For an informed Irish E-Commerce Sector

Amas, the Irish internet consultancy, released the latest State of the Net quarterly bulletin. There is a small article with information on Irish businesses online. Using data from the Central Statistics Office, it states that 87% of Irish businesses have broadband access. Of that percentage, only 23% of companies sell electronically while 49% purchase electronically.

The bulletin also contains some interesting findings on social media. The company recently conducted a survey on digital marketing with 400+ Irish marketers participating. The following highlight some of the findings:

• Social media is used primarily to build relationships (84%) and brand awareness (76%) as well as monitor what consumers are saying about companies (66%)
• The top online marketing format is still email campaigns (67%) followed by blogs / social networking (55%), search engine optimisation (52%), and banner advertising (49%)
• Marketing budgets are shifting towards online spending – over 1/3 of participants are spending over 21% of budgets on digital marketing
• Top 3 social media sites companies are using for communication: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter

Amas has posted the full results of the survey on their SlideShare channel, to view click here.

Source: 2011 Irish Online Marketing Sentiment Survey. Marketing Institute of Ireland / Amas