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Jun 24, 2019, 03:49 AM
by
Fred Dumas
What does it take to get things done in today’s world of digital marketing services? Not only has technology completely changed strategic thinking in marketing, it has also revolutionized marketing operations, or the discipline of getting things done in marketing. The following is a summary of how to achieve excellence in digital execution and managed marketing services. We focus on three areas: identifying essential digital marketing functions, driving operational excellence, and aligning investments with your essential functions.
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Aug 29, 2018, 15:44 PM
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None
Welcome to Featured, our publication in which we share the topics readers like you are most interested in each month.What resonated most with our audience in July? Our infographic on accurate attribution grabbed some attention—check it out to see why fractional attribution is the most effective method to optimize budget spend and improve MROI.
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Jul 26, 2018, 15:44 PM
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None
On the topic of technology, new author Tej Bhattarai, Marketing Campaign Director, examines best practices for selecting and implementing the right tools for your omnichannel experience—and Laura Watson, Director of Strategy, explains the irony in using technology to be more “human” in your communications.
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Jul 12, 2018, 08:50 AM
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Karen Puckett
Wipro’s flagship WINNOVATE 2018 event took place earlier this year, at which Harte Hanks CEO Karen Puckett joined executives from Microsoft, Uber, Discover and Nokia in a panel discussion on Operations Transformation in the Digital Age. We captured some of Karen’s insights on technology and transformation ahead of the event in this interview.
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Jun 28, 2018, 08:41 AM
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Jonathan Cayton
In this final installment of our four-part series on account-based marketing, we detail six technology fields essential to supporting an end-to-end ABM process. We also suggest tools for consideration for both entry-level and advanced strategies.
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Jun 28, 2018, 02:03 AM
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None
Laura Watson, Director of Strategy at Harte Hanks, explains how some day in the (near?) future, machines will be able to use artificial intelligence to read our emotions and act accordingly—allowing marketers to make a big leap forward.
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Jun 15, 2018, 14:05 PM
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Laura Watson
It’s been a decade since Mad Men’s Don Draper and his entourage dramatized the now-antiquated approach to marketing: create a product then convince consumers they can’t live without it. For today’s marketers, given the focus on big data, personalization and one-to-one marketing, that methodology feels foreign.
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Jun 14, 2018, 15:44 PM
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None
prEtrak software from Harte Hanks offers real-time reporting, which lets you know the precise location of your mail at all times. Our 30-year, hands-on relationship with the United States Postal Service helps to ensure that delays are avoided and your mail gets delivered on time. As a regular user of prEtrak data, even the USPS values the insight delivered by prEtrak reporting.
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Jun 13, 2018, 13:37 PM
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Tej Bhattarai
Omnichannel marketing—the practice of sequencing communication across channels so that it’s connected, relevant and consistent with the customer’s buying stage—is no longer a competitive edge, but rather a business practice mandatory for survival.
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Jun 7, 2018, 15:44 PM
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None
In a world where customers demand exceptional, relevant experiences—online and offline—single, static data points and demographics simply won’t cut it. ou cannot converse contextually with someone by knowing that she’s a 38-year old female from Denver making $67,000 per year.
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Jun 5, 2018, 09:25 AM
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KN Kasibhatla
n the not-so-distant past, the standard methodology in marketing analytics was to input raw data variables into statistical programs to generate marketing insights. This approach was a core element of what is referred to as CRM 2.0.
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May 30, 2018, 13:59 PM
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Nicole Bump
Brian Carrier is the Vice President of Global Demand Generation, Data Insights and Marketing Technology at Xerox. Reporting to Xerox’s CMO, Toni Clayton-Hine, Brian is responsible for the company’s global demand generation and marketing technology/data strategy, including the company’s big data datamart, Salesforce.com and Marketo integration, as well as their technology roadmap. We interviewed him about his key challenges and the innovative technology he’s employing to solve them.
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May 29, 2018, 14:09 PM
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Kate Sullivan
By Laura Watson and Kate Sullivan. Data privacy is a hot button topic right now—but being responsible with your customer’s personal data is never going to go out of style.
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May 25, 2018, 14:01 PM
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JD Metcalf
A sound way to increase deposits is by strengthening relationships with existing customers. In this first story in a two-part series, we lay out the four steps for growing deposits with a small but influential segment—affluent households.
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May 24, 2018, 10:12 AM
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Ioana Popescu
It's no stretch to say that there’s a lot of chatter on the internet creating a ton of digital noise. Today, on Twitter alone there are 350,000 new tweets sent per minute and currently 2.2 billion active monthly users on Facebook—that’s more people than the entire population of China.
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May 22, 2018, 15:34 PM
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Scott Rhodes
I’m going to bring up a term that might score if you’re playing buzzword bingo: “digital transformation.” The term has become ubiquitous enough that most companies are at least pretending to worry about it—and amorphous enough that no two “gurus” will give you the same working definition of what it actually means.
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May 14, 2018, 13:35 PM
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Marla Schilling
The Boutique continues to nurture website visitors by providing valuable content in the right moment. We strive to do this in the most human way possible, just as if we were in a real brick-and-mortar store, helping visitors face to face.
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May 11, 2018, 15:44 PM
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None
What an exciting and yet challenging time to be in marketing. The demands placed on us as marketers are constantly expanding and are being driven from all areas that impact our customers’ and potential customers’ lives. Perhaps none is more top of mind at the moment than trust. People share their information with us in the two-fold belief that we first will respect it, and second, that we will use it in a way that is genuinely relevant to them.
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Apr 27, 2018, 15:57 PM
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Aaron Ludwig
The scope of database marketing, the various skill sets required, and particularly the ways the database intersects both IT and marketing, are factors that contribute to why many organizations choose to outsource their database.
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Apr 27, 2018, 15:44 PM
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None
In a world where customers demand exceptional, relevant experiences—online and offline—single data points and demographics simply won’t cut it. You cannot converse contextually with a shopper by knowing that she’s a 38-year-old female from Denver making $67,000 per year
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Apr 26, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
Understand your customers' digital buyer signals to say the right things, in the right moments, beautifully on cue.
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Apr 17, 2018, 15:44 PM
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AAron Ludwig
We've created this worksheet to help you decide if you should seek to install or outsource your marketing database. Included are 20 factors to consider (other than cost). Think you know where you stand? Download the worksheet to find out.
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Apr 13, 2018, 08:41 AM
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Chris Field
Customer data privacy is an area of intense public and governmental concern across the globe. Since customer data are often managed by marketers, companies need their CMOs to take the lead on this one. We see four major risks that must be managed immediately. If done well, the risks become opportunities.
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Apr 5, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
Harte Hanks Director of Strategy DeShelia Spann explains how B2B marketers can use AI to move from broad-based messaging to a one-to-one approach.
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Apr 5, 2018, 13:53 PM
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DESHELIA SPANN
For several years now, the concept of personalization has been largely driven by quantitative and qualitative data. Leveraging demographic and firmographic insights to engage with existing and potential customers became the go-to-market strategy for many marketers.
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Mar 29, 2018, 15:44 PM
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None
Bad things happen when customer data generated by one component of the marketing technology (martech) stack is out of sync with another. In other words, customer data integration (CDI) can be a serious problem.
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Mar 27, 2018, 13:51 PM
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Jennifer Miles-Losapio
Sure, IBM’s Deep Blue knew how to maneuver a rook for a serious game of chess, but when it comes to anticipating your best customer’s marketing needs, the artificial intelligence program is kept in check by one sweeping figure: 2.5 billion.
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Mar 23, 2018, 13:50 PM
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Jennifer Miles-Losapio
With the recent data privacy scandal involving Facebook and a research company called Cambridge Analytica, the issue of personal data is seeing a whole new level of attention. In this light, adhering to privacy laws is all the more important.
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Mar 21, 2018, 11:29 AM
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Aaron Ludwig
Building and managing a database marketing solution is not merely data warehousing, as some companies mistakenly assume. It is a complex set of activities that cut across both IT and marketing, and that involve specialized skill sets in a number of areas. Most IT staffs can build the data warehouse easily, but that is only the beginning of a successful database marketing initiative.
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Mar 19, 2018, 13:49 PM
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Karl Hellman
The following is an interview by Dr. Karl Hellman with Alan Kittle, SVP Creative and Strategy at Harte Hanks. Karl was curious about Alan’s perspective after an extended series of meetings with clients across the USA and Europe. Karl’s question topics ranged from the 5 Pillars of Best-in-Class Marketing to social issue advertising.
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Mar 14, 2018, 15:09 PM
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Korey Thurber
When traditional “database marketing” first took off in the early 1990’s, marketing performance measurement and attribution was quite simple. We generated sales and direct mail campaign performance reports using a handful of dimensions. Attribution was easily derived through business reply cards (attached to direct mail pieces), phone numbers or tracking codes.
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Mar 13, 2018, 15:44 PM
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None
A major technology company was interested in recognizing and capturing business change indicators related to their offerings. These include news items such as when, or if, a business is hiring, moving, expanding or receiving investments. Often, this type of information is stored in a wealth of unstructured data on public websites.
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Mar 1, 2018, 14:44 PM
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None
A company in the pet care industry was shipping a high volume of samples to consumers, veterinarians, breeders, retailers and shelters. They uncovered that their existing data files contained abnormally high address problems which were driving up failed delivery attempts and increasing cost of shipping—causing the company to lose both money and product.
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Mar 1, 2018, 14:44 PM
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None
A consumer packaged goods brand in the skincare industry was losing money and opportunities because of incorrect or bad mailing addresses stored in their data files.
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Feb 27, 2018, 14:44 PM
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None
We are committed to creating data-driven conversations with customers. We build data and martech strategies and systems that cater to individual customers, in the moment, in ways we know they will respond to. The process rests on three guiding principles:
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Feb 20, 2018, 16:09 PM
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Nicole Bump
Over the past year, we've been on a journey to becoming agile marketers. We consider this to mean being able to have real conversations in real time with our potential buyers, providing them value throughout their journeys with our brand.
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Feb 20, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
Ken Bernhardt, Regents Professor of Marketing Emeritus, Georgia State University and Chair of the Harte Hanks Marketing Advisory Board, explains the value customers can expect from the Harte Hanks-Wipro partnership.
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Feb 14, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
You must know your customers and their context more deeply to achieve more human marketing.
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Feb 14, 2018, 15:35 PM
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None
Don't be a creep. You must know your customers and their context more deeply to achieve more human marketing.
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Feb 9, 2018, 14:06 PM
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Marla Schilling
In my last post, I discussed the launch of the newest channel of conversation available on our website: live chat. At the time of the launch we were unsure whether or not website visitors would actually use this new channel of conversation – but it didn’t take long for us to see that this channel of conversation is quite popular. The most obvious progression after installing live chat was testing out a chatbot.
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Feb 7, 2018, 14:44 PM
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None
We live in the “Age of Me.” Buyers call the shots. Brands don’t control the buying process. Winning share of wallet means winning share of attention. Buyers expect companies to make offers that are interesting and relevant in the moment. Anything less is an unwanted intrusion.
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Feb 1, 2018, 14:44 PM
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None
Marketing automation is more than the latest corporate buzzword. It’s a powerful strategy and tool that allows companies to nurture prospects with highly personalized, useful content. It helps convert prospects into customers, and customers into brand ambassadors.
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Dec 27, 2017, 12:49 PM
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Jennifer Miles-Losapio
To succeed in today’s market, brands need to establish an integrated analytics framework that enables access to insights derived from wide variety of data points. Enabling a truly analytics-led marketing ecosystem helps brands to make more informed decisions at every step of the buyer’s journey and optimize return on marketing investment (MROI).
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Dec 21, 2017, 16:05 PM
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Michael Behrenhausen
Marketing technology is changing faster than we can keep up. Capturing relevant, useful information from vast amounts of data and tailoring it to reach customers on a human level is just one of the challenges marketers faced during 2017.
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Dec 7, 2017, 08:07 AM
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Jon Dome
You have big plans for growth—customer experience improvements, increasing digital investment, creating an integrated martech stack that provides a holistic view of customer....
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Nov 29, 2017, 12:48 PM
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Karen Puckett
Marks & Spencer CEO Steve Rowe recently explained in Marketing Week that the British multinational retailer is looking to use data to "make M&S great again." In other words, he believes data will help M&S return to its former glory of one of the world's leading retailers.
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Nov 2, 2017, 14:02 PM
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Marla Schilling
In my last post, Behind the Scenes: Our Unprecedented Journey Into Making Marketing Human, I promised to discuss the launch of our newest channel of conversation available on our website: live chat.
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Oct 27, 2017, 10:18 AM
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Alan Kittle
Artificial Reality? Virtual Reality? Frivolous, empty fun, right? No use, of course, for the serious-minded architects of brilliant branding. Well. Think again.
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Oct 20, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
By implementing the Customer Engagement Hub, this technology company sought to connect data and systems to deliver successful onboarding at scale.
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Oct 17, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
Welcome to our first edition of Harte Hanks Quarterly magazine, showcasing the latest marketing news and views.
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Sep 19, 2017, 15:35 PM
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None
Marketing. It has until now, been viewed as companies pushing their messaging out into the world and trying to get consumers to buy more. That just doesn’t work anymore. Customers are calling the shots. If marketing is going to have any chance at success, it must be delivering value to the consumer and helping to solve the problems this person has set out to solve, in the moment they need to be solved. This goes beyond one-to-one marketing.
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Sep 19, 2017, 15:22 PM
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Korey Thurber
Machine learning has officially reached buzzword status. But once you separate the reality from the hype surrounding this type of artificial intelligence (AI), it becomes obvious that machine learning will be a key component for more contextual, human marketing moving forward.
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Sep 18, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
A long-standing leader in the office equipment and business services industry historically used a decentralized approach to marketing. Each global region had its own marketing organization and was independently accountable for most of the company’s market planning and execution. This approach was highly responsive to local markets and customer needs.
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Sep 14, 2017, 13:59 PM
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Brett Eckrich
We’ve previously talked about how artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to drive personalization in a B2B marketing situation. So, how do we put that AI into action and create a two-sided, thoughtful conversation that adds value for the buyer? We need a strategy for the implementation of these conversations and the proper technology to enable successful interactions.
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Sep 13, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
This month’s Featured—a monthly digest of our four most popular marketing articles—contains insights from marketing leaders Korey Thurber, Marla Schilling and Cheryl Strauss Einhorn. Hear their thoughts on topics like how machine learning can supercharge marketing, what to do when a good strategy is not enough, and why we need to enter an era of demarketing.
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Sep 8, 2017, 08:59 AM
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Kevin Gaherty
The invention of the app has made our lives easier. A good app on my phone can significantly reduce my time needed to accomplish a task or solve a problem. However, many of us interact with several different brands on a daily basis, and that can lead to what industry experts call “app fatigue.”
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Sep 6, 2017, 15:35 PM
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None
As humans, we have an infinite capacity to adjust our conversations in real time based on others' turns in the conversation. Digital marketing needs to act this way, too, and technology like AI can help.
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Aug 29, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
A Fortune 100 retailer decided to discontinue tobacco sales to reflect its health-conscious brand values. While the change gave the brand social clout, this retailer now needed to fill a $1.5B gap from lost tobacco sales and lost impulse purchases from tobacco customers. Episodic marketing campaigns based on static data weren’t going to cut it.
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Aug 29, 2017, 13:55 PM
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Korey Thurber
Machine learning is essentially giving computers the power to learn from experience, very much like humans do (learn more about what machine learning is and who is already using it well).
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Aug 28, 2017, 15:35 PM
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None
Buyers leave digital signals behind. Marketers must learn to understand them.
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Aug 23, 2017, 09:21 AM
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Anubhav Mishra
You might have trained people at work. You’ve possibly trained, or know how to train, a pet. But do you know how to train a chatbot?
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Aug 21, 2017, 13:51 PM
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Korey Thurber
From a hype perspective, machine learning is just about at its peak. Overnight, it seems, everyone went from knowing next to nothing about it, to speaking about it every day. “Marketing attribution” and “omni-channel” went through similar buzzword phases, though Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gone beyond buzzword status: a recent Gallup poll found that 26 percent of Americans fear the technology will eliminate their jobs.
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Aug 18, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
Significant and varied marketplace disruptions were creating challenges for one of the world’s most innovative and enduring brands. Smartphones and content streaming were eating into this consumer brand’s sales of core product lines like cameras, stereo systems and music players, camcorders, and even TVs. The shift away from physical storefronts, and the rise of dominant online sellers like Amazon, added to the challenge of connecting with customers.
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Aug 17, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
We’ve selected the 5 best insights and articles from MarketingJournal.org and Harte Hanks. Welcome to Featured – a monthly digest of our six most popular marketing articles. This edition contains insights from marketing leaders like Kim Whitler and Frank Grillo. Hear their thoughts on topics like what CMOs are getting wrong (and how to fix it), defining your brand’s purpose, and getting to know your customers more deeply—beyond traditional personas. Enjoy!
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Aug 17, 2017, 10:28 AM
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Korey Thurber
Marketing activities create a deluge of data. Today’s marketers face, at times, an almost overwhelming number of challenges when it comes to deploying truly personalized, choreographed and impactful communication streams across the customer journey.
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Jul 28, 2017, 15:08 PM
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Jennifer Miles-Losapio
Advances in marketing technology have made it possible for companies to collect or purchase significant amounts of prospect and customer data. What to do with this data – how to transform it, disseminate it, and render it usable – is the topic du jour for marketers, and this is where artificial intelligence, or AI, enters the conversation.
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Jul 25, 2017, 09:31 AM
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Elizabeth Crouch
If you can deliver more contextual, relevant interactions throughout the buyer’s journey, your customer will be more likely to engage with, purchase, and renew your product or service. But for most companies, achieving this marketing nirvana of a connected, behavior-driven journey is a complicated challenge.
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Jul 7, 2017, 15:44 PM
by
None
CMOs are automating multiple marketing functions at a growing rate. According to
Gartner: “CMO marketing tech spending is on track to exceed the CIO technology
spend.” The same report indicates that marketing technology budgets now surpass
advertising expenditures. These are shocking trends and reflect a sea change in
marketing, information technology, and business in general.
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Jul 5, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
This San Francisco-based technology company provides tools to develop and test native mobile applications. Their systems could see customer behavior in the usage analytics platform, but it was hard to tie behavioral data to an individual customer. It was even harder to personalize communications at scale based on what a customer did or didn’t do. It was therefore a big challenge to reengage customers that had abandoned their carts.
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Jun 26, 2017, 11:43 AM
by
Katie Sweet
Machine learning has been described as the science of getting computers to act without being specifically programmed to act. While for some, that definition can bring to mind nightmarish images of machines taking over the world, it is actually a great way to automate marketing activities to make them less time consuming and to provide better experiences for your customers.
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May 16, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
This luxury auto manufacturer had a new vision of a more connected consumer experience that would meet buyers where they are across the customer journey. Initially rolling out across two European markets, they needed a partner to connect all internal silos and champion customer centricity.
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May 15, 2017, 15:28 PM
by
Harte Hanks
In my last post, Rise of the (Marketing) Machines: How to Tame Them, I discussed the challenge marketing leaders face in bridging the gap between the journey experience their audience expects and the technology requirements to deliver on those expectations.
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Apr 14, 2017, 11:57 AM
by
Harte Hanks
It’s no secret that technology has changed the game when it comes to marketing. We all know the customer is now in charge of the journey. Add to this an explosion in engagement channels and content, and marketers find themselves awash in a sea of priorities.
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Apr 10, 2017, 15:44 PM
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None
Years-ago marketing was done primarily through human interactions; think personal and door-to-door sales. As time went on, marketing became depersonalized as demographics and databases drove direct mail and telemarketing. As the internet took off, customer relationship management systems (CRM) enabled digital and email marketing, and things became even more depersonalized.
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Apr 10, 2017, 11:53 AM
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Jennifer Miles-Losapio
A lot of our conversations lately have been focused on providing the right content to the right person at the right spot in the buyer’s journey—marketing in the moment. This is not a simple task, given the explosive growth of customer data we have at our fingertips, driven by the various touch points across digital, social, mobile and traditional channels.
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Mar 15, 2017, 16:53 PM
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Jennifer Miles-Losapio
Jay Baer, Marketer, Author, Speaker and President of Convince and Convert, is known for saying: “Make your marketing so useful people would pay for it.”
In other words, every interaction our brands have with a customer should deliver value to that customer. One-to-one marketing is no longer good enough—even though we’re just getting there. To provide value with each and every interaction, we must understand who individuals are and speak to them contextually, one-to-one, in the moment in which they are situated.
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Jan 19, 2017, 11:56 AM
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Frank Grillo
We all know by now that consumers are in the driver’s seat when it comes to marketing and the customer experience in 2017. To meet their ever-increasing expectations, we’ll need to get to know them at a deeper level than ever before and speak to them more contextually than we’ve dreamed possible.
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