Marketing

Cyber Monday may be the most visible symbol of the increasing use of e-commerce technology in the retail sector. On just one day, Nov. 30, consumers operating from home or office computers in the U.S. spent $887 million on Internet purchases. The spending level amounted to a gain of 5 percent versus...

It's important to keep the story of eService in mind when thinking about social media's role over the past few years in reshaping the ways customers interact with brands. Undoubtedly, the influence of social channels has been at least as profound -- and perhaps even more profound -- than that of eSe...

CRM systems are on a steep evolutionary slope, but marketing automation is evolving even more rapidly, spurred by a rash of innovative thinking and the SaaS delivery model. With the technology offering so much potential, integrating a crackerjack CRM system and an effective marketing automation solu...

From early origins of cold-calling into purchased contact lists, to contemporary methodologies incorporating Web 2.0 enablers, companies seeking to steer highly qualified leads to their "closers" are faced today with a combination of competitive threats, information overload and hesitant buyer behav...

Most marketers will accept that some portion of marketing will always be an art that is tricky to measure. However, it's difficult to deny the overwhelming need for marketers who can "crunch the numbers." Aberdeen research from the past five years suggest marketers are getting more savvy, more tech...

This just in: Females outnumber males on social networking sites. The site Pingdom did a survey and concluded that 16 out of 19 of the most popular social sites have more women populating them than men. The super geek sites Digg, Reddit and Slashdot have more men on them, but the more popular site...

One of the most important ways marketers can differentiate their offerings in today's unique selling environment is by creating a remarkable customer experience. One step toward achieving this goal is to ensure they have a single database that is tightly integrated with their CRM system to capture i...

Social media monitoring is a new business endeavor, with relatively few companies able to boast a significant track record of achievement. In fact, according to the new Aberdeen benchmark report, "The ROI on Social Media Monitoring," only 27 percent of Best-in-Class companies have engaged in social ...

I just finished reading The Black Swan, a book that has been on my list since it came out in 2007, and I highly recommend it, though it is not easy reading. There is a great deal of set up before you get to the whole point of the book in the last 50 pages. The Black Swan is about uncertainty in the...

In research conducted among over 200 companies in 2008 for a reported titled "B2B TeleServices and Appointment-Setting: Less Risk, Less Reward?," Aberdeen Group found that end-user sales organizations relying primarily on external appointment-setting vendors for lead generation realized dramatically...

Sales force automation -- nimble, lightweight and usually mobile -- seems to have little in common with its staid parent, enterprise resource planning. Until you consider this: After years of widespread adoption, SFA has also become mature. Yet the space is not remaining static. There have been chan...

Marketers can no longer afford to make decisions or measure results based on gut feel. For CMOs, this leads to one undeniable truism: Job security is directly correlated with data-driven marketing.

Online measurement has become increasingly focused on the integration of online behavior with customer marketing touch-points. Taking a complete view of the customer acquisition life cycle will often generate numerous potential integration points that can be profitably exploited. The goal of every...

The announcement that Adobe was acquiring Web analytics firm Omniture took many in the marketing industry off guard last month. However, it's less surprising in view of trends that have recently been gaining traction: integration of social media technologies to mainstream platforms; mergers and acqu...

Mzinga, a player in the evolving community platform space, has relaunched its flagship offering with a product that integrates many of its internally developed features with acquired technologies. The new platform, called "OmniSocial," provides external and internal communication and collaboration t...