Despite all the promises of digital marketing, data and analytics most marketers remain confused about how to manage the increasing complexity of digital channels, devices and tactics -- let along integrate them coherently. In particular, two recent surveys from email marketing services provider StrongMail and IBM show that marketers and CMOs conceptually embrace mobile marketing but are generally stumped by tactics.

The IBM survey was conducted in 2012 and had a sample size of roughly 350 "marketing practitioners." The StrongMail survey was conducted in Q1 and had 802 respondents, described as "business leaders." Just under half (46%) of the StrongMail respondents technically qualify as small businesses, with fewer than 100 employees. The IBM survey was more representative of enterprises and had respondents from multiple countries.

Among StrongMail survey respondents, only 55% had an existing mobile presence or were engaged in any form of mobile marketing. And 57% said they'd been doing it for only a year or less. Although 43% of those without a mobile presence or strategy planned to implement one within the next year. 

What did they plan to do? In roughly equal numbers the StrongMail respondents planned to build mobile sites (30%) and mobile apps (26%), followed by SMS/MMS marketing (15%). Impressively, 70% of StrongMail survey respondents planned to increase their mobile budgets in the next 12 months. But there's a difference between "talk" and action. 

For those still not doing anything, the top three answers to the question "Why aren't you leveraging mobile marketing?" were the following:

• We see value in mobile but haven't yet determined the right strategy: 37%
• Lack of resources/staff: 22%
• Lack of funding/budget: 12%

Confusion over strategy and tactics similarly plagues the marketers at the larger organizations surveyed by IBM. In answer to the question, "Which three of the following market factors will be the biggest challenge for your organization over the next 3 to 5 years?" they responded that the proliferation of channels and devices was the biggest challenge: 

Like the marketers in the StrongMail survey, the emphasis in the IBM survey was on mobile sites and apps. In response to the question, "Which of the following mobile marketing tactics is your company using or planning to use?" they said: 

In this case, however, mobile email, SMS and local ad targeting were also being (at least conceptually) embraced. In the StrongMail survey the top current marketing methods reported were the following:

• Mobile websites: 70%
• Mobile apps: 55%
• QR codes: 49%
• SMS/MMS: 40% 

Interestingly only 13% of the mostly small business respondents in the StrongMail survey said they were using "location-based mobile marketing." And among those not currently doing any mobile marketing, only 3% indicated they were planning to implement it. 

By contrast the larger companies represented in the IBM survey were more interested and bullish about location. This is almost the opposite of what you might expect. SMBs could be expected to be more interested in location-based mobile marketing while one would anticipate that enterprises would be more skeptical. But the opposite appears to be true, drawing inferences from the data in these two surveys.