However, 48% of marketers report challenges in personalising each customer interaction, 42% report challenges in meeting expectations of the always-connected consumer, and 42% report challenges in analysing the constant flow of customer data, according to the research conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud from salesforce.com.

The research, which collected the views of 121 North American digital marketing decision-makers, revealed that there are four key predictive and data analytic tools where marketers said they plan to increase investment and overcome these challenges:

• 58% plan to increase spending in site optimisation tools
• 52% plan to increase spending in real-time interaction management
• 51% plan to increase spending in predictive algorithms
• 51% plan to increase spending in guided selling

The full study can be downloaded here.