News from around the water cooler

A weekly round-up of controversial, thought-provoking or otherwise entertaining stories of marketers around the globe.

Analytically challenged

Marketing analytics are being used in less projects and their quality evaluated by fewer marketers, according to a new survey undertaken by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. The February instalment of the latest CMO Survey found just 40 per cent of companies are formally evaluating the quality of marketing analytics, a fall of seven per cent compared with the previous report in August 2012.

The average percentage of projects using marketing analytics was also down three per cent to 30 per cent, while CMOs gave analytics’ contribution a mean rating of 3.7, down from 3.9 in the previous survey. Ironically, it is analytics which CMOs believe they’ll be spending more of their budgets on this year.

Is this just a case of playing catchup, or is Google releasing a miracle tool in April we haven’t heard of yet?

Read the full report: 6 in 10 CMOs Say their companies don’t evaluate the quality of marketing analytics here.

Mobile tagging

Target in the US is using a combination of mobile advertising, SMS and a mobile site to educate consumers about its mobile coupon initiative and save money on their favourite products.

Mobile Commerce Daily reports that the retailer is running the mobile campaign within The Weather Channel’s iPhone app. Its intention is to drive in-store traffic, as well as mobile app and mobile site revenue. The latest promotion is just further step in Target’s mobile agenda, which previously included limited-run mobile games for Super Bowl XLVII advertising, as well as a QR code initiative last year encouraging consumers to buy select items via their smartphone.

Read the full report:Target intensified mobile coupon push via interactive marketing campaign here.

Learning from Seinfeld

Is there really a marketing lesson for all of us in 1990s TV sitcom, Seinfeld? Customer experience and marketing analyst, Brian Cantor, believes there are at least two, in fact. The managing editor and community director of IQPC’s Customer Management IQ advisory panel has penned a two-part series on lessons from Seinfeld, starting with the program’s pilot episode, which is built around the concept of signals and how men can decipher what women are thinking.

Cantor argues when it comes to customer management, businesses often rely on signals and indicators to the detriment of their organisation. In the world of data-driven marketing, it is impossible to ignore these tools, but they shouldn’t be an excuse not to delve deeper into your customer base with feedback, surveys and long-term interaction.

Check out the blog Customer Management Lessons from ‘Seinfeld’ – Part One here.

Writing an epic

Following on from the success and controversy of his first post, ‘Women who rock content marketing’, Content Marketing Institute’s Joe Chernov has selected 20 more women who are producing epic content on behalf of their brands.

Why make a second list? According to Joe, the last post was overwhelmingly in favour of business-to-business content marketers, and failed to recognise women for who content ‘is an inseparable component of their professional and often personal lives’. In other words, women who are living and breathing the dream.

Top of the list is Sonia Simone, who runs the influential industry blog Copyblogger, followed by Sarah Hofstetter, whose firm 360i was responsible for Oreo’s noted ‘you can still dunk in the dark’ tweet during a blackout at the recent Super Bowl.

Read Chernov’s full list of Epic content marketers: 20 more women who rock here.

The CMO/CEO great divide

There is a chasm forming between the CMO and CEO even as chief marketers are finding more success than ever before, Enodo Software’s latest blog claims. The vendor quotes a recent study by Fournaise Group, which found 70 per cent of CEOs have lost trust in marketers’ ability to deliver growth as a result of their inability to prove ROI.

Enodo also points out a global poll of 400 ‘c-suite’ members by The Economic Intelligence Unit found 30 per cent of non-marketers identified driving revenue as the CMO’s primary goal, while CMOs see development of new products and customer acquisition as their key tasks.

Where do you sit in the mix? Are you doing enough to showcase marketing’s ROI to your boss? As Enodo points out, with responsibility comes accountability and CMOs, you’re more accountable than ever.

Check out the Enodo Software blog, The year of the ROI Marketer here.

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