Category Archives: Customer Journey

Sales and Marketing 3.0

Sales cycles are complex and the era of the greasy used car salesman is no longer applicable in today’s market. Sellers need to be more sophisticated to survive. The focus doesn’t lie in generating more leads – the 80’s style antiquated sales funnel. The funnel is dead, so to speak. Marketing tactics around the funnel are still applicable […]

Creating Content for the Customer Journey

According to MarketingSherpa, 79 percent of marketing leads never convert into sales due to lack of lead nurturing. We all know how time-consuming lead nurturing can be, and that’s just one reason why you need to have effective, remarkable content for every part of the customer journey. If you can properly deliver your content at […]

Embracing Customer Differences with Lifecycle Marketing

Difference makes the world go around. I frequently remind myself this world would be very boring place if we were all the same. Lifecycle marketing strives to recognize, accept and celebrate customer differences. Long gone are the days where it’s considered sensible to market with blind eyes, assuming all customers want the same information, at […]

Re-focusing on Lifecycle Marketing

Last week, our partner Salesforce.com released its ExactTarget Marketing Cloud 2014 State of Marketing study that polled over 2,600 mid to senior level marketing managers across all industries. The report provides some interesting insights. In particular, I was most drawn to the list of priorities for marketers in 2014. 67% of marketers want to increase […]

TweetChat: Is the marketing funnel dead?

Practically a year ago, Forrester analyst Cory Munchbach wrote a break-up letter on behalf of all chief marketing officers to the “marketing funnel.” Cory broke it to the funnel hard as lifecycle marketing presents a bigger and better opportunity for CMOs to improve marketing efforts. In the letter, she addresses why the funnel is no […]

Tips for a Successful Year in Marketing

As we embark on a new year, full of opportunity and optimism, it’s in marketers’ best interest to explore new ideas and question old strategies. That is, after all, how change is made. However, most marketers may have more than just a couple of changes they would like to make in their overall strategy. How […]

What about Bing?

Just like browsers and mail servers, you have a choice when selecting an internet search provider. Whether you’re a die hard Google fan or you bounce around from one to another, you at least know where you will start a search. Since Google announced it was saying goodbye to keywords, odds are you may have […]

WestJet Earns Major Marketing Win

Earlier this week, like many of you, I watched the five and a half minute video from WestJet dubbed a Christmas Miracle. I’ve read numerous reviews of the video all suggesting this was money well spent for the Canadian airline. Of course, I need to weigh in as well and break the video down into the […]

Orbitz: Rethinking the Loyalty Program

If you’re like me and you utilize sites like Orbitz or Travelocity to search for good deals on travel, you likely heard about Orbitz’s new loyalty program last week. Instant Gratification Members of the program will earn “Orbucks” for hotels, flights and vacation packages, and redeem them immediately for hotel stays. President of Orbitz.com, Chris […]

Authentic marketing through storytelling

As consumers we want to connect with brands we believe to be real, engaging and honest. Everyone wants what I like to refer to as the “Norm Affect.” There’s something special about walking into your favorite coffee shop, boutique or restaurant and the staff knows your name. I discussed in another recent blog post the […]