2019 B2B Marketers Embrace Analytics, ABM, AI

A new report based on business-to-business marketing data from Salesforce Research, Forrester Research and the Information Technology Services Marketing Association shows how technically sophisticated top-performing B2B marketers have become in order to woo today's demanding clients. "B2B marketers are increasingly using a mix of account-based marketing (ABM), artificial intelligence (AI), and analytics to connect the right customers with the right content at the right moments," concludes B2B Marketing Trends: Insights From the Frontline released in June. For example, today's business buyers demand personalization: 69% of business buyers expect companies to anticipate their needs, and 60% of business buyers are comfortable with companies applying relevant personal information in exchange for personalized engagement. B2B marketers are not quite up to speed yet, however, with only 46% of B2B marketers reporting a completely unified view from customer data sources. This is true even though most marketers agree that personalization improves brand building (92%) and customer advocacy (80%). Account-based marketing (ABM) programs are collaborative efforts between marketing and sales teams, and high-performing B2B marketing teams are much more likely to collaborate effectively on ABM programs (54%) compared with under-performing marketing teams (34%). Among B2B marketers using ABM, the ABM programs now account for more than a quarter of their total marketing budgets. Why? Nearly half of ABM users say the programs deliver higher ROI than comparable marketing methods: 77% of ABM users are achieving 10% or greater ROI, and 45% of ABM users are seeing at least double ROI compared to other marketing methods. Meanwhile, because 69% of business buyers expect personalized "Amazon-like" customer experiences today, AI usage among B2B marketers grew 23% in 2018, with the majority using AI for facilitating online experiences with offline customer data, driving next best offers in real time, to improve customer segmentation, creating dynamic websites and landing pages, and personalizing overall customer journeys, as well as other goals. For more data and a link to download the report, see our full blog post at https://www.acculist.com/research-shows-abm-ai-analytics-drive-b2b-marketing-success/

Many Publishers Not Fully Mining Audience Data

Business periodical marketers come to AccuList USA for help with audience building via multi-channel campaigns, but as data experts, we'd like to remind them that their audience data offers other revenue streams worth mining. Most publishers know that targeted audience data is key to competing for ad dollars; for improved subscriber response via personalization; and for better targeted content marketing. A recent Adweek article by Jason Downie suggests several other ways to monetize audience data. Downie urges publishers to build “off-the-shelf” audience segments that can be sold directly to advertisers, for example. Consider how a seminar promoter could use a business magazine's data if the publication built an audience of people interested specifically in his topics or proven seminar buyers; the advertiser would be able to enjoy the benefits of tapping not just a business-engaged audience but a strategically targeted set of potential buyers more likely to convert. Audience segments can also offer insights that can be further monetized. For example, analytics could show that seminar attendees are four times more likely to share content online. That makes them online influencers, and since influencers are extremely valuable, the publisher can demand a higher CPM. Additionally, an audience segment can open the door to new advertisers and marketers, including non-endemic spending. A business publisher's analytics may show a subscriber segment visits golf sites as well as the magazine site, for example. The publisher can now woo clients looking to target "golfers." Another way publishers can take advantage of data is in the RFP process, according to the Adweek article, noting that the average publisher spends up to 1,600 hours per month, or 18% of revenue, responding to advertiser RFPs. Publishers can develop a customized response to an advertiser RFP, starting with first-party data to build out the RFP-requested audience and then enriching that database with third-party data appending. Digital campaigns can expand targeting by adding lookalikes. Author Downie advises running a portion of an ad campaign without audience or contextual targeting to identify additional audiences, interests, actions and behaviors of those who respond well to the campaign but were not included in the initial targeting. Still another option for publishers with high-quality audience data is to sell it as "second-party data," either directly to another company through a second-party data exchange or through a programmatic data exchange. And, of course, subscriber lists can be monetized as "third-party data," earning regular rental revenue on the open market and via data brokers. For more detail, see http://www.acculistusa.com/many-business-publications-fail-to-fully-mine-audience-data/

Shoppers Demand Seamless Omnichannel Retailing

Omnichannel marketing is the rule for today's retailing. While print catalogs continue as a vital merchant tool, with 42% of households reading catalogs per the U.S. Postal Service, integration of multiple channels--including online, mobile and social with direct mail--is now essential to store, catalog and e-commerce marketing. Unfortunately, while the majority of consumers expect to shop seamlessly across all those channels, only 7% of retailers provide the unified "start the sale anywhere, finish the sale anywhere" experience that customers want, per the recent "2018 Customer Experience/Unified Commerce Survey" by BRP Consulting, a retail management consulting firm. Marketers can't afford to ignore that the majority of shoppers interact with promotions and purchase services via multiple channels and devices. According to the same BRP study, three in five (62%) consumers surveyed said they check online reviews/ratings before visiting a store, yet just 61% of retailers offer consumer product reviews for research! Shoppers now rely on mobile to continue a digital buying process in-store, with nearly 60% of shoppers looking up product information and prices while using their mobile phones in stores, per Retail Dive's 2017 Consumer Survey. Merchants can leverage customers' cross-device penchant to optimize acquisition and conversion, argues a Direct Marketing News article by Pierre DeBois. But they must keep in mind that, while the opportunity to boost ad frequency and content across channels is huge, smart management is required to avoid turning it into a bludgeon. As Bill Kee, Google's group product manager for attribution, highlighted at the 2017 Google Marketing Next conference, "If I am on three devices, and if I see your ad five times, it means you've reached me 15 times…believe me I get it." The first place to start is good omnichannel analytics to understand the contribution of each channel to ROI and its place in the customer journey. Only then can merchants cost-effectively tailor targeting and investment to maximize sales. One useful analytics tool is Google's Unique Reach report, which displays digital ad frequency metrics across devices, campaigns, and formats to measure how many times a person views a given ad, and combines attribution influences from AdWords, DoubleClick, and Google Analytics, suggests DeBois. Good omnichannel analytics also can improve use of image and video content to maximize the proven effectiveness of image/video in digital engagement, to answer the customer demand for education, and to direct prospects through the sales funnel. However, quantities of images bombarding customers across multiple channels can overwhelm and confuse, so both media curation and a content mapping strategy aligned to the customer journey are needed. One example of a targeted image strategy is use of an "image story" feature on a social media platform to orchestrate images and/or a short video, notes DeBois. Pinterest Lens, Instagram Stories, and Twitter Moments are all image story features. For more, see http://www.acculistusa.com/shoppers-demand-seamless-omnichannel-retail-strategies/

Why You Should De-dupe Your Data

Anna Kayfitz, CEO of StrategicDB Corp., recently offered AccuList USA this expert advice on why direct marketing success requires de-duping data: 

In today’s data-driven marketing, data is not only the most important asset that your company can have but can also make or break your campaign. Having clean data impacts not only marketing activities but also impacts your reputation, operations and decision-making. De-duping is one of the most important aspects of overall data hygiene. Duplicates can be found on many levels of data; they arise at the household level, individual e-mail level or company level. If you are not convinced that you need to de-dupe, consider the following five benefits. First, you can avoid different offers to the same customer. For example, you send two different direct mail creatives to the same household. As one of the records was a customer, you decided to provide a returning customer 15% off, while the other record was marked as a prospect and only got 10% off. Now the person opening both direct mails will be confused by having two different discounts, and the company also can face a PR nightmare. Second, you can cut unnecessary cost. For example, assume you are doing a direct mail creative which costs you $5 per mailing. Your list contains 10,000 recipients. The total cost of mailings therefore is $50,000. If you decided to de-dupe, you would find out that 10% of your mailing list was duplicated. Therefore, $5,000 was a waste of resources. It would have been much cheaper to de-dupe prior to deploying your campaign. Third, you will get better analytics for decision-making. Analytics is important not just from a perspective of understanding how your marketing and sales is performing but also from a decision-making perspective. By having duplicates in your CRM, you are going to be double-counting your list capabilities, miscalculating your true growth rates, and getting the wrong rate of responses. If you are looking to make a decision on future campaigns, basing it on duplicate data will will give you the wrong list count, wrong budget and possibly the wrong creative picked (especially if you are basing it on an A/B testing done previously). Next, de-duping helps prevent customer service confusion when clients call in, e-mail or come into the store. For example, Mary Smith is found twice in your CRM with the same phone number. She calls in to your customer support to inquire about her order status. Your customer service rep decides to pull up the customer account by phone number and finds two records. Now she has to put the customer on hold while she checks both accounts to try to locate the last purchase before she can even assist the customer. Not only is it wasting everyone’s time and making customer service inefficient, it also makes the customer have a bad customer service experience. Finally, the biggest impact that duplicates have on your business is a potential loss of sale. If you have duplicates, you do not have a true view of all prospect or customer activities. Therefore, you could be excluding prospects from a sales call because your lead scoring system indicated that they are not ready. However, if the data from both records was combined, you would have all signals indicating they are ready to be passed on to sales. With duplicates, by the time you figure it out, a customer may have already lost interest and gone with your competitor. De-duping should be part of your data-cleaning initiative, either prior to any major campaign or on a yearly basis. You can easily de-dupe your list by using a de-duping tool that will require less effort to identify duplicates and establish a master record than is required to deal with the consequences of duplicate data. For more help, see http://www.acculistusa.com/why-you-should-de-dupe-your-data/

Cross-Channel Effectiveness Needs New Tactics

Multi-channel, cross-device marketing campaigns offer broader, deeper and more nuanced audience reach, but without careful planning, there is a risk of counterproductive ad frequency and confusion. At the recent 2017 Google Marketing Next conference, Bill Kee, Google's group product manager for attribution, is quoted giving a powerful illustration of how a multi-channel campaign can saturate the market: “If I am on three devices, and if I see your ad five times, it means you've reached me 15 times….believe me I get it.” So how can marketers improve performance given today's complex, interconnected channel usage? In a recent Direct Marketing News article, Pierre DeBois, founder of digital analytics firm Zimana, suggests several tactics for better cross-device/cross-channel effectiveness. First, DeBois recommends using cross-channel/cross-device analytics in place of traditional last-click attribution or channel-to-channel comparison. The goal should be to see the complete picture of channel contributions to ROI at each step of the customer journey, he advises. An example is Google's new Unique Reach report that displays digital ad frequency metrics across devices, campaigns, and formats to measure how many times a person views a given ad. The report combines attribution influences from AdWords, DoubleClick and Google Analytics. It is a new marketing axiom that videos and images are great response-getters for digital media. But multiple cross-channel/cross-device campaigns can visually overwhelm and confuse customers, too. DeBois advises marketers to locate videos and images in a content mapping strategy so they can understand how their media aligns with each step of the customer journey. Plus, they should curate media by carefully selecting and orchestrating images, videos and messages in order to help customers understand products and services. One helpful curating tool is the "image story" feature on social media platforms, including Pinterest Lens, Instagram Stories, and Twitter Moments. Another option for providing a consistent customer story across channels is to employ chatbots, programmable assistance, powered by rules and sometimes artificial intelligence, to interact with customers via a chat interface, auditory or textual. For the full post, go to http://www.acculistusa.com/effective-cross-channel-marketing-requires-new-tactics/

2016 Customer-Centric Trends You Shouldn't Ignore

We've read many marketing trend predictions for 2016, but a recent Entrepreneur magazine article best emphasizes the new "customer-centric" focus of many shared predictions. Jay Arnold, vice president of marketing at FullContact, cites 10 marketing trends that he believes will make 2016 the "year of the customer." Here are just his first five forecasts. He foresees a proliferation of "marketing apps" this year, not just mobile apps but web apps, desktop apps and even TV apps, as marketers take advantage of the many free or low-cost apps that can now aid with tasks such as e-mail, social media, online ads, contact management, analytics and more. He also sees a shift to "insight-driven marketing," using analysis of the heaps of available data for more relevant targeting and messaging. Of course, this assumes a centralized database of multichannel customer info, so that is a priority task if not already under way. Content marketing got a lot of buzz last year, but Arnold now sees a greater shift from static content (such as social posts and white papers) to "interactive content," such as interactive assessments, calculators, training and games to keep people clicking and sharing useful information for sales. Everyone agrees that "personalization" will continue and grow as a proven response driver, but Arnold warns that 2016 will demand greater adaptation by channel and customer expectations. Consumers now expect relevant content tailored to them, but they will also be less tolerant of online and mobile advertising that is overly personal to the point of intrusive and creepy. Finally, Arnold predicts that 2016 will see a leap in "advocate marketing," as marketers realize that using customers to advocate for brands and generate referrals can be more effective than incentives and affiliate programs for referral generation--especially now that identifying influencers and advocates is easier than ever before via social and digital interactions. For five more of his customer-centric marketing predictions, go to http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/254620

'Dirty' Data Continues to Sap B2B Lead Success

We do a lot of data work for clients--list hygiene, appending, de-duping, etc.--so we are dismayed to learn that "dirty" data is still the rule rather than the exception in the business-to-business lead process. An article in eMarketer recently noted that, based on a March 2015 poll of U.S. B2B marketing execs by Spear Marketing Group, executives estimate that over 25% of their marketing databases were filled with old, inaccurate and unusable duplicate leads. The majority rated their data accuracy as fair to plain bad. Worse, although the executives acknowledged that third-party solutions can boost data quality, 46% said they did not employ such data solutions, compared with the 40% who did. The waste caused by bad data is especially frustrating considering how it undermines the benefit of other improved marketing technologies. For example, over half of worldwide B2B marketing executives recently surveyed by Regalix reported that marketing analytics had increased their sales revenues between 10% and 25%, according to the eMarketer report. Imagine how much better sales would be if more lead data input was enriched and updated! For more on B2B data trends, see http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Help-Lead-Process-B2Bs-Must-Deal-with-Dirty-Data/1012396

Staying on Top of E-mail Trends That Deliver ROI

Marketers are expected to spend $2.3 billion on e-mail marketing this year, and emerging e-mail trends can mean the difference between stellar marketing ROI and wasted dollars for many moving forward. Our thanks to Liga Bizune's article for MarketingProfs, which highlights six e-mail trends likely to define success in the next few years. Her list includes 1) planning for the triage effect and creative challenge of wearable technology like smartwatches; 2) adapting e-mail to the continued charge of mobile marketing, with its triage, creative and content impacts; 3) proximity and geolocation opportunities for hyper-targeting and smart automation; 4) the arrival of video as a standard e-mail engagement and sharing technique; 5) embrace of transactional e-mail, which delivers four times more revenue than promotional e-mail, via detailed list segmentation and optimized, timely delivery; and 6) greater use of predictive analytics for behavioral marketing, allowing for automated, triggered, targeted and re-targeted messaging throughout the sales funnel. For details on each trend, go to http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2015/27328/top-six-email-marketing-trends-you-need-to-keep-pace-with

Psychographics Differ for iPad vs iPhone Users

When you invest in mobile marketing, your quandaries include whether to focus on apps for iOS devices (60% of the market) or Android, and then, within the iOS market, whether to develop iPad apps, iPhone apps, or both. The answers depend on the customer segments you want to reach, so take a look at a recent e-commerce blog post sharing Flurry mobile analytics on smartphone and tablet usage. Drawing from app usage by nearly 400 million iOS devices, the Flurry data shows why mobile apps and site features need to match different device usage patterns. For example, data shows that a store locator is a more important call-to-action for a smartphone user on the go, as opposed to a tablet user. The psychographic segmentation also differs between iPhone and iPad. If you are seeking "value shoppers" with mobile coupons or showrooms, you should skew toward iPhone apps. If you are targeting parenting and education activities, small business services, moms, or pet owners, iPad apps are more effective. Plus, Android users and iOS users have different psychographic profiles; for example, the "mommy market" is more likely to use an iOS device rather than an Android (77% vs. 23%). The data creates more interest in our lists of iPhone and Android users with demographic data. For more detail on mobile app customer segments, see the getelastic.com article at http://www.getelastic.com/iphone-vs-ipad-app-use-across-psychographic-segments/.

You Can Use Data to Win Hearts As Well As Minds

You can use cool data to create warmer feelings, and hotter sales, for your brand. In a recent Forbes.com On Marketing post, marketing expert Sandra Zoratti argues for developing a higher "EQ," or emotional intelligence, score to increase marketing effectiveness. She points out that emotional connections can be a more potent force in marketing than intellectual persuasion. In fact, experiments by a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist found people will purchase a product they know is inferior or overpriced if they like and trust the seller. So how do you tap into customer emotions to get them to like and trust you? By using that hard data and analytics to win hearts as well as minds, answers Zoratti. She cites the example of Royal Canin Canada, a pet food company. Via a "PetFirst" e-mail program, the company gathered info about the names, birth dates, breeds and weights of customers' cats and dogs. Royal Canin then combined that info with veterinary data to create personalized pet-care plans. The company used the data to not only win over customer minds with pet-specific nutrition knowledge but to win hearts with programs like pet birthday greetings. For more, see http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2013/07/09/marketers-heres-how-to-use-data-to-win-hearts-and-minds/

Time to Spring-Clean Fundraising Databases

Spring has officially arrived, and it's time to clear the cobwebs from your database, fundraisers. We ran across a timely reminder of this in a NonProfit Quarterly article. Here's a quick synopsis of the three steps to a clean and profitable database. Step 1: Assess the data you need to meet your fundraising goals and then the data you have and when it was last updated. Ideally, your database should be updated and scrubbed annually. Step 2: Verify the accuracy of your data to remove bad addresses, deceased, duplicates, and lapsed contacts. Remember that 15% of households move each year, and 70% of business data is out of date within a year. Step 3: Decide on the value of your names in terms of past and potential donations, and determine an appropriate contact strategy in terms of frequency and channels. If you rely on a broad base of small donors acquired through direct mail, your road to cost-effective fundraising can mean long-term value calculations and modeling, ranking-scoring for propensity to give. Overwhelmed by the task? AccuList USA is among the various third-party vendors that can help. The one thing you can't afford to do is let your database gather dust. As an apt quote from Shannon Duffy, vice president of marketing for Salesforce's Data.com, reminds: "Data is the DNA and the lifeblood of organizations." For the complete article go to http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/management/21985-spring-cleaning-time-for-your-organization-s-fundraising-database.html

Modeling Can Turn 'Big Data' Into Actionable Data

"Don't try to boil the ocean" is the advice Wayne Townsend, CEO of ClickSquared, gives marketers overwhelmed by "big data" in a recent article for "Target Marketing" magazine. In other words, before you spend to manage a huge database and cook it with special tools, figure out what information you really need for your marketing and how you can make it work for you -- make it actionable. Before you pore over web analytics of every keystroke, figure out acquisition and retention rates and their drivers. But how do you start to develop that actionable data? By modeling, answers Townsend, and you don't have to be a data analysis guru to do it, he reassures. He suggests using embedded pre-built, industry-specific predictive models that are affordable and easy to use, as well as traditional descriptive models such as RFM (recency, frequency and monetary value), to help better target customers otherwise lost in the mass of "big data." For all his comments, see http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/big-data-vs-actionable-data-2-steps-get-information-marketers-need/1

Marketers Plan to Spend More on Data This Year

With every marketing forum talking about "big data," it's no surprise that seven in 10 marketers plan to increase their data-related spending in 2013. That's according to a survey conducted by Infogroup Targeting Solutions and Yesmail Interactive at the DMA2012 Annual Conference and Forrester Research’s e-Business Forum. Of marketers questioned, 20% said they plan to greatly boost spending, and 48% plan to slightly increase data-related marketing expenditures in 2013. Only 3% said they will cut data-related dollars this year. Data analysis was cited as the top priority for improvement, supporting results from a recent Direct Marketing Association survey in which marketers said they saw analysis as big data's primary challenge. For more on the survey, see the report at http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/topics/measurement-analytics/7-in-10-marketers-plan-increased-data-related-spending-26408/

Will Big Data Require Big Changes in Marketing?

In this new age of "digital Darwinism," will "Big Data" require marketers to become "change agents" for their brands to remain relevant with customers? In a universe of rapidly shared public data, will "context" replace "content" as king, focusing analytics on customer experience over product? Those are just some of the issues raised by Brian Solis, principal analyst at consultancy Altimeter Group, in his keynote address at the Direct Marketing Association's National Center for Database Marketing (NCDM) conference and expo in December of 2012. Most marketers are already behind the curve: "There is a perception gap between what marketers know about their customers and reality,” stated Solis. With customers engaging with brands via multiple channels simultaneously and scattering "digital breadcrumbs" everywhere, marketers are challenged to figure out what data signals to follow and which to ignore as "noise." Since there's no stopping the big data evolution, marketers who want to survive and thrive should become "change agents" for informed, data-driven decisions across their organizations, suggests Solis. For a more in-depth discussion of the Solis remarks on how marketers can respond to the big data challenge, see the blog post by John Balla, SAS Senior Marketing Specialist in Customer Intelligence, at http://blogs.sas.com/content/customeranalytics/2012/12/05/seven-ways-for-marketers-to-respond-to-big-data-from-brian-solis/

How Direct Marketing Shaped the Recent Election

Political campaigning in 2012 leveraged a range of sophisticated direct marketing tools -- and left behind important lessons on what worked and what missed the mark. An excellent "Target Marketing" magazine article has surveyed the direct marketing tactics that shaped the recent election, noting how Democrats and Republicans employed large, complex voter databases; "retargeting" web services for more effective online ads; micro-targeting analytics for personalized direct messaging; social media endorsements; and targeted e-mail and texting to capture votes and donations. For a detailed discussion, read the full article at http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/election-2012-barack-obama-mitt-romney-microtargeting-retargeting-mobile-marketing-social-media-voter-databases/1

Last-Click Focus Distorts Conversion Metrics

The last step on the customer's conversion path is not necessarily the most important one, but it's the easiest to see, so some marketers still use a simple "last-click" standard for conversion credit. This ignores all the other parts of a marketing campaign that may drive conversions. But even marketers who allocate conversion credit across touch points -- using an even spread, time-decay or ad hoc attribution approach --are missing the mark, according to a Digiday article by Paul Pellman, CEO of Adometry.  Conversion credits that are arbitrarily assigned don't produce reliable metrics, argues Pellman. He urges analysis of all touch points in the path to conversion -- taking into account the relative performance of varying channels, campaigns, creatives or placements -- to calculate each touch point’s true contribution to conversion. The end result of an advanced attribution approach, Pellman avers, is that marketers will be able to more reliably optimize conversions, revenue, ROI, reach, and lifetime value. For the full article, see http://www.digiday.com/brands/why-last-click-analytics-dont-tell-the-whole-story/

Most Marketers Don't Know How to Use 'Big Data'

In the era of "big data," why do so many marketers still go with their gut over stats? A recent Corporate Executive Board study of nearly 800 marketers at Fortune 1000 companies found that, on average, marketers depend on data for just 11% of all customer-related decisions! The rest of the time they rely on intuition, past experience, conversations with managers and colleagues, expert advice and one-off customer interactions. Data comes in dead last. One reason marketers fail the big-data test is that they flunk basic statistics. When marketers' statistical aptitude was tested by five questions, ranging from basic to intermediate, almost half (44%) got four or more questions wrong, and only 6% got all five right.  Even the data junkies (the 11% of the study) perform worse than the average marketer because, with weak statistical skills and judgment, they get distracted by the data noise --  constantly adjusting course for small changes in response metrics at the expense of long-term goals like lifetime value. The lesson: If you want to harness "big data," filter and focus on the "big picture" -- and brush up on statistics! For more on the study, see the Harvard Business Review blog at http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/marketers_flunk_the_big_data_test.html

Marketers Face the New Challenges of 'Big Data'

"Big Data" -- that messy, massive flood of digital customer information -- is creating big challenges for direct marketers. We note the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) is recognizing the issue with a new "List Source Big Data Optimization Workshop," co-hosted with CRM leader Merkle, this July in New York City. One problem, aptly described in a recent DM News piece by John Mullin at Javelin, is just the "functional overload" of big data capture, analysis and real-time use. Enterprises globally stored more than 7 billion gigabytes of new data in 2010, and the tide of information keeps rising.  But other knotty issues are emerging. Mullin notes a growing schism among direct marketers who assume you can work in big data or big creative, but not both. Plus, he foresees potential consumer alienation from an overwhelming blitz of information. And where's the line between Big Data and Big Brother? The recent flap about Orbitz steering Mac users to pricier hotels is just the first inkling of potential controversies. For more, read http://www.dmnews.com/the-birth-agonies-of-big-data/article/244316/ 

2012 Doomsday? Not for E-mail, Says Expert

The end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 may spell doom to some -- but not for e-mail marketers, opines e-mail expert David Daniels in his forecast column for ClickZ.com. He predicts that e-mail marketers will continue to profit in the year ahead, but bottom-line pressures will mean a new focus on behavioral segmentation, on cross-channel success measurement, and on the penalties of beating dead-horse e-mail files. Marketers will also have to keep an eye out for more sophisticated hacker attacks as well as election-spurred legislation to address cyber-security. For his complete forecast, see http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2134717/2012-email-marketing-predictions

Acquisition, Data Integration Lead Marketing Agenda

In good and bad times, all marketing roads still lead to data. In a sign of improving economics, acquiring new customers is now the top challenge for marketers, according to the 2011 mid-year marketing trends report by Kern Organization, a Los Angeles-based direct marketing agency. Recession-battered firms previously were focusing more on retention. Some 90% of the 400 top marketing executives surveyed agreed that better integration of offline and online data collection with analytics is key to success now. For details, see
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/2011-mid-year-marketing-trends-study-reveals-top-three-marketing-challenges-130618818.html