Blog Posts By: Matt Austin

Google recently announced the integration of real time data into their web search results page.  Real time data includes Twitter feeds, news updates, blog posts, even craigslist ads displayed up to the minute with the traditional search results.  Google has also reportedly partnered with Facebook and MySpace to incorporate other forms of real time data such as status updates into their search results.  How these changes will impact the marketing landscape will be an interesting question in the near future.

Honda recently caught my attention with their new social media marketing campaign - "Everybody Knows Somebody Who Loves a Honda".  I found this particularly interesting because Honda is directing people to Facebook in order to participate in the experiment.  I could not recall another company of Honda's stature using a foremost social media platform for an official marketing campaign and customer engagement platform.  Interesting!

After visiting the page myself, I see that Honda has amassed an impressive network of 268,000 fans (as of Nov 2009).  Counting all of the fan's friends, this network reaches over 3.3 million Facebook users.

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a series of product demos for Neolane.  According to their web site, Neolane is "the only enterprise marketing software specifically designed to manage, automate and optimize programs across traditional and emerging channels including direct mail, email and mobile".  The Neolane team did a nice job detailing out this functionality and emphasizing their ability to integrate easily with numerous outbound channels.

The demos focused on three main points:

1.       Overall product offering

2.       Campaign planning and execution

3.       Technical architecture

In searching for some statistics on social media to support a separate idea, I came across this interesting link:

Statistics show social media is bigger than you think

The blogger has compiled an impressive collection of statistics pointing out the staggering growth of social media in recent years.  I believe some of these figures have been carefully "interpreted" by the author to help build his argument; however, he has linked back to his sources adding a level of credibility of the information.  The evidence makes the case that social media is not a fad, but a fundamental shift in how we communicate and consume information.  I think it's hard to deny this, and the implications of this change are particularly interesting to marketers.  Marketers should apply careful thought and consideration to these media trends when planning future initiatives and roadmaps.

To read more insights on social media, be sure to check out two of Quaero's resident experts:

Dave Raffaele

Michele BB

Data profiling is the process of analyzing data sets to gather information on data types, statistics, patterns, relationships and other attributes.  This process is a critical task often scheduled just prior to the start of a design phase for a new database initiative.  Typically, data profiling is seen primarily as an input for data modeling and ETL design to identify data types and entity relationships.  The value of thorough data profiling actually extends far beyond these tasks and may help steer the direction of the project and ensure its success.

Below are some of the ways data profiling can add value during a new database initiative: 

Recently I had the opportunity to work with one of our clients on a campaign response attribution project.  The client is a hosted solution customer using a popular campaign planning and execution tool with a focus on direct mail catalog distribution across North America.  A savvy campaign management team builds complex campaigns with intricate segments at both the business and contact level. Campaign responses arrive in the database in the form of catalog orders generated by the direct mail campaign.

Delivering data in "real time" is becoming an increasingly important design requirement for database architects.  However, building a true real time database (where data is available the instant it is created or updated) is a complex design challenge when the database is not the system of record.  Even if the database is indeed the system of record, the complexity of user queries often requires additional aggregation in order to be optimized for reporting, campaigning, analytics, etc.

Capturing and using web analytics is increasingly becoming a fundamental business tool for IT, Marketing, Sales and Finance.  However, without a clear web analytic strategy, you can easily get lost in the details and not realize the true value.

Below are five starter ideas to help build a plan for success.

Consumers are turning to the internet more and more to browse, research, and purchase goods and services.  Setting up your website to capture consumer click data is a necessity in today's online marketplace.  The data consumers leave behind is ideal for measuring and shaping your marketing initiatives while gaining additional insight into the consumer.  Here are a few simple topics to help illustrate the power of the click.