My, when I decided to launch this newsletter, I knew that once the first issue was out, I couldn’t neglect it the way I did my blogs. Those of you who are subscribers since the very beginning (err, two months ago!) have noticed that this issue is coming out a little late. Hello? Holidays anyone? I hope yours were great, and I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a great and happy New Year 2012. I know this year is going to be quite a ride.
When I asked Ron Shevlin to be a guest author, I must confess I wasn’t sure he would want to. Ron is a very sharp thinker. Think knife. I didn’t know if he would think that appearing in something published by yours truly was worth of his knowledge, and wits! I guess seeing who were the first two guest writers convinced him to be part of what I hope will be an amazing roster of contributors. I am of course kidding; Ron is a very nice man who accepted my invitation right away.
His article is a fascinating take on what he calls the Interactive Marketing Maturity Model, with some very concrete data coming from 25 companies in the financial sector. Ron examines in details the model developed by Aite Group, which “encompasses three stage across three processes.” He ends it with a call to Web Analysts, underlying the important, more important role they could play if they would align their focus differently. Truly a fascinating read.
As for me, I wrote something on the verge of what I could call “Marketing Sci-Fi”. In this new era of Big Data annoucing the coming Age of Mammoth Data, I offer an interpretation of a world where we would have perfect data, data that are not just traces of a phenomenon, here the customer, but the customer herself in all her behaviors and thought process complexities. I suggest that even then, we will not be better marketers if we lack that special little something. Go read if you want to know what it is.
Finally, if you think this newsletter has any value, thanks for forwarding it to colleagues. It will evolve, both in volume and quality, and adding new subscribers is certainly a good motivation.