Blog by S.Swaminathan

Only 50 percent of global marketers report having a strategy for further penetrating or monetizing key account relationships, reports the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council in a new research study, Business Gain From How You Retain. In addition, a surprising 45 percent rate the effectiveness of c...

I read an interesting post about how the rules of mass marketing, direct marketing & social media are so different in approach, content, analysis and results. Therefore, for marketers, the challenge of applying & measuring each of them is conflicting, different & downright confusing. The...

MarketingNPV provides an in-depth point of view on measuring engagement. This is a complex and evolving subject in marketing. The key however is to start small, keep defining & redefining it, see the results and keep improving it all the time. I think customer engagement must include all touchpo...

Forrester, has come-up with some research around emerging trends in marketing ( ahead of their Marketing Forum 2008) - Engagement is becoming an important metric. Key highlights include:

Marketing leaders steer based on hard data. Measuring engagement will take the guesswork out of budget allocation....

I was just going thro' some reports on the Gartner CRM 2008 summit. There are some highlights which I  saw was not new or earth-shattering but definitely makes a lot of sense to reinforce once more:

• Act on feedback, deploy changes and communicate actions to employees and customers - companies s...

The CMO council in its new global survey, "The Power of Personalization"  has some interesting pointers on potential opportunities that enterprises have in exploting this approach and strategy.

According to the survey:

• Inadequate customer data is the key obstacle facing top marketing e...

I am not always excited if somebody tells me I have acquired a new customer. I always look at what is in the plan of the marketing & product teams to make these customers use all the features and benefits of the product, so that these customers can be with them for life. Not too many companies p...

Peter Kim of Forrester has written a thought-provoking article on the future of the advertising agency. The report argues that consumers now rely less and less on marketing messages when in buying mode. Instead they seek guidance from family, friends and others in their respective communities to gui...

Ron got my attention with a lovely post on this topic. He has some very thought-provoking points on various facets of building customer relationships. He picks-up a quote from John Gottman who says:

“Good relationships aren’t about clear communication — they’re about small moments of attachment and i...

According to a research released by Royal Mail, an estimated 90 per cent of companies fail to exploit data they already hold  on their customers!

It was really disturbing to me as I went thro' some highlights of the report as to how companies value data. In my opinion, in the coming decade, dat...