Archive for the ‘online marketing suite’ Category

Launching the Rainier Advisory Group

Posted: September 7, 2010 in Ascentium, Closed Loop Marketing, CMO, community marketing, Customer Engagment, customer lifetime value, enterprise marketing platform, integrated marketing, Marketing Strategy, online marketing suite, Rainier Advisory Group, SDMA, Strategy, web marketing
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After nearly 5 years, I’m leaving Ascentium and starting my own consultancy, Rainier Advisory Group specializing in helping companies navigate the complexity of the marketing technology landscape.

I’m very proud of the success I’ve had growing Ascentium from a small technology consulting firm into the 5th largest independent digital agency according to AdAge and being called out with the highest customer satisfaction scores in the country by Forrester Research in their 2009 Forrester Wave® of Top Interactive Agencies.

Now is the time to move on and focus on my real passion of mastering cross-channel customer experiences through the integration of the technologies that are helping transform the marketing landscape from search to analytics, lead management to CRM and everything in between. With the maturation of cloud-based services, today’s marketer is faced with a myriad of choices and almost no one to help navigate not only the applications and services themselves, but how they fit into an integrated cross-channel strategy, Forrester calls Digital Brand Orchestration.

I believe that my combination of executive experience on the client side for Lufthansa, T-Mobile and Gateway, agency consulting experience working with companies like Microsoft, Intel, Lexus, and Ford as well as start ups like Marketfish, Quasar, and Surveyanalytics as well as my thought leadership and speaking engagements for organizations like Forrester Research, the DMA, Digital Hollywood, Mirren New Business, The Integrated Marketing Conference and MarketMix, position me well to provide the strategic consulting services needed by leading companies, marketing service providers and advertising agencies.

Please feel free to reach out to me if you’d like more information or if you know of any firm in need of my services.
I will also be devoting time to my commitment to our industry in my capacity as past president of the Seattle Direct Marketing Association, incoming president of the Pacific Northwest Business Marketing Association chapter as well as lecturing on digital marketing at local institutes of higher learning.

Most of my contact information remains unchanged, with the exception that I can now be reached at john@rainierag.com or jkottcamp@gmail.com . Today I have also launched my new company website, www.rainierag.com . Farewells are always sad, but new beginnings are even more exciting. I continue to wish everyone at Ascentium continued success and I look forward to sharing new stories with each of you in the near future.

RFIDs for People, it’s finally here

Posted: April 1, 2009 in Closed Loop Marketing, CMO, community marketing, Customer Engagment, customer lifetime value, ecommerce, enterprise marketing platform, integrated marketing, Interactive Agency, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, microsoft, online marketing suite, re-marketing, social media, social networking, Strategy, User-generated content, Web 2.0, web marketing
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Chipmaker, BrandChip Inc., announced that they have perfected a RFID chip that can be embedded in jewelry, watches or other personal items commonly worn by average people. This chip will contain opt in personal information regarding the wearer’s tastes, shopping habits and brand preferences. Participating retailers will be able to access the information whenever the wearer comes into the store and can then automatically generate a special offer via mobile phone.

This is the ultimate in one to one marketing. Don Rogers of Peppers and Rogers fame has been quoted as saying he’ll sign up as soon as he can and looks forward to getting some great offers from The Sharper Image. Google is figuring out how to offer a stripped down version for free and Microsoft is said to be studying it and should have a beta in market by 2015.

I applaud these efforts and look forward the next generation when they won’t even need the mobile connection. You will be able to get the offer straight from the chip.

Oh, and by the way, have a great today, April 1, 2009

The Future of eCommerce and The Customer Experience

Posted: July 22, 2008 in Closed Loop Marketing, Customer Engagment, ecommerce, enterprise marketing platform, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, microsoft, online marketing suite, web marketing
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I’ve been thinking a lot about contemporary ecommerce customer experiences lately. Besides fixing the obvious problems like having to register before you buy, going all the way through the purchase process before seeing the shipping costs or taxes and of course the all too frequent screw up that makes you start all over again and hope that your credit won’t be charged twice, I wonder who is really looking at commerce as just one piece in the overall customer experience.

In the technology world, ecommerce usually refers to the actual shopping cart/order management application that enables a company to sell products online, order and fulfill and take payment. Companies with recurring payment plans like cell providers and cable companies even allow you to add services, increase plans and in some cases refer a friend. But from a customer-centric perspective, ecommerce needs to include analytics applications that track what is important to a customer by their actions of the Web site, i.e. where they have spent their time, which pages or products they have shown interest in. Once you start wanting to remember anything about a particular customer, you will need a CRM system or customer data management program. And if you’re going to provide a personalized customer experience you will need a robust enough campaign management system to present unique combinations of relevant content.

Who’s going to provide all these systems? Amazon? Microsoft? Salesforce.com? It’s another case where what Forrester calls the enterprise marketing platform is a need waiting for a solution.

The Online Marketing Suite

Posted: March 17, 2008 in Blogroll, Closed Loop Marketing, CMO, customer lifetime value, enterprise marketing platform, integrated marketing, Interactive Agency, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, online marketing suite, re-marketing, Strategy, web marketing
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I was just reading Peter Kim’s blog, beingpeterkim discussing the idea of the online marketing suite  I fully agree that the time has come for marketer’s to embrace the idea of an online marketing suite.  However I think it is a mistake to represent it’s value as being primarily around collaboration and optimization.  Marketing organizations are being pushed harder and harder by the rest of the enterprise to integrate marketing with sales, operations and particularly finance.  There are two values of what Peter’s Forrester colleague Suresh Vittal calls the enterprise marketing platform.

First, by integrating various technology tools like analytics, campaign management and CRM, marketing organizations can begin to track relationships, capture real behavior and preferences and engage customers with meaningful dialogue.

Secondly, my integrating all these various applications, marketing will be able to elevate its reporting and analysis from campaign reporting to real business metrics that can measure ROI or ROMI from prospect (think adserving) to conversion (think ecommerce) and most importantly loyalty (CRM).

While the first will bring the most immediate benefit to members of marketing organizations, it is the second that will gain them the success and respect.