Two-thirds (66%) of marketing professionals plan to invest in social media over the next 12 months and 40% will shift more than one-fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget toward digital, interactive, or social channels, according to a new survey from Alterian.

Moreover, most marketers (67%) say social media is either "increasingly important" or "critical to success."

Below, highlights from Alterian Annual Survey 2009, which examines the impact of social media on marketing organizations.

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In addition to investing in social media, 36% of marketers plan to invest in social media monitoring and analysis tools. Other marketing techniques that marketers are investing in or planning to invest in:

• Engaging individuals on their websites: 57%
• Customer analysis and reporting: 55%
• Individual e-mail marketing: 55%
• Multi-channel campaign management: 50%

Only 6% of marketers say they are "extremely prepared" to take advantage of the new techniques that digital and social media represent as part of their overall marketing/customer engagement strategy. Another 19% say they are "very prepared."

However, a total of 40% say they are "minimally prepared" or "not prepared" at all.

Other findings:

• 51% of marketers are expending either a "fair amount" or "significant amount" of effort to ensure integration of communication strategies. Some 31% are making "some effort," and 7% are making "no effort" at all.
• 69% of marketers work with three or more separate suppliers––and 23% work with seven or more suppliers––in order to achieve all of their marketing objectives.
• Most marketers have difficulty coordinating resources across their digital and direct marketing agencies: 72% cite that level of difficulty between "neutral" to "very difficult."
• 58% of companies incorporate clickstream/web analytics data into customer/email databases.

About the data: The Alterian Annual Survey 2009 was conducted from October 1 to December 3, 2009 and is based on the opinions of 1,068 marketing professionals, primarily from North America and Europe.