[Posted by Erin Collins,
Marketing Intern, Neolane, Inc.]

With the massive adoption of social networks, a significant increase in the number of American smartphone users, and the subsequent changes in consumers’ receipt and ability to react to marketing messages, 2011 was an eventful year for marketers. As 2012 rapidly approaches, here are a few key trends that we expect to see impact the future of brands’ customer relationships:

Read the rest of this entry »

[Posted by Ed Hadley
Senior Marketing Manager, Neolane, Inc.]

My 20-month-old daughter was too young to get the concept of Santa last year.  This year is another story.  She’s borderline obsessed, constantly talking about how he flies through the sky, puts presents under the tree, and says “ho, ho, ho.”

To say she’s excited about Christmas would be an understatement.  In fact, she’s so eagerly awaiting Santa’s arrival that I’m afraid she’ll be disappointed if she doesn’t actually see him in our house.  Hopefully, the gifts under the tree offer some consolation.

Why I am writing this here?  Because great marketing is like Santa: it makes kids of us all.  If it’s truly special, we eagerly await its arrival.  And we know that the gifts waiting under the tree—in our inbox—will be exactly what we want.

Santa delivers incredible engagement  and relevance.  Hopefully, your marketing does too.

Happy Holidays from Neolane!

[Posted by Ed Hadley
Senior Marketing Manager, Neolane, Inc.]

The theme of the MarketingProfs B2B Forum, which took place this week in Boston, was “Charting a New Course”.  As adventurous as that sounds, I would caution marketers to remember that regardless of the course, the destination has never changed, and should therefore remain the same: revenues.  With that in mind, what I thought the B2B Forum offered was not so much an entirely new course, but a bevy of valuable “course corrections” to help steer marketers and their efforts toward that coveted destination.

Although I was only able to attend a handful of sessions, there were so many great takeaways that I split them into two posts.  Below are the key takeaways from day one of the event, grouped by session.

Read the rest of this entry »

[Posted by Alexis Karlin
Digital Marketing Specialist, Neolane, Inc.]

We recently introduced a series of “Stalking with Style” -themed posts and asked readers’ opinion on what you wanted to us to write about.  While many marketers expressed familiarity with branding efforts on Facebook and Twitter, it seems LinkedIn is still unchartered territory on many fronts, especially for prospecting and customer relationship-building by sales and marketing teams.  This could be due in part to the belief that LinkedIn is simply a tool for “personal” branding, specifically for those individuals interested in networking or looking for a new job.  What many don’t know is that LinkedIn has been steadily adding new features and functionality that are making it much more effective for corporate branding and sales efforts as well.

We’ll continue to write more on this topic, but to get us started, this post will cover a few ways you can learn more about prospects, competitors and current customers via LinkedIn.

Read the rest of this entry »

As you may know, every couple of weeks we produce a Marketing Tip of the Week video. We cover different topics that interest B2B and B2C marketers: CRM, marketing automation, campaign management, email marketing, lead management, and marketing management.

This week’s video discusses the importance of contact and account data. And if you have a tip of your own please tweet it to us, @Neolane. We hope you enjoy!

Read the rest of this entry »

[Posted by Kristin Hambelton
Senior Director of Marketing, Neolane, Inc.]

For those familiar with the Chinese zodiac, we are entering the Year of the Rabbit. General traits of the rabbit are calmness, creativity and endurance. This is a distinct and welcomed shift from 2010, Year of the Tiger, which was distinguished by competitiveness and unpredictability. In a year marked by transitions, we saw companies forced to take on great financial and business burdens, and a year that was capped off with numerous acquisitions.

Read the rest of this entry »

[Posted by Josh Bickford,
Marketing Intern, Neolane, Inc.]

It seems you can’t go anywhere today without hearing about new media marketing whether it’s Mark Zuckerberg’s awkward interview on 60 minutes, Google’s constant acquisitions, Avion tequila on Entourage, or 50cent’s twitter page, new media marketing has taken the country by storm; and guess what, it is only the beginning. When talking about new media marketing I am referring to emerging channels of advertising and promotion including search, branded entertainment/product placement, banners, videos, and mobile phones.  New media advertising sales have grown 31% in the US since 2007 and the market is currently worth $37.6 billion according to Mintel.

Read the rest of this entry »

[Posted by Jen Zick
Director of Strategy and Business Development, FanOne Marketing]

Former Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry once said, “The secret to winning is constant, consistent management.”  We apply the same philosophy to managing successful digital marketing campaigns for our sports and live entertainment clients.  Gone are the days of ineffective “batch and blast” communications where poorly timed and poorly coordinated messages are responsible for driving down campaign effectiveness.

Read the rest of this entry »

[Posted by Adam Needles
VP, Demand Generation Strategy, Left Brain Marketing]

This past week, Left Brain Marketing announced the public release of its demand generation model, called The Left Brain Model. This model provides marketers with a framework to granularly measure a B2B marketing organization’s contribution to demand generation programs as well as a structure for the nurturing, progressive profiling and lead scoring activities that support this process.

We didn’t re-invent demand generation with The Left Brain Model, but we’re hoping to elevate awareness and fill in some details about how B2B marketers can play a successful role in the demand generation process.

Read the rest of this entry »

[Posted by Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek
Executive Director, Marketing & Business Development
CSG's Quaero Solutions Group]

A colleague of mine has two children – ages 8 and 5 – with no plans to increase the size of her brood.  So you can imagine her surprise when she received a box from a leading baby food manufacturer that contained five samples and a letter, which welcomed her to their loyalty program and indicated that she would be receiving additional samples and offers in the coming months. And, then they came – direct mail pieces with diaper samples, coupons and other goodies – at least eight in total.

Read the rest of this entry »