Two major groups in the marketing industry are partnering on efforts to keep their members’ skills up to date in the digital world.

This week, the American Marketing Association and the Digital Marketing Institute announced they will work together to deliver training in areas where it is growing increasingly important for marketers to have current knowledge, such as social media marketing, customer experience, and search engine optimization.

The plan involves providing DMI’s education offering, called the DMI Pro program, to AMA’s members along with its own. Those who complete the program will receive certifications from both AMA (the PCM Digital Marketing certification) and DMI (Certified Digital Marketing Professional).

In a news release, AMA CEO Russ Klein said the program will bring its members “access to always-relevant digital marketing insight and learning opportunities.”

“With AMA-DMI certification, our members will be able to differentiate themselves in the talent field and demonstrate the business and marketing savvy to lead their organizations into the future,” he said.

The initiative comes as DMI’s own research finds that many marketing professionals feel challenged to keep current on digital marketing strategies and tools. In the association’s recent Perpetual Evolution study [registration], conducted with The Economist Group, 35 percent of respondents said talent and skill set was the greatest challenge facing the marketing industry, while 27 percent said keeping pace with market and audience demand was the greatest challenge.

The study noted that fields enabled by modern technology and trends, such as customer experience, are growing increasingly important, with data and analytics, user experience, and social media marketing also seen among the key drivers of success for marketing departments.

“It’s a critical time in our industry as we collectively recognize the urgent need to develop marketing talent with the capabilities to adapt to emerging technologies and shifting customer demands,” DMI CEO Ken Fitzpatrick said in the release.

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