Three quarters of online marketing campaigns suffer from website failures, with 14 percent of those severe enough that they prevent the campaign from meeting its objectives, according to new research from the U.K., writes NetImperative. The "Internet Campaign Effectiveness Study" by web-testing firm SciVisum reports that more than a third of failures were "serious to severe," with many customers complaining or unable to complete web transactions.

A lack of technology awareness is identified as the key factor affecting successful campaign planning, and a quarter of the surveyed organizations experienced website overloads and crashes as a direct result of a lack of communication between the IT and marketing departments.

Nearly two-thirds of marketers did not know how many user transactions their websites could support - despite an average transaction value of 50-100 pounds - and so were not able to factor it into campaign plans. Moreover, 37 percent of marketers could not assign a monetary value on losses caused by customers abandoning web transactions.

Some 26 percent of marketing departments admitted they never alert IT about impending campaigns, and 52 percent only sometimes or rarely work with the IT department before the start of a campaign.