Press Releases

January 25, 2005

E-business is an important and critical component of current and future operations at US-based manufacturing companies, according to a recently-published report from SVM E-Business Solutions.

SVM surveyed 80 marketing executives at US-based manufacturing companies in November 2004 to find that 77% say e-business is either "extremely" or "very" important to their current business and 83% say the same for business over the next 12 to 18 months.

When asked what benefits their companies had already gained from e-business, marketing executives told SVM improved customer communications was key, cited by 72%, as well as improved positioning in the market and increased efficiency internally, each noted as a benefit by 44% of respondents.

Just under 30% of respondents credit e-business as having helped improve profits, and a mere 10% say they have not realized any benefits from e-business.

Including online marketing initiatives in its definition of "e-business," SVM finds that most manufacturing companies' e-business plans for the future center around marketing plans. Exactly 50% say they will concentrate their e-business initiatives for the next 12 to 18 months on search engine marketing while 40% say the same for e-mail marketing.

SVM also reports that the three primary tactics used by manufacturing companies to drive traffic to their Web sites are trade shows (73%), sales people (72%) and presenting the URL on print collateral (71%).

Will e-business initiatives improve the manufacturing industry's response rates this year? The DMA reports that in 2004, the manufacturing equipment industry achieved an average response rate of 2.1% for 40 direct marketing campaigns last year.

Source: eMarketer