Location-based strategies for digital marketing

Many businesses that market in a specific geographic area are perplexed when it comes to the new digital frontier. How can they tap the efficiencies of new interactive technologies like social media when they market to a small subset of customers? Add on to this the many new digital offerings that are confronting local businesses and you can see why it’s difficult to determine what’s the best mix of advertising dollars and which ones will deliver the highest return to their locally-based business.

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Data Modeling Creative License.. And When to Take It.

Many questions circle the heads of Database Architects during the design phase of any database build; especially those that aim to integrate existing data sources into a database to support a direct marketing practice. A solid discovery process answers many of these questions, and usually concentrates on aspects of the data that are self-evident, either from direct analysis or exposure to some level of documentation.

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Forrester Survey Says Today’s Campaign Management Tools Will Soon Be Extinct

There are three types of companies that are converging to deliver integrated campaign management solutions. Some vendors are marketing specialists like Alterian, Aprimo, and Unica. A second group is data and analytics specialists such as SAS and Teradata. Enterprise application providers (Oracle, SAP) make up the final segment. Forrester’s report said that no single vendor, or segment of vendors, is delivering systems that are comprehensive enough for multichannel marketing and program management.

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Managing customer data privacy in a multichannel world

Admittedly, most companies are not out to cross the line on what information about a consumer could be shared in a way that violates hard-earned trust and destroys a relationship they work so hard to establish. However, as online and offline data capture and analysis boundaries are tested and expanded, there will be more and more attention given to this emerging area. Data-driven agencies and marketers must be vigilant about how they intend to use identifiable consumer data to ensure that their customers have a clear understanding about and confidence in how this information gets used.

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Database Marketing Assessment: Data Management

Data management is clearly not the sexiest part of our work, but nothing else can be accomplished without intelligent data management and data hygiene processes. I can even say now, after the passage of several years, that I am grateful that I was forced to attend a weeklong training program called “Data Hygiene Boot Camp” when SIGMA was part of The Acxiom Corporation (the mental scars have healed).

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Best In Class Marketing Analytics Start with Business Requirements

Hats off to the marketing departments for the Marketing Technology companies who do a fantastic job at selling the sizzle of their technology! Unfortunately for the many failed implementations, falling in love with a tool is just not the right way to bring marketing analytics and measurement into your organization. Forrester’s Liz Boehm* phrased this nicely “Don’t Put the Technology Cart in Front of the Business Case Horse”

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Marketing Analytics for the New Marketing Reality. Part 3 of 3

According to Brian Haven, senior analyst at Forrester Research, Engagement involves four components: involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence, each built from data collected online and offline. “Using engagement, you get a more holistic appreciation of your customers’ actions, recognizing that value comes not just from transactions but also from actions people take to influence others…”

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Marketing Analytics for the New Marketing Reality. Part 2 of 3

We are used to tracking web traffic, purchases via phone, web and retail locations. Add into that reviews in sites like Yelp, Facebook fan activity, LinkedIn updates, Tweets — good and bad, blog content, RSS content, mobile activity. Every day there are new apps like Foursquare (a location service-based social network/game. What it does is tell you where your friends are and adds a little fun to going out in the evening) and Chat roulette (exactly where is that going?).

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Database Marketing Assessment : Campaign Management

As we’ve been discussing in these Marketing Assessment posts, our first approach with new clients is to understand their business with a Five-step Maturity framework that ranges from basic to sophisticated – we hope to objectively rate where a client’s database marketing expertise falls on a scale of 1-5 and we provide a score and a roadmap for organizational improvement. Let’s look at some of the questions we ask when it comes to Campaign Management.

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Playing Nicely in the Same Sandbox

Forrester released their new study this week on The Future of Agency Relationships.* In a nutshell, Sean Corcoran, the lead analyst on the study, proclaims that marketers will need to lead their agencies to make changes in order to cope with the rise of social media, new marketing channels and a sputtering economy. For those of us who work for agencies or marketing services and analytics firms, the implication is pretty clear: we’re either not smart enough to change ourselves or we’re so bogged down in what we’re currently doing that we’re unable to change our own companies. Our clients will have to do it for us.

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