worst ROI with more than two-fifths (22%) of the surveyed marketers rating it as such.

The second worst performer is sponsorship with one in ten (10%) of mentions. CRM is used by 77% of the marketers that took part in The Chartered Institute of Marketing’s survey and accounts for an average of 10% of overall marketing spend.

Two-thirds (66%) of those using CRM think their marketing function has a high level of visibility over their entire organization’s relevant customer data.

This proportion reaches 77% in retail, distribution and leisure companies but drops to 59% among public sector/charities.

Source: The Chartered Institute of Marketing