"I had a customer who made my blood pressure spike as soon as I heard she was on the phone," writes Scott McKain in a Pro article at the MarketingProfs site. "We would jump through hoops to try to keep her happy, and she stressed all of us beyond description." There ... more

"The problem with the word 'segmentation' is that it has lost its meaning," says Andy Hasselwander in a recent post at the B2B Marketing Confidential blog. "Like [saying] 'analytics,' saying 'segmentation' can mean virtually anything." To better hone their targeting efforts, B2B marketers need to focus in on creating more ... more

If you've ever pitched the idea of creating an email preference center to your team, you know what a tough sell it can be. "I had a meeting this morning where we started to list out all the different country and local laws governing choices across various brand-service agreements," writes ... more

In a post at Harvard Business Online, Scott Anthony recalls a client who read a magazine article suggesting a focus on quantitative research for businesses with limited resources. He wanted to know if this would, indeed, produce the best data. Anthony's response: "While of course quantitative surveys can generate important ... more

"Predictive analysis has a long and profitable history with direct mail," says Arthur Middleton Hughes in a Pro article at MarketingProfs. "Millions of dollars have been saved by focusing on those customers most likely to buy—and not mailing to those who are unlikely to be interested." Only recently, though, have ... more

"We fuss over subject lines, offers, calls-to-action, and targeting, but sometimes a lack of response is simply a matter of timing," says Mark Brownlow in a post at the Email Marketing Reports blog. "By the time the recipient checked her inbox, your carefully crafted email was buried by Facebook alerts, ... more

"[T]he degree of uncertainty in business and consumer markets has soared," says John Quelch in a post at Harvard Business Online. "Yet, to conserve cash, most firms are reducing spending on the market research that would help manage that uncertainty." He reports that spending has dropped for four straight quarters, ... more

As summer approaches, and your subscribers begin to go on holidays, you might wonder whether you should scale back your email campaigns. But in a post at the Email Experience Council blog, Ryan Allis says, "Not only should you feel comfortable sending out your messages over the summer, it's also ... more

When hunkering down to face a challenging economic climate, you might become so focused on survival that you don't notice when the storm begins to weaken. In an article at BusinessWeek, Gene Marks explains how to spot true signs of a recovery: Pay attention to the Consumer Confidence Measure, released by ... more

As B2B budgets tighten, CFOs are becoming more demanding. Show me the results! Justify the expense! What more can a CMO do? In a recent post at the Marketing Interactions blog, Ardath Albee offers some words of advice on producing the cold, hard facts that CFOs are desperate to see ... more

While most retailers have experienced various degrees of tumult during this recession, the picture isn't entirely gloomy. A recent survey by Internet Retailer, for instance, shows many online-only businesses have maintained—or are improving—their email marketing conversion rates. Of the 275 retailers surveyed: 56.4 percent report their ... more

In Part I, we suggested a few cuts to make in your current marketing budget to help keep your bottom line healthy during these tough times. Now let's take a look at a few line items you should probably keep intact—or even fund a bit more. According to Pat LaPointe ... more

We may be in a recession, but that isn't stopping marketers from spending on search. According to the new 2008 annual survey and forecast from the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO), spending on search engine marketing in North America is expected to hit $26 billion by 2013, up from $13.5 ... more

Is it better to send an email on Monday or Wednesday? What about Tuesday or Friday? If you wonder about each day's pros and cons, a post at the 60 Second Marketer has some practical advice. Here's a sample of their wisdom: Sending a message on Monday has the advantage ... more

Knowing what to improve and by how much is vital to establishing realistic performance targets and metrics. This two-part article discusses how to use benchmarking to assess your organization's performance and to understand what changes to make. Part 1 defined benchmarking and explored its value. This second and final part identifies marketing ... more

While you know you shouldn't measure the success of your email marketing programs against results achieved by other businesses, learning about average open, click-through and conversion rates can be a useful tool. You might identify areas for potential improvement—or get a thrill out of learning you outperform other companies in ... more

CEOs and CMOs are interested in seeing marketing organizations improve their performance in two key areas: effectiveness (the ability to produce the desired result) and efficiency (reducing waste). The economic environment makes these efforts even more top-of-mind. Often the question that remains is how much do we need to improve? Benchmarking ... more

The next time your management team meets to determine the fate of a recently introduced product or service, consider a post by Scott Anthony at Harvard Business Online. He argues that superficial success, or underperformance, might not give a full picture of actual potential. To make his point, Anthony presents ... more

Even if your email campaigns meet goals and deliver great ROI, you probably wonder how you compare to industry standards. If so, you’re going to love the spreadsheet in a recent blog post from Mailchimp. The company analyzed 271 million emails delivered by its system on behalf of small business ... more

Want to take your performance to that ideal level of highly effective and efficient marketing? It takes better access to detailed data and ROI discipline, but it also comes along with greater growth and better levels of budgets, according to the recently released study. more

Without metrics to track performance, marketing and business plans are ineffective. For marketers, three primary metrics stand out as a starting point for tracking their performance. Once companies are aware of their competitive position, their desired outcomes, and what it will take to achieve those outcomes, companies will be better able ... more

After conducting thousands of marketing research studies and asking hundreds of thousands of questions, the author has come to understand one thing: There are no bad questions, only irrelevant ones. In other words, the majority of questions asked are irrelevant. That is, they don't result in answers that lead to ... more

Few people would argue that a pilot should give up his preflight procedure in favor of a creative session. But there are those who argue that marketing professionals should always start from scratch and make their own mistakes, even if the exact same mistakes have been made a thousand times ... more

Few "tools" are more widely abused these days than so-called best practices. It's no wonder that most banks, supermarkets, airlines, retailers and professional services firms look astonishingly similar--they've been busy copying each other's best practices for decades. What's most alarming is how ingrained their use has become in the language ... more

tock market analysts say that a company’s past performance is no indication of their future returns. Well, it’s the same story in strategy and marketing. more