Deloitte Study on use of Social Media

Funny that, just today I finished reading cScape's 2009 Online Customer Enagagement Survey (the third such one they've done - not online yet but 2006 and 2007's are at http://www.cscape.com/services/Pages/CustomerEngagement.aspx). It's a bit more granular and 70% clients / 63% of agencies reponding were UK-based.

Of the 1,291 respondents here's the top 10 of the 20 tactics polled in response to the question: Have any of the following resulted in a tangible improvement in your organisation's online customer engagement?

1. Email newsletters 69.25%
2. Focused micro-sites 30.19%
3. Onsite video (brand created) 29.92%
4. User ratings & feedback 29.64%
5. Blogging 25.65%
6. Brand presence on social networks 23.27%
7. User generated content 21.05%
8. Rich on page interactive experiences 15.79%
9. On-site branded communities / forums 14.68%
10. Web-based widgets 9.70%

(microblogging, mobile marketing, wikis, audio and personalisation all came lower).

It's based mostly on 2008's activities/ ROI of course, and not sure how it compares with Deloitte's sample. But it suggests that social media while moving mainstream still is just part of the "engagement" mix. Will be interesting to see if the younger generation who don't use email start to get into it as their priorities mature and the social spaces become more gamed/spammed. So who will save email, or will it save itself from the hordes drowning in unfiltered quicksand?

Of course something else will likely be invented by the time 2010's survey comes round. But according to the tea leaves email's due a second coming...