IBM has announced a new cloud-based Web analytics and digital marketing suite designed to help organizations automate online marketing campaigns across all online channels, such as web sites, social media networks, and mobile phones.

The new IBM offering, which combines the best of Coremetrics and Unica, provides sophisticated analytics that help companies better determine the effectiveness of new products and services, fine tune marketing campaigns and create personalized offers in real-time across all online channels.

Today's news is part of IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative, which is focused on helping companies more effectively market, sell and secure greater customer loyalty in the era of social networking and mobile computing. With 64 percent of consumers making a first purchase because of a digital experience, it's critical that marketers understand this online behavior and refine their marketing activities accordingly.

Recognizing this demand, IBM integrated market-leading capabilities from recent acquisitions of Coremetrics and Unica to deliver a comprehensive, new cloud-based analytics and digital marketing suite. Building on IBM's digital analytics experience with more than 2,000 business brands, this new offering will allow companies for the first time to quickly understand their customers' buying preferences and patterns across all digital media, including web sites, social media networks, mobile phones, and tablets. This intelligence is used to quickly develop and deliver the most relevant customer experience, transforming marketing from an uninvited intrusion to an intuitive client service.

For example, businesses would be able to evaluate Facebook or Twitter activity, and offer customers tailored promotions delivered to their mobile devices on the fly. IBM's suite also enables businesses to deliver and fine tune digital marketing programs based on what customers are doing offline. For example, a consumer who purchased a new tablet in a brick-and-mortar store would receive special offers via email to purchase tablet accessories. The benefit to the customer is a consistent, relevant brand experience that reflects all of their online preferences, not just what they did, read or saw on one specific site.

“The convergence of social networking and mobile computing has given rise to empowered consumers who demand a tailored, compelling online experience,” said Robert Gilbreath, Ecommerce director, Calendars.com. “IBM is the company we trust to help us continue to evolve our approach to customer-centric online marketing, and identify new opportunities as they arise.”

The IBM Coremetrics Web Analytics and Digital Marketing Optimization Suite automates and simplifies a company's ability to design and deliver a tailored online experience and marketing promotions through real-time personalized recommendations, email ad targeting, and more:

• Enables marketers to perform advanced segmentation and automate marketing execution based on multichannel data, including off-line data sources
• Delivers real-time product recommendations for all online channels, including social, mobile, email, and display ads
• Provides A/B testing capabilities to help search engine marketers compare pairs of search terms to determine the most cost-effective terms and associated ads
• Incorporates best practice key performance indicators and corresponding industry-specific benchmarks
• Supports deep analysis into how customers interact with a brand over time and when each marketing program is the most effective.

"We're seeing increasing client demand for a single source of truth in understanding customer online behavior and buying trends as businesses strive to identify and seize new revenue streams," said Yuchun Lee, vice president and general manager, IBM Enterprise Marketing Management. "We are defining a powerful, integrated, and data-driven approach to marketing, one that drives higher-margin sales while using analytics to place the customer's needs squarely at the center of all campaigns and promotions."

The IBM Coremetrics Web Analytics and Digital Marketing Optimization Suite is the newest addition to the company's family of Smarter Commerce solutions. With its Smarter Commerce initiative, IBM is defining and leading a new market that it estimates will grow to $20 billion in software opportunity alone by 2015, driven by the demands from organizations that are increasingly looking for ways to bring new levels of automation to marketing, sales and fulfillment to secure greater customer loyalty.

Smarter Commerce transforms how companies manage and swiftly adapt to customer and industry trends across marketing, selling and service processes that span the entire commerce cycle, putting the customer at the center of their decisions and actions.

For more information on IBM Enterprise Marketing Management, visit: http://www.ibm.com/software/info/coremetrics/

For more information on IBM Smarter Commerce, visit http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/smarter_commerce/overview/index.html