IT and Marketing: 4 tips for getting along

Computerworld - More and more IT execs find themselves having to add "Play nice with the CMO" to their to-do lists these days. The reason? Technology is rapidly remaking marketing departments, to the point where previously siloed corporate marketing campaigns are morphing into enterprise digital media projects that encompass -- or are even run by -- IT.

This is especially true as social media increasingly becomes more important to companies' identities and dealings with customers.

But there remains a chasm: IT in general doesn't want to be bothered with branding and making things look pretty, and it doesn't welcome interference in its data center, either. By the same token, marketing isn't much interested in the details of how things work. It just wants things to work, even if they're not perfect.

How can two such very different mindsets meet in the middle to collaborate on projects that are ever more critical to the business -- and ever more tech-centric, as marketing goes fully digital, dynamic and data-driven?

To continue reading, register here to become an Insider

It's FREE to join

Computerworld - More and more IT execs find themselves having to add "Play nice with the CMO" to their to-do lists these days. The reason? Technology is rapidly remaking marketing departments, to the point where previously siloed corporate marketing campaigns are morphing into enterprise digital media projects that encompass -- or are even run by -- IT.

This is especially true as social media increasingly becomes more important to companies' identities and dealings with customers.

But there remains a chasm: IT in general doesn't want to be bothered with branding and making things look pretty, and it doesn't welcome interference in its data center, either. By the same token, marketing isn't much interested in the details of how things work. It just wants things to work, even if they're not perfect.

How can two such very different mindsets meet in the middle to collaborate on projects that are ever more critical to the business -- and ever more tech-centric, as marketing goes fully digital, dynamic and data-driven?

We checked in with marketing and tech executives at companies in a range of disciplines to garner their advice on making the IT-marketing relationship productive. Read on for their four best practices, as well as my first-person account of what it's like to run both marketing and IT.

1. Consider your organizational structure

The United States Golf Association (USGA) relies heavily on digital marketing and has an atypical organizational structure to prove it: Its digital media team reports to IT, and IT reports to marketing.

"This provides a more streamlined and logical business flow for planning, design and implementation of digital and B2B applications," says Jessica Carroll, managing director of the hybrid department, dubbed Information Technologies and Digital Media. "Since Digital Media reports to IT, and IT reports into the business executive responsible for marketing, there is great clarity and smart directives for pulling these intertwined and critical functions together," Carroll explains.

Other organizations, while not ready to make such a bold move, still acknowledge the need for tight integration with and division of duties between marketing and IT. In the Miami-Dade (Fla.) County government, for example, digital media-related functions report to marketing but coordinate with IT on Web-related projects.

"In IT's working relationship with marketing, we have a collective understanding that marketing defines what it wants, and IT makes it happen," says Carmen Suarez, the county's director of the Enterprise Architecture Services Division.

"We are responsible for technical support, for running the website portals and for all of the back-end integration of the websites," she explains. "Within marketing, there is a function that deals with social networking over channels like Facebook and Twitter, and another outreach function that uses content management software to develop the content of our websites."

• Google I/O 2013's Coolest Products and Services
• 10 Star Trek Technologies That are Almost Here
• 19 Generations of Computer Programmers
• 25 Must-Have Technologies for SMBs
• A walking tour: 33 questions to ask about your company's security
• 15 social media scams
• The 7 elements of a successful security awareness program