I am honored to be a speaker at this year’s On Demand Conference. As the conference approaches, I just wanted to give everyone a preview of the topic I will be speaking about.
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“Eating the Whole Whale”: How to Sell and Support Multi-Layered Companies
Today, keeping your most valued client relationships requires the means to [...]

We are proud to announce the official integration of our cross media platform, Fuse, with USADATA. This initiative enables print and marketing services providers to more effectively increase their marketing reach with customizable Fuse applications.

As you may know, multi-channel marketing is one of the more effective methods of reaching and communicating to customers. The thing is, multi-channel campaigns tread on a thin wire between effectively “communicating to” and “blasting” customers.

As some of you may know, the Cross Media West Conference, part of PMA 2010, is coming up in a couple of weeks. It is a one day event with a focus on multi-media integration. There will be exhibits and presentations dedicated to various aspects of cross media marketing: VDP, web-to-print, multi-channel strategies, personalized urls etc… more details

As a multi-channel/cross media technology provider, we have witnessed many great and successful campaigns launched by our customers … and then there were some that… I wouldn’t call a complete failure, but are not really a success.

“Then HOW do I launch a successful multi-channel campaign?” you may ask. Well, quite frankly, there is no single correct answer to the “how” question. It is rather a series of answers to a series of other questions that will give you the answer to the “how” question.

More than often, multi-channel campaigns don’t achieve successful results, because not enough questions were answered before answering the “how” question.

Here is a list of questions I have compiled from some of the customers who have launched multiple successful campaigns…

Seth Godin has a book about the lies marketers tell, do you agree with the premise?

Yesterday, I had a refreshing conversation with a non-marketer friend about the perception of marketers and of marketing campaigns. With no knowledge of the book by Seth, she came to the same conclusion that all marketers are liars.

If you’re like me, you’ll probably disagree with this statement.

For us, every other marketer is a liar, seems to be more applicable here. Yet, the simple fact is, sometimes we get so entrenched in marketing speak, industry jargon and hype, that we forget the basic function of marketing is to engage, educate and enrich customers.

Going back to this basic function, you’ll do well to apply the “so what” test to your marketing.

Every line you write, every tagline you like, every campaign theme you design, apply the “so what” test and see if it is still relevant. Often you only have a few seconds to capture your audience, if it does not pass this simple go-no-go test, then scrap it.

Sometimes campaign data is like a clock that’s too fast or too slow. It gives you a good impression of what time it currently is, but without knowing how much faster or slower it is, you can’t be precise.
Sometimes data works in a similar way. The data you have of your customer may at times be [...]

As the demand and limits of variable data publishing (VDP) continue to advance, more questions arise. Most of you understand the concept of VDP, but some of you may be wondering about the following…