Marketers say Cross-Channel campaigns lift sales 11%.

Epsilon announced results from a recent executive survey in which nearly three-quarters of respondents reported practicing integrated, cross-channel marketing, and measuring a resulting average sales increase of 11% compared to non-integrated efforts. However, operational and data deficiencies remain serious challenges for these respondents, even as they strive to achieve–and measure–a broader array of campaign performance goals.

“Clearly firms are moving beyond traditional marketing metrics to better understand the value of the customer and the impact of multi-channel marketing efforts,” said Michael Iaccarino, president and CEO of Epsilon. “But many marketers face significant data and database inefficiencies as they work toward operationalizing the customer experience and accurately measuring campaign success. As they overcome these limitations, companies will truly unleash the power of integrated marketing to produce even greater performance and marketing ROI.”

The annual survey–Epsilon’s second with international research firm GfK–was conducted among a pre-qualified sample of 175 marketing decision-makers and influencers from companies with annual revenues exceeding $250 million. Key findings included:

– Growth in measurement of diverse performance metrics. Less than one-third of 2006 integrated marketers judged success by anything other than sales lifts, but this year’s survey found rapid growth in the number measuring “lift in customers’ likelihood to recommend” (35% compared with 22% in 2006), “lift in loyalty/return visits” (41% compared with 27% in 2006), and “lift in brand awareness” (45% compared with 33%).

– Widespread data and operational deficiencies. Fifty-seven percent of integrated marketers said that they did not have a good understanding of what customer data were available, and even more (69%) said they don’t effectively collect customer data at all touch points. Fifty-three percent said that customer data were not easily available for marketing efforts (most— 41%—said they needed help from IT teams to use customer data), and 53% said they did not have good data hygiene processes. These shortcomings are preventing many from realizing the full potential of integrated marketing campaigns.

– Marketers continue shifting budget toward direct and trackable channels that facilitate performance measurement. While still commanding smaller shares of aggregated marketing budgets, email, banners, and search grew rapidly over 2006 levels. Thirty-seven percent of all respondents said that they have increased their email marketing budgets over last year, 33% increased their search budgets, and 25% increased their direct mail spending.