• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, July 30, 2012

According to the IBM new survey of the marketing industry, chief marketing officers and chief information officers must join forces in order to connect with today’s consumer across mobile devices and social networks. 60% of marketers point to their lack of alignment with the company's IT department as the biggest obstacle to reaching today's consumers. 

According to the study, 34% of respondents stated that in less than 12 months, they intend to deliver mobile ads, the highest rate of new marketing tactic adoption in the five-year history of the study. Overall, 46% of respondents are currently using mobile web sites followed by 45% mobile applications, up from 40% and 44% respectively since last year.

While the mobile channel is thriving, marketers lack this same clear consensus on how to best utilize social media, which will result in ongoing experimentation with these channels. When looking toward the remainder of the year:

• 26% intend to launch applications on 3rd party social network sites
• 24% plan to incorporate user-generated content into their social media efforts 23% are looking to launch social media ads or share links in email and web offers 

51% of respondents, who identified their companies as high performing, indicated they have good relationships between marketing and IT, 10% higher than other companies. The marketing and IT alliance gives top performers greater responsibilities for the products, price, place, and promotion. As a result, marketers from these higher performing companies are nearly three times more likely to be pro-active leaders in driving their organization's customer experience across all channels, says the report.

Yuchun Lee, Vice President, IBM Enterprise Marketing Management Group,concludes that “... as new channels continue to mature and consumer habits evolve, marketing and IT have no alternative but to emerge from their traditional silos and form a strong partnership... “

Additional results from the survey include: 

• 71% of the respondents believe integration across owned, earned and paid channels is important, but only 29% are effectively integrating these different channels. 59% said that existing systems are too disparate to integrate these channels. This is most evident in areas such as mobile and social where only 21% and 22% of respondents run these tactics as part of integrated campaigns with the remainder conducting them in silos, discretely and on an ad hoc basis, a practice which inhibits their ability to deliver effective cross-channel campaigns.
• 41% stated that keeping pace with new social media and mobile devices will be their biggest challenge over the next three to five years. This finding follows the IBM 2011 CMO study where 65% of CMOs stated that they are under prepared for the growth of social and online channels such as Facebook and Twitter and new device choices including smart phones and tablets. 
• 51% of marketers experimenting with social media channels are not using this data to inform decisions about marketing offers and messages... a missed opportunity for marketers looking to best meet the needs of today’s customer. 
• 65% of respondents are doing the basics using online visitor data, reporting and analyzing their data, but only one third are using this data to target one-to-one offers or messages in digital channels, and less than 20% are using this online data to make one-to-one offers in traditional channels.

To view the complete survey results with complete charts, graphs and slide show, please click here.