• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, February 9, 2010

According to a new Coremetrics study, "The Face of the New Marketer," while most marketers report a desire to use online data to personalize their marketing efforts and deliver tailored offers to their customers, their current technology use does not support this goal. 75% of marketers report that using various online tools for personalization is a priority, and 81% claim that it's very important for them to increase visitor value through compelling product and content offerings. Yet only 51% report they currently use online personalization tools. This suggests that the information and data gathered through online marketing efforts is not being utilized to its full potential.

John Squire, chief strategy officer, Coremetrics, says "... companies that can harness marketing technology... (and) get the most... value out of the data they collect... enables (them) to personalize their marketing efforts and create a competitive advantage."

Most marketers lack confidence that they are using the right metrics to gauge marketing success and value, says the report. When asked how they would evaluate marketing success at the end of 2009, 47% said "meeting our key performance indicators." However, 62% of marketers claim they are not confident they are tracking the right metrics for online marketing performance.

Other key findings in "The Face of the New Marketer" include:

The two top challenges facing marketers are:

• Obtaining an integrated view of customers across online marketing touch points (45%)
• Interpreting the resulting data (41%)

The three areas that have seen the biggest spending increase this year are:

• Online marketing (69%)
• Generating online business (56%)
• Web 2.0 (55%)

67% of marketers indicated that marketing has always been viewed as critical in their organization, and only 19% say that marketing is seen as discretionary.

The three most commonly used forms of online marketing are:

• Email marketing (87%)
• Display advertising (86%)
• Paid search (69%)

The three most commonly used marketing measurement tools are:

• Individual online marketing campaign performance (77%)
• Online customer behavior-per visit/session (76%)
• Display advertising performance based on impressions (69%)

97% of marketers say it is important for their organization to collaborate to better target customers. However, only about half indicate that this is an easy process. The biggest barriers to collaboration are:

• Organizational structure (47%)
• Control issues (38%)
• Decision making procedures (33%)
• And poor communication (33%)

Squire concludes that "Business leaders are aware of the value online marketing provides, but... many are not sure they are utilizing it effectively."

To read more about the research conducted by Bloomberg BusinessWeek Research Services in conjunction with Coremetrics, please visit here.