Articles by Ian Michiels

Few marketers would argue against the importance of relevant, timely, personalized marketing communications. In fact, research has consistently proven the value of personalizing marketing messages by segmentation, targeting, or one-to-one messaging. Personalized email campaigns generate two to three times higher click-through rates than mass email campaigns and twice the conversion rates. Unfortunately, when it comes to personalization and one-to-one initiatives, many marketers are constrained by the quality of customer data and an inability to centralize disparate data for analysis...

Anyone who has worked in sales or indirectly worked closely with sales has experienced those curious times when deals that seem to be moving along perfectly suddenly go cold. Was it something you did, something you said, something you failed to do? Inevitably, the question always gets asked "What could we have done differently to make the sale?" ...

Most marketers will accept that some portion of marketing will always be an art that is tricky to measure. However, it's difficult to deny the overwhelming need for marketers who can "crunch the numbers." ...

The role of the chief marketing officer (CMO) has evolved dramatically over the last 10 years. The average CMO is on the job for just 23.6 months. The CEO and board of directors are demanding a new level of accountability from senior marketing leaders, which requires tangible justification for marketing decisions. Marketers can no longer afford to make decisions or measure results based on gut feel. For CMOs, this leads to one undeniable truism: Job security is directly correlated with data-driven marketing...

In November 2008, Aberdeen published a study titled, "Lead Nurturing: The Secret to Successful Lead Generation." The survey captured the challenges and strategies from 213 organizations and found that on average, 16 percent of the total leads that are deemed "sales-ready opportunities" actually close. That's a fairly alarming number. The differen...

There are dozens of webinars, seminars, research reports, whitepapers, and blog postings on the topic of sales and marketing alignment. Despite the endless flow of resources and suggestions, sales and marketing alignment continues to elude many organizations. Misalignment is often a byproduct of a lack of process and a natural result of traditio...

The term "marketing automation" is perhaps one of the most widely used, ill-defined and ambiguous terms in the marketing and sales technology landscape. Ask 10 different people how they define marketing automation, and you'll probably get 10 different answers. Are there marketing automation solutions? Is it a category? Is it a type of technolo...

Recession. Nine letters you never want to see together in one word; at least not in that order. Sales and marketing departments across the globe are reeling from one of the worst financial crisis in recent business. The stock market is down, unemployment is climbing, and businesses are bracing for what could be a long, slow recovery. As an ana...

The economic downturn is top of mind for every organization. Pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV and it's hard to dismiss the facts: Recession looms and nobody knows when or how it will end. ...

Recent research from the Aberdeen Group titled "Channel Sales: Renaissance in Partner Management" explored the challenges, strategies and tactics from 220 organizations that rely on indirect channel partners, distributors, and retailers to drive top-line revenue. Sixty-three percent of companies indicate that partner/agent management has a moderate to severe impact on organizational effectiveness. ...

A recent report from the Aberdeen Group explores the critical role closed-loop marketing plays in today's Best-in-Class organizations, and the dynamic shift in the tools, technologies and processes that support today's top-performing closed-loop marketing initiatives. Significantly, 88 percent of top-performing organizations indicated they leverage closed-loop marketing.

The proliferation of marketing channels represents a key challenge for every CMO seeking to optimize return on marketing investments. Today, the marketing department is tasked with maximizing return across dozens of marketing channels Most organizations have become intimately familiar with the need to leverage multiple technologies in marketing -- ...

"We need more leads!" cries the sales manager. "What happened to the ones we gave you last month?" replies the marketing manager. "Those leads were lousy" retorts the increasingly frustrated sales manager... and so goes the never-ending lead "quality vs. quantity" debate in many organizations New research suggests that this stereotypical back and f...

What does marketing resource management mean to you? Does it mean the same thing to your coworker? Your competitor? The vendors who sell these solutions? The acronyms used to define the marketing automation space -- MRM, MOM, EMM, DAM, etc. -- have undeniably become so ambiguous that it's not uncommon for one to define another With some vendors ...