Thomas Husson says, “Customer-obsessed businesses will take personalization to the next level in 2016. By the end of 2016, Forrester forecasts that 4.8 billion individuals globally will use a mobile phone, and as that number continues to grow, customer-obsessed business leaders have vast opportunities to deliver great customer experiences via mobile. Mobile moments — a time when consumers picks up their mobile devices to get what they want in that moment of need —  are the next battleground where to win, serve, and retain customers. Many executives believe they should manufacture... [...]

Michelle Moorehead says, “2016 marks the year the CMO will take control of the customer experience — or risk facing significant coordination challenges (and potential headaches) with some other fledgling executive who sees the opportunity to own it. Savvy CMOs will lead the charge to convert superior experiences to growth. This includes driving change above and below the visibility line: from aligning experiences with the brand promise to transforming operations to deliver high-value, personalized experiences. Customer expectations around personalization will continue to grow in 2016, but... [...]

Laura Ramos says, “I attended the “Galvanize” conference sponsored by Bulldog Solutions last week and had the pleasure of hearing Scott Brinker explore the changing landscape of marketing technology.  Investment in new marketing start ups and ideas is clearly at an all time high, as one look at the ChiefMarTec supergraphic will show. This is both good and bad for B2B marketers. Good: so many technology options make marketing an exciting place to work and to deliver more impact on the business.  Bad: wow, that’s a lot of stuff to worry about investing in. My colleague... [...]

Rusty Warner says, “We’ve all seen comprehensive diagrams featuring hundreds of vendor logos across multiple marketing technology categories. So, when tasked with mapping the technologies required to deliver contextual marketing, I decided to simplify things. For more details, see my new report “Combine Systems Of Insight And Engagement For Contextual Marketing.” Forrester has defined broad “systems of X” categories that include systems of record, design, operation/automation, insight, and engagement. The latter two lend themselves to the enterprise marketing technology landscape. Real-time... [...]

Martin Gill says, “Deliver exceptional digital experiences. It sounds easy enough, but to win in the age of the customer, businesses must realize that there is much at stake if they do not focus efforts on providing customers with a solid customer experience. Forrester even argues that, in the coming years, it’s the customer obsessed digital leaders who will push far ahead of their competition. But how can they get there? To help digital leaders exceed the expectations of their empowered customers, Forrester has designed this week’s Digital Business Forum around how to build a strategy... [...]

Boris Evelson says, “Industry-renowned data visualization expert Edward Tufte once said: “The world is complex, dynamic, multidimensional; the paper is static, flat. How are we to represent the rich visual world of experience and measurement on mere flatland?” He’s right: There’s too much information out there for knowledge workers to effectively analyze — be they hands-on analysts, data scientists, or senior execs. More often than not, traditional tabular reports fail to paint the whole picture or, even worse, lead you to the wrong conclusion. AD&D pros should... [...]

Nate Elliott says, “Social Relationship Platforms (SRPs) like Sprinklr, Sprefast, and Hootsuite save marketers time and help them more effectively manage their branded Facebook pages and Twitter accounts — but most marketers still don’t use these valuable tools. We recently analyzed the Facebook posts made by 5,000 large brand pages and found that two-thirds post exclusively through Facebook’s native tools. That’s right: 67% of the biggest brands we could find didn’t make a single Facebook post through a third-party vendor during the six week window we studied. Twitter... [...]

Rebecca McAdams says, “Hey Everyone! I’ve been at Forrester over a year and a half now, originally coming from an analyst support role, to more recently, working with Shar VanBoskirk to drive our research around email marketing. I’m excited to announce that, going forward, I will be leading our coverage of the technologies, services, and analytics that support email marketing. My first report in this new role was an update to our email marketing playbook assessment chapter. This report allows marketers to assess their email marketing campaigns around specific benchmarks defined by Forrester... [...]

Xiaofeng Wang says, “Marketing leaders face the challenge of achieving a positive ROI —in fact, it is the top challenge for the digital marketers we surveyed in China earlier this year. Fortunately, a few marketers have managed to achieve this, and Spring Airlines is one of them. My recently published report, Case Study: Spring Airlines’ Digital Business Takes Off With Social Marketing, tells its success story. From it, B2C marketers can learn how to achieve positive returns on their investments in social marketing initiatives and support their transition to a digital business. As... [...]

Sucharita Mulpuru says, “In a recent Forrester-Shop.org study, we found that 70% of online retailers are investing in “content” in the coming year. What sort of content you may ask. Usually when they say “content” retailers mean videos, blog posts and magazine-like content that is best for consumers at the top of the shopping funnel. This type of content though is notoriously difficult to monetize though. A number of companies like Babycenter in the late 1990s were the first wave of content-driving-commerce digital players to try this. They quickly realized it was not only difficult... [...]