A year ago, I blogged about the fact that the app economy was blurring the lines and opening up new opportunities, with a lot of new entrants in the mobile space, be it with mobile CRM and analytics, store analytics, dedicated gaming analytics, etc.

Since 2010, more than 40 companies have raised about $500 million in that space! Watch it closely – consolidation will continue, as evidenced recently by Yahoo’s acquisition of Flurry.

While a lot of innovation is happening on the supply-side, too many marketers have not defined the metrics they’ll use to measure the success of their mobile initiatives. Many lack the tools they need to deeply analyze traffic and behaviors to optimize their performance.

Fifty-seven percent of marketers we surveyed do not have defined mobile objectives. For those who do, goals are not necessarily clearly defined, prioritized, and quantified. Only 38% of marketers surveyed use a mobile analytics solution! Most marketers consider mobile as a loyalty channel: a way to improve customer engagement and increase satisfaction. Marketers must define precisely what they expect their customers to do on their mobile websites or mobile apps, and what actions they would like customers to take, before tracking progress. Too many marketers focus on traffic and app downloads rather than usage and time spent. While 30% of marketers surveyed consider increasing brand awareness as a key objective for their mobile initiatives, only 16% have defined it as a key metric to measure their success!

Marketers can improve mobile performance by linking customer lifetime value analysis with acquisition costs and engaging specific segments of users in real time. Such an approach requires them to use mobile as a variable in their existing marketing segmentation and to start measuring cross-channel attribution.

At Forrester, we have explained why marketers must have a structured business discipline to deliver mobile moments and embrace the Mobile Mind Shift. We call this business discipline the IDEA cycle:

The fourth step, “ANALYZE,” is critical to monitor performance and optimize outcomes.

Marketers are still a long way off capturing, tracking, analyzing, and acting on mobile data to improve engagement.

Clients interested in learning more can click here to download our updated report, “Make The Most Of Analytics To Meet Your Mobile Objectives.”