Rusty Warner

Customers demand that marketing coordinate with sales, service, and commerce to deliver better experiences. That’s why enterprise marketing technology (martech) is melding with customer experience (CX) to deliver consistency and relevance (see Forrester’s “Predictions 2019: B2C Marketing” report). Martech is a direct line to consumer touchpoints, and marketers should embrace and leverage it to drive […]

Making sense of the enterprise marketing technology (EMT) landscape can easily overwhelm even the most dedicated martech aficionado. 2018’s “Martech 5000” is astonishingly closer to 7,000 vendors, rendering vendor differentiation difficult and vendor selection a nightmare. Forrester recommends starting this process by categorizing vendors in terms of systems of insight (SOI) and systems of engagement […]

It’s frustrating when a customer exhibits purchase intent but doesn’t buy because of friction in the customer journey. It’s worse when a store manager or contact center agent is unaware of a digital promotion. Nearly 40% of CMOs say that a lack of consistent customer experience (CX) prevents greater online sales revenue. Empowered customers now […]

We are delighted to announce “The Forrester Wave™: Marketing Resource Management, Q3 2018.” Our 35-criteria evaluation includes the eight most significant MRM vendors — Aprimo, BrandMaker, IBM, Percolate, SAP, SAS, Stylelabs, and Workfront. Forrester defines marketing resource management as: enterprise marketing technology that helps marketers with financial planning, performance measurement, collaboration and calendaring, project management, content […]

I’m pleased to announce the publication of The Forrester Wave™: Cross-Channel Campaign Management, Q1 2018. In our 33-criteria evaluation, we identified the 12 most significant vendors – Adobe, Cheetah Digital, Emarsys, IBM, Oracle, Pegasystems, Pitney Bowes, RedPoint Global, Salesforce, SAP Hybris, SAS, and Selligent – and researched, analyzed, and scored them. Forrester defines CCCM as: Enterprise […]

I’m pleased to announce that we have just published The Forrester Wave™: Real-Time Interaction Management, Q2 2017. This evaluation includes 12 vendors that address RTIM, which Forrester defines as: enterprise marketing technology that delivers contextually relevant experiences, value, and utility at the appropriate moment in the customer life cycle via preferred customer touchpoints. Vendor capabilities […]

If you’re a marketer struggling to decipher the complicated marketing technology landscape of more than 5,000 vendors – and show me a marketer who isn’t – then I have some good news for you. It won’t be as easy as following the yellow brick road, but you can begin to make sense of today’s seemingly […]

I am pleased to announce TWO new Forrester Wave™ reports for B2C marketers. Today we published the Forrester Wave™: Cross-Channel Campaign Management, Q2 2016 and the Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Marketing Software Suites, Q2 2016. The former will help you compare the 15 leading campaign management vendors, while the latter will help you evaluate 9 vendors […]

Context – noun –  con·text – ˈkän-ˌtekst What is context? According to Merriam-Webster, context is “the situation in which something happens or the group of conditions that exist where and when something happens.” We’ve been using it since late Middle English speakers adapted the Latin contextus, from con (together) and texere (to weave). For marketers, […]

Have you ever felt like this… Our vendor has some great capabilities that we are not leveraging, but I would place the blame on us. Well, you’re not alone. That’s actually a direct quote from one of the 74 customer references we surveyed for the Forrester Wave™: Real-Time Interaction Management, Q3 2015. In general, we […]

We all know the opening part of Pope’s often-quoted adage. Certainly some acquisitions in the enterprise marketing technology arena are now looking like foolish decisions. In yesterday’s 2015 trading update, SDL announced it will sell multiple products that are “non-core to its future strategy,” including social intelligence, campaign management, and its Fredhopper eCommerce recommendation engine. […]

We’ve all seen comprehensive diagrams featuring hundreds of vendor logos across multiple marketing technology categories. So, when tasked with mapping the technologies required to deliver contextual marketing, I decided to simplify things. For more details, see my new report “Combine Systems Of Insight And Engagement For Contextual Marketing.” Forrester has defined broad “systems of X” […]

When I published the Market Overview: Real-Time Interaction Management back in May, I highlighted more than 100 vendors that provide real-time interaction management (RTIM) solutions or solution components.  I outlined in that report how enterprise marketing technology vendors address – to varying degrees – all five RTIM requirements: customer recognition, contextual understanding, decision arbitration, offer […]

I’m a big fan of the cloud – and not because I live in the United Kingdom, which actually gets a lot more sunshine than people think. Seriously, I like the cloud because of the opportunities it brings for enterprise marketing technology deployment. Note that I said “opportunities,” as in potential; although Forrester’s research shows […]

Back in February, I published a brief on Demystifying Real-Time Interaction Management, where I reviewed evolving requirements for building a contextual marketing engine, capable of engaging empowered customers across real-time channels. These requirements include: customer recognition, contextual understanding, decision arbitration, offer orchestration, and measurement and optimization.  As promised then, I have been researching the RTIM […]

A = Analytics (or more precisely, customer analytics). At its Summit in Salt Lake City this week, Adobe unveiled new analytics functionality for its Marketing Cloud. Taking a granular view of real-time analytics, Adobe is differentiating requirements for live stream (instantaneous) data vs high frequency metrics (10 seconds) vs current data (90 to 180 seconds) […]

We all know that empowered customers expect brands to deliver contextually relevant experiences based on their individual preferences for content, timing, location, and channel(s). How do customer insights (CI) professionals decide the appropriate course of action – not just for a single customer, but for all customers? How do they then execute on those decisions […]

Yesterday SAP formally launched its hybris Marketing Solution, hailing it as “the industry’s first contextual marketing platform.” Customers will welcome the new functionality, which SAP has highlighted in roadmap presentations during the past year.  Claims of being first-to-market, however, fall short. First to offer an analytics suite for marketers? SAS Institute may disagree. First to […]

This week Teradata became the latest Enterprise Marketing Software Suite vendor to extend its commitment to mobile, announcing the acquisition of Appoxee, an Israeli-based mobile marketing SaaS provider. Appoxee complements Teradata’s Digital Messaging Center (based on the 2012 acquisition of eCircle) with technology capabilities for messaging personalization, contextual targeting, in-app notifications and mobile analytics. Marketing […]