Expert insights. Personalized for you.
InformationWeek's September 11 issue published its list of Top 250 Innovators, with detailed profiles of the top five. What first struck me was that four of the top five firms focused on improving customer experiences: whether by better marketing (Principal Financial Group), mass customization (Automatic Data Processing), or improved customer-facing operational processes (American Power Conversion and Global Crossing). MORE
Acquisitions form the never-ending background noise of the technology industry. Some illustrate such obvious trends they are barely worth noting, while others hint at something important. This week brought one of each. On September 11, Alterian (www.alterian.com) announced its purchase of Nvigorate (www.nvigorate.com), one of the better established developers of marketing resource management systems. MORE
One of the topics that has always fascinated me is how innovations spread through an industry. At the risk of admitting an embarrassing truth, most of the concepts that customer management thought leaders discuss have been around for a long time. I don’t mean the ancient “corner shop keeper” analogy, but the specific vision of linking customer touch points to a central management system that can optimize each interaction. MORE
I’ve been researching software to model the flow of customers through an organization. The thought is to take literally the mantra that “the value of a business is the value of its customer relationships” by modeling the relationships individually and viewing an aggregate result. This is all central to the Client X Client business concept. MORE
i wanted to share the final installment from the podcast series i did with 800-ceo-read. in this podcast, todd interviewed me and jill konrath on the critical interface between marketing and sales. here's what todd says about it MORE
A Columbia University study published in Science (2/10/06 issue) sheds light on the role that social influence can play in driving consumer demand. Researchers recruited more than 14000 people in a study to measure the impact of social MORE
the biggest challenge most sales pros with a complex sale face is getting access to executives, especially those in big companies. to be successful, sales and marketing efforts must be better aligned. jill konrath just wrote an e-book MORE
i had a great time chatting with todd at 800-ceo-read on lead generation. this is the first of three podcasts 800-ceo-read is doing on b2b sales and marketing. here's what todd says about it: "in this podcast, i talk with brian carroll MORE
do you use the telephone as part of your multi-modal lead generation strategy? a recent btob magazine article by carol krol, "copy this: telemarketing big with xerox" shows that, although the phone may not be as buzz worthy as other MORE
When you're designing a website, blog or email template do you ever think about how your users will actually see it? This may seem like a stupid question but it's extremely important to ensure that the people viewing your website or email see what you intended them to see. MORE
Here's an award winning integrated campaign by Honda to promote it's sporty Element. It combined, TV spots, search marketing and even YouTube videos !! The agency that designed the campaign ended up winning an award which isn't too surprising. Why is this campaign so good? It's a great product. MORE
If you market to marketers and want to get the word out about your products or services -- or in your quest for marketing knowledge you just want to assure that you aren't overlooking important but obscure sources of information -- check out the new directory of Advertising and Marketing Trade Publications on WebMarketCentral. The genesis for this page was some client research on publications that target direct and catalog marketers. MORE
Yesterday’s The New York Times ( www.nytimes.com ) carried an article on identity theft, which basically suggested the problem is not as important as it seems (“Surging Losses, but Few Victims”, Circuits, September 27, 2006). Since I had just written on the topic in this blog (September 22, 2006), I read it closely. MORE
Unica ( www.unica.com ) released the latest version of their Affinium marketing suite earlier this month. One set of enhancements related to response attribution, which the new release makes both more flexible and easier to use. Since this is an area of particular interest for me, I asked Unica for a briefing. Over all, the new features are very good, but I’ll leave it to Unica’s marketing materials to describe them at length. MORE
Amount of money I've made on Adsense in four months: $2.29 Number of inbound links that I have to my blog in four months: 229 The vast amount of knowledge that I've gained regarding blogging, e-marketing, search marketing (SEO), online advertising, and email marketing by blogging? PRICELESS! MORE
The CMO Council ( www.cmocouncil.org ) just released initial results from a major study, “Secure the Trust of Your Brand”, on how information security impacts customer attitudes. The initial report is a survey of consumer attitudes. Among the eye-opening factoids: - the Federal Trade Commission reports that 10 million Americans each year become victims of identity theft, at an average cost per victim of $5,885 and 30 hours of time. MORE
You may be saying to yourself, what should I blog about today? This is no different from a marketer saying "Where am I going to get quality content for our email newsletter." MORE
My last two posts have dealt with activities that affect customers but are invisible to them: back-office analytics and information security. How do you fit these into a Customer Experience framework? Actually there are several means of connection. The most obvious is to expose the activities to customers directly, by featuring them in advertising or building them into customer-facing activities. MORE
SEPTEMBER 26, 2006
Who could resist a paper entitled “100+ Questions CRM consultants get paid to ask”? Certainly not a sometime CRM consultant like myself. As I downloaded the paper from hosted CRM vendor Entellium ( www.entellium.com ), hope and fear wrestled inside me: Would I learn something new? Are they giving away all my trade secrets? Would this be heaven or would it be hell? Whatever happened to the Eagles anyway? Didn't I see they were on tour recently? The Rolling Stones are touring again. MORE
Thinking about a new marketing campaign to promote a new product? Why not consider doing a video that could be used as a TV ad, website video, posted on YouTube , added to your business blog, linked to from emails and advertised in magazines and print material. Sounds difficult eh? MORE
A friend recently described her customer experience with a months-late furniture order. The store was sincerely apologetic, but explained that manufacturers accept an order only to find, when they go to build it weeks later, that the fabric is no longer available. The mills themselves don’t give the manufacturers current information, so there is little the manufacturer can do. The store itself is even more helpless but is left to face the customer’s wrath. MORE
OK, so I spent several fun-filled hours yesterday working through a tutorial for an agent-based modeling system. The particular product I chose, SeSAm ( www.simsesam.de ), was developed as a teaching aid. It is free, powerful and easy to learn. I didn’t finish the tutorial* but saw enough to confirm that I could build models with agents that stored their own history and drew on that history to determine future behavior. MORE
Today’s New York Times carried an article on the use of science by marketers, although this is not exactly news. Enlisting Science’s Lessons to Entice More Shoppers to Spend More”, Science Times, September 19, 2006.) The specific examples it will be familiar to any marketing professional: carefully tracking shoppers’ paths through a store; analyzing physiological reactions to advertisements; and using multivariate test designs to assess ad components. MORE
“Customer Experience Management” meets the two key requirements for a successful buzzword: it’s impressive (10 syllables!) and no one quite knows what it means. (My My own definition, “understand and improve how you treat your customers,” fails on both counts.) Given these virtues, it’s not surprising that many firms have adopted Customer Experience Management as part of their marketing message. Since my own firm is among these, I take particular interest in watching how others use the term. MORE
Every once in a while it's great to stop and look around the blogosphere at what some of the great bloggers are writing about when it comes to marketing. Since it is labour day, I thought I would raise a glass to those top marketing bloggers as defined by technorati. Here they are: 1. MORE
SEPTEMBER 21, 2006
When I saw that Computerworld ( www.computerworld.com ) had a special report on successful business intelligence projects (“BI Home Runs”, Computerworld, September 18, 2006), I confidently expected something similar to the InformationWeek article described in my September 13 post: that is, a major focus on improving customer treatments. MORE
B2B Lead Generation
SEPTEMBER 30, 2006
i wanted to share the final installment from the podcast series i did with 800-ceo-read. in this podcast, todd interviewed me and jill konrath on the critical interface between marketing and sales. here's what todd says about it
Anything Goes Marketing
SEPTEMBER 7, 2006
Thinking about a new marketing campaign to promote a new product? Why not consider doing a video that could be used as a TV ad, website video, posted on YouTube , added to your business blog, linked to from emails and advertised in magazines and print material. Sounds difficult eh?
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Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
Unica ( www.unica.com ) released the latest version of their Affinium marketing suite earlier this month. One set of enhancements related to response attribution, which the new release makes both more flexible and easier to use. Since this is an area of particular interest for me, I asked Unica for a briefing. Over all, the new features are very good, but I’ll leave it to Unica’s marketing materials to describe them at length.
Buzz Marketing for Technology
SEPTEMBER 25, 2006
A Columbia University study published in Science (2/10/06 issue) sheds light on the role that social influence can play in driving consumer demand. Researchers recruited more than 14000 people in a study to measure the impact of social
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
Data normalization. It’s not a far stretch to suggest that the topic isn’t exactly what gets marketers excited in their day-to-day workflow. However, if lead generation, reporting, and measuring ROI is important to your marketing team, then data normalization matters - a lot. In this eBook, we’ll break down the ins and outs of data normalization and review why it’s so critical for your marketing strategies and goals!
WebMarketCentral
SEPTEMBER 27, 2006
If you market to marketers and want to get the word out about your products or services -- or in your quest for marketing knowledge you just want to assure that you aren't overlooking important but obscure sources of information -- check out the new directory of Advertising and Marketing Trade Publications on WebMarketCentral. The genesis for this page was some client research on publications that target direct and catalog marketers.
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B2B Marketing Zone brings together the best content for marketers in the B2B industry from the widest variety of thought leaders.
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B2B Lead Generation
SEPTEMBER 5, 2006
i had a great time chatting with todd at 800-ceo-read on lead generation. this is the first of three podcasts 800-ceo-read is doing on b2b sales and marketing. here's what todd says about it: "in this podcast, i talk with brian carroll
B2B Lead Generation
SEPTEMBER 1, 2006
the biggest challenge most sales pros with a complex sale face is getting access to executives, especially those in big companies. to be successful, sales and marketing efforts must be better aligned. jill konrath just wrote an e-book
Anything Goes Marketing
SEPTEMBER 30, 2006
Here's an award winning integrated campaign by Honda to promote it's sporty Element. It combined, TV spots, search marketing and even YouTube videos !! The agency that designed the campaign ended up winning an award which isn't too surprising. Why is this campaign so good? It's a great product.
Anything Goes Marketing
SEPTEMBER 11, 2006
Amount of money I've made on Adsense in four months: $2.29 Number of inbound links that I have to my blog in four months: 229 The vast amount of knowledge that I've gained regarding blogging, e-marketing, search marketing (SEO), online advertising, and email marketing by blogging? PRICELESS!
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Your employees are smoking, and at a cost of $7,000 per year for each employee who smokes, that adds up - fast! This free report will show you how an effective cessation program pays for itself.
Anything Goes Marketing
SEPTEMBER 30, 2006
When you're designing a website, blog or email template do you ever think about how your users will actually see it? This may seem like a stupid question but it's extremely important to ensure that the people viewing your website or email see what you intended them to see.
Anything Goes Marketing
SEPTEMBER 6, 2006
You may be saying to yourself, what should I blog about today? This is no different from a marketer saying "Where am I going to get quality content for our email newsletter."
Anything Goes Marketing
SEPTEMBER 4, 2006
Every once in a while it's great to stop and look around the blogosphere at what some of the great bloggers are writing about when it comes to marketing. Since it is labour day, I thought I would raise a glass to those top marketing bloggers as defined by technorati. Here they are: 1.
Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 28, 2006
Yesterday’s The New York Times ( www.nytimes.com ) carried an article on identity theft, which basically suggested the problem is not as important as it seems (“Surging Losses, but Few Victims”, Circuits, September 27, 2006). Since I had just written on the topic in this blog (September 22, 2006), I read it closely.
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
In this report, ZoomInfo substantiates the assertion that technographic data is a vital resource for sales teams. In fact, the majority of respondents agree—with 72.3% reporting that technographic data is either somewhat important or very important to their organization. The reason for this is simple—sales teams value technographic data because it makes essential selling activities easier and more efficient.
Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 27, 2006
A friend recently described her customer experience with a months-late furniture order. The store was sincerely apologetic, but explained that manufacturers accept an order only to find, when they go to build it weeks later, that the fabric is no longer available. The mills themselves don’t give the manufacturers current information, so there is little the manufacturer can do. The store itself is even more helpless but is left to face the customer’s wrath.
Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 26, 2006
Who could resist a paper entitled “100+ Questions CRM consultants get paid to ask”? Certainly not a sometime CRM consultant like myself. As I downloaded the paper from hosted CRM vendor Entellium ( www.entellium.com ), hope and fear wrestled inside me: Would I learn something new? Are they giving away all my trade secrets? Would this be heaven or would it be hell? Whatever happened to the Eagles anyway? Didn't I see they were on tour recently? The Rolling Stones are touring again.
Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 25, 2006
My last two posts have dealt with activities that affect customers but are invisible to them: back-office analytics and information security. How do you fit these into a Customer Experience framework? Actually there are several means of connection. The most obvious is to expose the activities to customers directly, by featuring them in advertising or building them into customer-facing activities.
Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 22, 2006
The CMO Council ( www.cmocouncil.org ) just released initial results from a major study, “Secure the Trust of Your Brand”, on how information security impacts customer attitudes. The initial report is a survey of consumer attitudes. Among the eye-opening factoids: - the Federal Trade Commission reports that 10 million Americans each year become victims of identity theft, at an average cost per victim of $5,885 and 30 hours of time.
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
By using the power of intent data, capturing buyer interest has become more feasible for sales. Not only that, but using it will save immense time during your workflow; a win-win on all fronts.
Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 21, 2006
When I saw that Computerworld ( www.computerworld.com ) had a special report on successful business intelligence projects (“BI Home Runs”, Computerworld, September 18, 2006), I confidently expected something similar to the InformationWeek article described in my September 13 post: that is, a major focus on improving customer treatments.
Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 20, 2006
“Customer Experience Management” meets the two key requirements for a successful buzzword: it’s impressive (10 syllables!) and no one quite knows what it means. (My My own definition, “understand and improve how you treat your customers,” fails on both counts.) Given these virtues, it’s not surprising that many firms have adopted Customer Experience Management as part of their marketing message. Since my own firm is among these, I take particular interest in watching how others use the term.
Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 19, 2006
Today’s New York Times carried an article on the use of science by marketers, although this is not exactly news. Enlisting Science’s Lessons to Entice More Shoppers to Spend More”, Science Times, September 19, 2006.) The specific examples it will be familiar to any marketing professional: carefully tracking shoppers’ paths through a store; analyzing physiological reactions to advertisements; and using multivariate test designs to assess ad components.
Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 18, 2006
OK, so I spent several fun-filled hours yesterday working through a tutorial for an agent-based modeling system. The particular product I chose, SeSAm ( www.simsesam.de ), was developed as a teaching aid. It is free, powerful and easy to learn. I didn’t finish the tutorial* but saw enough to confirm that I could build models with agents that stored their own history and drew on that history to determine future behavior.
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
Forward-thinking marketing organizations have continuously invested in a database strategy for enabling marketing processes. Download this ebook to learn how to maintain a strategy that includes refreshed information, database cleanses, and an accurate analysis at the same time.
Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 17, 2006
I’ve been researching software to model the flow of customers through an organization. The thought is to take literally the mantra that “the value of a business is the value of its customer relationships” by modeling the relationships individually and viewing an aggregate result. This is all central to the Client X Client business concept.
Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 15, 2006
One of the topics that has always fascinated me is how innovations spread through an industry. At the risk of admitting an embarrassing truth, most of the concepts that customer management thought leaders discuss have been around for a long time. I don’t mean the ancient “corner shop keeper” analogy, but the specific vision of linking customer touch points to a central management system that can optimize each interaction.
Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 14, 2006
Acquisitions form the never-ending background noise of the technology industry. Some illustrate such obvious trends they are barely worth noting, while others hint at something important. This week brought one of each. On September 11, Alterian (www.alterian.com) announced its purchase of Nvigorate (www.nvigorate.com), one of the better established developers of marketing resource management systems.
Customer Experience Matrix
SEPTEMBER 13, 2006
InformationWeek's September 11 issue published its list of Top 250 Innovators, with detailed profiles of the top five. What first struck me was that four of the top five firms focused on improving customer experiences: whether by better marketing (Principal Financial Group), mass customization (Automatic Data Processing), or improved customer-facing operational processes (American Power Conversion and Global Crossing).
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
For marketing teams to develop a successful account-based marketing strategy, they need to ensure good data is housed within its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. More specifically, updated data can help organizations outline key accounts for their campaigns. And to begin the targeting process, marketing teams must develop an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) with appropriate firmographic and behavioral data to ensure they’re going after the correct audience.Download this eBook to learn how to start improving your marketing team's data!
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