Siloed customer databases, myriad marketing campaigns on Twitter, Facebook and other online channels, point of sale touch points that never seem to be accounted for in a marketing or customer service push: these are the reasons - and challenges - in having a marketing strategy that is fully integrated not only internally but with customer service.

E-mail marketing executives took aim at this complex issue in ExactTarget's newly-released Letters to the C-Suite Series: 10 Ideas to Turn Data into Results. Some steps a marketing department might want to take before it embarks on a project, include:

• Define key "personas" within your customer base and be intentional about how, when, and where you speak to each, says Jeff Murray, senior solutions architect with PFSweb.

• Identify which behaviors on your website are most meaningful to your business and decide what you want to say and/or offer to customers who engage in those behaviors, he also says.

• Automate the integration of marketing tools, advises Chris Parkin, director of Genesis Solutions at Adobe. "IT has enough on their plate already and frankly, marketing needs to move faster than IT is often able to. Marketing should not have to add additional staff simply to launch an integration." This will lead to several benefits automatically, including using cross-channel or cross-application dashboards for a holistic view of performance, he says.

The Carrot

The rewards of slogging through this process will be significant, says Scott Rhodes, group director of operations for Razorfish. "You will be able to spring into action when changes occur without waiting weeks to receive results from disparate data sources. In order for your brand to be successful and create an informed experience, you must have the data to enable, the technology to deliver, the processes to connect, and the intelligence to learn and evolve."