Customer World Blog

ING Direct is one of the few successful financial services companies in the US with an unique business model. In this environment of financial meltdown in the US, ING Direct has practiced & built a bank with a difference. There is a lot to learn from them. Lots of things that I have read and hea...

While most marketers talk about customer loyalty, the principles behind accounting for loyalty remain unclear. While customer loyalty is achieved over the long term, the sale & reward of points is treated as short term and have to be accounted for within the same financial year!

DNA Money in Indi...

I recently got to read an old post from Chief Marketer thro' Msquared Group and it has got some lovely insights on how marketing and advertising has to change to the new order.

My view has also been that fusing data-driven marketing and targeted advertising will be the future. The ones who will be s...

Vince Kellen, a senior consultant with Cutter Consortium, a leading IT Advisory firm's 11 point plan to focus IT on customers resonated with me. I have been over the last couple of months writing about the need for IT to become customer-centric. In fact Forrester has been evangelizing the need for I...

In an interesting post Jay Budford writes:

At the DMA Conference in Las Vegas this week, I heard a common question.  "Why set up a Marketing Database?  We have a CRM platform." 

Then I begin to ask the questions.  How long does it take to get data from IT to complet...

What's the lesson for banks and financial services companies in this hour of financial crisis?

Thad Peterson has lovely post on topic.He writes:

The lesson…when you start and finish by thinking of the best interest of the customer, and you manage your business prudently, you rarely go wrong. So, what ...

Most often when I interact with clients, I am always amazed that they have data and information about customers, products,  promotions, distribution, sales etc. in islands. At the other end, I meet clients who say they have done all the mining on this data and haven't got the impact at the righ...

I was reading this article written by Michael ( Thanks to Suzanne) on an interesting thought on information arbitrage. He wrote:

Arbitrage has been a widely used term in the financial world, describing the practice of taking advantages of price differences in different markets. It is all about strik...

How do we make loyalty programs work? In an era where we have over 5-10 loyalty cards in our pocket, the challenge is to determine how to make loyalty programs make a difference in increasing market share and brand affinity amongst members. I have always found this an increasing challenge for brands...

The Economist Intelligence Unit has an released an interesting study on this topic. It provides some interesting and well known challenges facing marketing today and therefore how CMOs of the future will have to acquire new skills and competencies to take their organizations and brands forward. Take...