Companies Lag in Digital Marketing Efforts

As technology continues to advance and a growing number of processes are digitized, digital marketing becomes more critical to business success. Organizations need to have integrated technology systems and processes, along with the ability to centrally analyze data from customer interactions. However, a survey of 700 marketing professionals from a range of industries, mostly based in the United States and Canada, concluded that the companies had an overall rank of "intermediate" for digital marketing maturity, suggesting room for improvement. Conducted by Dimensional Research and sponsored by Progress, the study found that a number of organizations are still at a basic level with important technologies such as marketing automation, content management systems, and usage of CRM and sales automation. Integration of various systems that track customer interactions is also lagging in many organizations, hampering their ability to deliver real-time, personalized experiences. Given the fact that four out of five respondents said that manual processes are required for their systems to work properly, there is a question as to whether companies really understand how to use big data and analytics. The study concluded that organizations need to optimize, integrate and automate systems, and they should use a true analytics platform to take advantage of big data to drive conversions. "There is still work to be done," said Svetozar Georgiev, senior vice president of application platforms for Progress. "Companies looking to reach a higher level of digital marketing maturity must automate more processes and integrate more systems for a 360-degree view of the customer."