Tag Archives: Customer Lifecycle Marketing

Big Data and its Business Value

When talking about Big Data, the first question people often ask me is how I would define it. Though this usually leads into conversations about the amount of data companies are collecting, I believe it misses the true meaning behind Big Data. Big Data isn’t about how much data a company has, it’s about what business value companies can […]

Keys to Solving Big Data Issues

Earlier in our big data series we explored the rise of big data and some of the specific factors that define it. We also examined a handful of reasons why big data is important and why companies and governments alike are using it to predict trends and customer behavior. In this installment we’ll take a […]

Big Data: What does “Big” mean?

Google “Big Data”; you’ll see talk of terabytes, petabytes, exabytes. Yes, searching and summarizing massive amounts of data is a challenge, but there are tougher challenges on the path to – as Lauren Littlefield put it recently – “amazing insights”. Let’s call another challenge “complexity meets the unknown”. We recently worked on a 42 megabyte […]

Big Data and Your Website: Personalizing the Customer Experience

Data is the new natural resource. What steam and oil did during the industrial revolution data is doing for us now. Today, we are competing on a whole different scale and the company that is able to collect the most relevant data will win. IBM CEO, Ginny Rometty, was recently quoted as saying that “Data […]

Why is Big Data important?

In part one of this big data series, we defined big data and looked at some of the components it’s comprised of. Now we want to look at some of the advantages big data offers. According to a recent report in Forbes, academic research found companies that incorporated data and analytics into their operations show […]

When Retaining Customers May Not Be a Good Idea

We know it’s far easier (and cheaper) to retain existing customers than it is to recruit new ones. But amidst the buzz surrounding customer retention, it’s important to remember that not all customers are worth keeping. More customers generally means more profit. However, beyond a point, the marginal increase in profits per customer decreases. Increasing […]

Facebook Paid Messages: Marketing Advantage or Annoyance?

Facebook is testing a new feature called paid messaging. It will let users send a message directly to the inboxes of people outside of their network, starting with a cost of at least $1 per message. The price tag rises depending on the profile of the strangers you’re trying to reach. The higher the profile, […]

Lead Scoring Automation: Feeding the Algorithm Engine

More is not always a good thing. For instance, more leads than the sales force can manage can result in overworked or harried marketers, unable to engage with anyone properly or focus on what they are doing. In these cases, the solution is obviously prioritization, or following up on leads that seem most promising. This […]

A Look Into Lead Nurturing

In the mad scramble to generate leads, companies may actually be bleeding money rather than gaining it. This is where analytics come in. The analytics engine in marketing automation software suites, fed with past results or experiences, scours the database of incoming leads and assigns points for each predetermined attribute to determine the potential value of […]

Customer Award Programs: The Benefits and Pitfalls

A customer is the best critic your business can have. So, it’s critical to engage your customers in a consistent and respectable manner to get suggestions, feedback, testimonials, and, eventually, brand advocacy. The National Bank of Oman, for instance, launched an “NBO Customer Consultant Award”, which consisted of a cash prize and certificate to customers who […]