Trends

Real-time bidding, or "programmatic buying" as it is sometimes called, is remaking the online ad industry with its approach of matching supply and demand of ad inventory in real time against the attributes of any given viewer. Now this trend is starting to creep into how mobile ads are delivered. Fi...

Am I making up a term? Maybe. This column is inspired by the continuing dreadful news out of PC land. Last week Dell announced its profits for the just finished quarter dropped 72 percent year over year and Lenovo took over the No. 1 one spot in PC manufacturing from HP, though both companies saw ...

Wireless customers are generally much happier with the quality of service they receive from providers via the companies' self-service websites than through other outlets, a new survey from J.D. Power reveals. In addition, they're happiest with AT&T among service providers, the study found. The s...

Millennial Media announced on Tuesday that it will acquire competitor Jumptap in a stock transaction worth approximately $225 million. Under the terms of the agreement, Jumptap shareholders will receive approximately 24.6 million shares of Millennial Media. The combined company will be able to offer...

I've been having so much fun lately that I may have missed something, but let me ask -- have we already reached the end of the customer experience trend? I think CX still has a lot of life in it, but let me play devil's advocate for a moment. "CX" is a nebulous term and idea, and its discussion lead...

If you want glamour, status and prestige within your company, go out and get new customers. If you want to stay in business, specialize in keeping the ones you have happy and loyal. Customer retention isn't flashy, and it doesn't earn extra pats on the back from executives or big promotions -- which...

Social customer service has now become a key point of contact between brands and their customers. Consumers, particularly within the Millennial demographic, take to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks when they have a problem with a company. Sixty percent of 18-24 year olds go to social medi...

A subtext to the marketing automation explosion is analytics. Having a CRM system might make you wonder why marketing automation is needed at all, but the reasons boil down to analysis and improved data collection. Let me share some information from a new marketing study. First, the data: We asked m...

Businesses depend on their customers, and it would make sense that good customer service would translate into loyalty and sales, but high-tech vendors don't seem to have gotten the message. The average customer experience rating for tech vendors fell from 58 percent to 52 percent since last year, in...

It can be difficult enough to market to consumers through one channel, but trying to work across channels compounds that difficulty considerably. Enter Experian Marketing Services, which recently upgraded its cross-channel marketing platform with several new features. Experian regularly updates its ...

In a move that surprised me, Amazon last week announced that it was lowering its fees for on-demand infrastructure by as much as 80 percent. Should we be rejoicing, or is this a sign that something is amiss? Back around the turn of the century, something similar happened in at least two situations.

ClearSlide has already released several mobile apps targeting salespeople on the road, and recently it rolled out another key piece of its platform in mobile form. Dubbed "Connect," the new app for iOS gives users mobile access to marketing and sales collateral stored in the cloud, such as presentat...

Like everyone else with a pulse, Paul Rand, president and CEO of Zocalo Group, has noted the phenomenal growth of mobile advertising. Statistic after statistic confirms such observations, including the latest from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which earlier this week reported that mobile adver...

Last year, I polled a group of respected CRM resellers to create a list spotlighting "forgotten features" -- tools and settings in CRM that many users overlook, even when they could bring great value to their businesses. Perhaps the most interesting forgotten feature was internal reporting. Most com...