Participants in the online survey of 300 marketing professionals in North America and Europe ranked “turning data into actions” as the most important issue from a list of seven, which also included shifting to social media and allocating budget. Attributing success to marketing came second on the list.

“Measurement, analysis and learning” was ranked as the most significant “bottleneck” in organisations, ahead of technology, cross-channel integration and creative development.

The survey suggested that marketers recognise the value of web data, with a majority saying that it was “very important” for doing customer analytics and for making decisions about campaigns. However, there was less confidence about putting this into practice, with less than a quarter saying they were already using this data “very effectively”.

Full results of Unica’s annual survey of marketers are available online here.