Marketing software solutions outfit Unica Corporation, an IBM Company, recently announced results from its global survey of marketers, entitled “The State of Marketing 2011.” The sample covered nearly 300 online and direct marketers across a wide range of industries, geographies, and company sizes. Results revealed a number of key findings, including the urgent need to turn data into action, the increasing recognition of mobile’s marketing power, social media marketing growing pains, and a desire for more integrated technology solutions.

• Marketers Ready to Bridge the ‘Analysis to Action’ Gap: Nearly 60% of respondents listed “measurement, analysis and learning” as their top IT bottleneck, whereas last year, they overwhelmingly viewed “IT support of marketing needs” at the top. More than 60% identified “turning data into action” as their top organizational issue. 
• Small, but Growing Use of Mobile: More than 40% currently use mobile marketing tactics and another 20% plan to do so within the year, as more consumers rapidly adopt connected mobile devices.
• Social Media Interest Wanes: More than half of marketers use social media, but based on responses, their enthusiasm is on the decline, suggesting that the peak of inflated expectations has passed; marketers are focused on finding the value that social channels can yield.
• Integrated Marketing Suite Required: Nearly 90% of respondents expressed interest in an integrated marketing suite, as marketing’s need for technology grows and technology adoption matures.  More than half of marketers cited technology as the key to productivity, in particular, to resolving the challenges of meaningful measurement and analysis, and to choosing the next best course of action. 
• Marketing Silos Limit Integrated Cross-Channel Marketing: Marketers believe in the concept of Interactive Marketing, but have more progress to make toward this vision. While responses suggest that interest in achieving truly integrated cross-channel dialogs with customers is high, nearly half of survey participants report that they are only partially achieving that goal. The key barrier is organizational structure and internal processes. Regardless, 57% report the adoption of inbound marketing methods (personalized targeting/messaging) in their web channels.
• Understanding Marketing Attribution Still the Holy Grail: Marketers are getting more serious about using cross-channel attribution to understand marketing effectiveness. In the ranking of top marketing issues, “attributing success to marketing” took the second spot. Those marketers who adopt an Interactive Marketing strategy will already have a centralized view of marketing touches, i.e. a centralized interaction history of marketing contacts and customer responses.

“’More’ is certainly the key word for our times. But as the results of our annual survey of marketers reveal, the proliferation of marketing channels and the simultaneous explosion of data pose a wealth of challenges for marketers in 2011,” said Paul McNulty, EMM Marketing, IBM. “Marketers are looking for ways to turn more marketing possibilities into better marketing results.”