Survey Shows Marketers Embracing Personalization, Demanding Better Technology Tools

CHICAGO, IL--(Marketwire - May 24, 2011) - A survey of more than 100 companies conducted at the Web 2.0 Expo by EPiServer, the world's fastest growing provider of platforms that drive online engagement, reveals that 34 percent, more than one-third, of the respondents said that personalized campaigns have delivered "highly effective and measurable ROI," and 14 percent has seen "better response rate than mass-market" delivery methods such as print/TV/newspaper advertising and outdoor/billboards. Nearly half of those surveyed said that their companies currently use up to 40 percent of their marketing budgets on personalized communications, with that number expected to increase in the next 6-12 months.

While digital and data-driven channels provide the greatest upside for personalized communications in customer acquisition and relationship marketing programs, the survey respondents, representing more than 100 organizations in various markets and of different sizes, said unequivocally that inadequate software applications and poor data limits the potential of such campaigns. Of those surveyed 45 percent said that their company's personalized campaigns would be "better with more relevant data." More than 60 percent of the respondents rated currently available personalization software as either "satisfactory," "poor," or "very poor." A key challenge is integration, a single view of the customer data across multiple digital channels.

"The survey clearly shows that marketers are ready to move to more digital and personalized marketing. Forget about TV, radio, and newspaper advertising, even digital channels are not being personalized, and, to date, technology has been a key inhibitor to greater adoption," said Bob Egner, Vice President of Global Marketing at EPiServer. "Of those surveyed 64 percent, nearly two-third of the respondents said that they currently do not offer personalized content on the company Website. As technologists, we have to ask ourselves, 'why not?' EPiServer's goal is to offer integrated applications for greater personalization, allowing marketers to manage content, create communities, understand customer behavior and sell across multiple digital channels."

The survey was conducted at the 2011 Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, California among CEOs, Vice Presidents, Directors and Marketing Managers at more than 100 attending organizations including large corporations, small and medium-sized business and marketing and digital agencies.

The EPiServer platform, combining content, commerce, communication and community is available now. For more, visit http://www.episerver.com/, or search "episerver" on Google.

About EPiServer
EPiServer, the leading supplier of solutions that enable true Web engagement and drive business results for end customers. 3,500 customers worldwide use EPiServer's technology platform that combines content, community, commerce, and communications with a configurable metrics dashboard. EPiServer CMS is the foundation for more than 10,000 websites and is used by more than 130,000 web editors daily. The EPiServer platform is delivered through an extensive network of over 500 partner companies in 30 countries. EPiServer combines the stability and support of a commercial product with EPiServer World, a thriving developer community of more than 12,000 developers. EPiServer is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with an AAA-ranking by Dun & Bradstreet since 2000. The company was founded in 1994 and has offices in the United States, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, The Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and the United Kingdom. EPiServer is controlled by the IK2007 Fund. IK Investment Partners is a European private equity firm with Nordic roots, managing EUR 5.7 billion in fund commitments.