From the category archives:

Marketing Technology

Marketing Data Security: Securing Your Cell Phone or Mobile Device

Today’s business cell phones are more than just a phone, they are smart phones. Whether you use an iPhone, Droid, Blackberry, or other smart phone for business, you probably have corporate email, contacts, and other data on the phone. Essentially, cell phones are becoming smaller versions of our laptops and have unique security concerns. The following are some things to keep cell phones secure…

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Is Web Analytics Alone Enough to Understand Your Web Interactions?

We’ve discussed this at length in previous posts… Perhaps the fact that we keep bringing it up my elude to the fact we believe this to be critical to marketing successes in the future. The Web Analytics Association defines web analytics as “…the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.” From a web design perspective, that’s an appropriate description. However…

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Cookie Cutter B2B Sales Methodologies Don’t Work.

No sales cycle should ever be looked at from a cookie cutter approach, but this is especially true and examining the B2B sales process. In B2B transactions, there is no way to fully predict the decision making hierarchy, as every organization has a different marketing or purchasing structure with unique buyer types. This can make your B2B marketing messaging a challenge.

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Distributed Marketing: An idea whose time has come for Technology Marketers

Distributed Marketing is a concept for delivering automated marketing services to small- and mid-sized businesses, resellers or other sales/service channels through a larger marketer who would act as a centralized enabler of data, analytics and technology.

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Evaluate Your Marketing Campaign With Analytics BEFORE You Launch It. (Part 2 of 2)

Let’s say your campaign has launched on schedule and successfully. You have reached the finished line! This is the time to thank your marketing analytics, operational partners and account services coaches for helping you define, plan and execute. Now imagine yourself sitting in your comfy office chair, with your Starbucks Coffee, as you review your very own online dashboard which displays your multi-channel campaign results on a daily basis! Your coaches also will be there to help offer best practices, and what you need to work on for your next campaign.

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Web Analytics 2.0 – It’s Not All About the Web.

By now, most marketers have embraced the digital channel and the fact that a majority of consumers are spending a significant amount of time playing, researching, transacting and communicating on the web. According to Advertising Age’s 2010 Digital Market Facts (Feb 22, 2010), Internet spending as a percent of all U.S. marketing spend is estimated to be over 20% by 2012.

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The Secret Sauce for Successful Marketing Campaigns

As the practice of marketing analytics is making a name for itself, and businesses are starting to catch on that they’ve been capturing all this great customer information. These same businesses are now starting to realize they should consider using it! If you are using predictive analytics to target your marketing campaigns, you should be seeing improvement in response rate from versus older campaigns where no predictive analytics were available. It is still common practice to send email campaigns or direct mail pieces to every contact in your list, hoping that mass distribution will lead to higher volume of responses.

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How Much Are Your Customers Worth?

As marketers, we have heard about it for years: It is important to understand the total value of your customers over the “lifetime” of their relationship with your brand, product or service. Makes sense, right? Why would you not want to understand the total impact a loyal customer can have on your acquisition and retention efforts based on this calculation? However, a great number of marketers we speak to still overlook future revenue opportunities by not recognizing the true lifetime value of current customers. Even though quite a number of companies can recognize differences among customers’ loyalty over a lifetime, they are often unable to quantify or act on those differences.

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Sophisticated Data Modeling and Analytics Lead to Better Marketing Metrics

Marketing professionals need to track and analyze the effectiveness of their marketing programs. Best practices align marketing activities, strategies, and metrics with business objectives. Creating a framework to track and measure marketing performance is critical in today’s marketplace. Marketing metrics focuses on measuring, managing, and analyzing performance to maximize effectiveness and optimize marketing ROI. Three elements play a critical role in managing marketing performance; data, analytics, and metrics.

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CMOs Need to Grow Up to Sit at the C-Level Table.

There is a general consensus that marketing is both an art and a science. With the increased importance of technology in today’s marketing environment, it’s clear that the pendulum has swung to the science side of the equation. Technology, analytics, and measurement are at the forefront and, with the pace of change expected to quicken going forward, they’ll only increase in importance in coming years. A technology-enabled CMO will help companies prosper in this new world order of marketing.

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