Blog: data
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Top Trends in Customer Intelligence - a Webinar Featuring Fatemeh Khatibloo
3/29/12Continue ReadingA month ago, I had the pleasure of participating in a Webinar with Fatemeh Khatibloo, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. Rather than an old, staid presentation-style Web event, we approached this one as more of a coffee klatch - a bit of back and forth, more of a discussion. You're more than welcome to view the replay.
We opened the Webinar on the topic of new and emerging opportunities for CI professionals, in light of the increased complexities associated with their role. Most interesting (or perhaps unsettling) were the stats we shared about the amount of data people create and consume every day. I wrote a post late last year entitled, Numbers That Make Marketers Tremble, but Fatemeh shared an unbelievable stat from David Siegel, Futurist: "Human beings generate 200 exabytes of information each year." Exabytes...as in 18 zeros. Now imagine having to store, sift through and make sense of that data.
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When Firing the CEO is Not an Option
3/1/12Continue Reading
I have been participating in an interesting dialogue on LinkedIn lately about what happens when, as the new head of marketing, your CEO asks you to assess and “fix” marketing within a notional 30-day period. The range of posts and reactions has been very interesting and, in some cases, worrying. What concerns me the most are the folks - they look mostly like very traditional brand marketers - who argue that the CEO should somehow be “fired” or that you, as head of marketing, should quit in response to a patently “impossible” request that shows how little the CEO understands and appreciates the art of marketing. I characterize that kind of thinking as “head in the sand” and say in response “wake up people!” because, whether they realize it or not, most senior marketers (and marketing itself) are being continuously assessed in terms of their contribution to the bottom line. The difficulty in measuring the return on many marketing investments only exacerbates this problem. So while a notional 30-day deadline is tough, I do feel that making an impact quickly by optimizing your marketing investments is expected of all new heads of marketing, especially because they will also be saddled with the many unrealized expectations the CEO had of their predecessors. -
Engagement [en-geyj-muhnt]
8/5/11Continue ReadingEveryone's talking about customer engagement. And for good reason. The notion goes beyond the last decade of CRM-focused tactics and demands that marketers not only engage their customers, but understand how to measure that engagement. And, translate it into real value. Customer engagement is only one variable that contributes to the overall value equation, but it is without a doubt, the most vital attribute from which marketers can build on existing value.
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Data, Data, Everywhere Nor Any Drop of Insight
4/23/10Continue ReadingOK, so it’s not quite as catchy as the line from Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner but it describes a problem many of us marketers are facing these days. With the proliferation of interactive technology and a significant decrease in the costs of storage, many marketers have become customer data hoarders. As such, many of us are having a hard time finding that favorite “customer insight sweater” in a closet overflowing with customer data. I suggest we all embark on some spring cleaning of our customer data to make sure we are deriving as much value from it as we should be.
