As we prepared for Forrester’s Marketing Forum 2010, we talked with customers and partners about what “adaptive marketing” means to them.

According to Forrester Research, Inc, building an adaptive marketing organization requires renewed investment in technology and process change. However, budgets and entrenched behaviors often stand in the way of much-needed, more flexible approaches that would allow marketers to quickly and accurately recalibrate campaigns and adjust go-to-market strategies.

This topic of adaptive marketing got us thinking about the webinar Neolane did with Quaero, a CSG Systems solution. The session, “When the Four Ps of Marketing Aren’t Enough: New Rules for a Cross-Channel World,” examined marketers’ traditional focus on the four P’s – Pricing, Product, Promotion and Place.Product, Promotion and Place. To quote from Forrester's October 2009 "Adaptive Brand Marketing" report, "the classic four P's [are] now table stakes rather than differentiators." We agree, and suggested a new set of terms to focus on – Online, Offline, Outbound and Inbound.

Marketers must be able to rely on technology to easily incorporate Online, Offline, Outbound and Inbound channels into their overall communications mix to effectively increase customer retention, drive new customer acquisition and improve marketing efficiency. To survive in this new “adaptive” environment, marketers must also understand how to overcome the new challenges for coordination, management and measurement.

During the session, we examined topics such as: tactics and strategies to leverage online data for offline analytics to increase messaging relevance; how to measure outcomes and performance of marketing programs across all of the channels; and highlighted real-world quantifiable benefits a true cross-channel marketing approach. We think all adaptive marketers could benefit from viewing a replay of the webinar.