Despite spending increases in the online space, marketers still lack the technology to support their goals in this space, says a new study.

The study, entitled ‘The Face of the New Marketer’, has found that 75% of the 360 marketers surveyed report that using various online tools for personalisation 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 half report they currently use online personalisation tools (51%).

Collated by online metrics company Coremetrics, the study also revealed that while spending on online marketing efforts has increased, most marketers lack confidence that they are using the right metrics to gauge marketing success and value.

When asked how they would evaluate marketing success at the end of 2009, nearly half (47%) said ‘meeting our key performance indicators’.

“This global survey shows that many marketers are struggling to derive real value from their online marketing tools. They understand the need to personalise messages for target audiences – they just don’t know how to go about it. This is surprising given just how critical tailored marketing efforts are becoming in competitive markets,” said Kevin Mackin, general manager for Coremetrics Australia and New Zealand.

Other findings 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%)

Two-thirds of marketers (67%) indicated that marketing has always been viewed as critical in their organization – 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 behaviour – per visit/session (76%)
– Display advertising performance based on impressions (69%)