Looker CMO, Jennifer Grant, didn’t always envision a career in marketing. In fact, she had her heart set on being an actress. That was, until she realised business - marketing in particular - was her true calling.

Once upon a time, meeting a partner online was not seen as conducive to a happily ever after. In fact, it was seen as a forbidden forest. However, in the modern age of time poor, stressed-out professionals, meeting someone online is not only seen as essential, it can also be considered to be the more scientific way to go about the happy ending.

While most data professionals are tasked with driving growth for their organisation, for Rachel Green, the opposite is true.

Digital marketing company Performance Horizon’s VP of marketing, Erik Mikisch, speaks to CMO about how to be a more intelligent marketer in today’s fast-paced digital marketplace.

We’ve spoken to a raft of marketing leaders, analysts and industry commentators about where the focus will be in the New Year for big data and predictive analytics in the marketing mix.

Australian businesses are underutilising existing data and analytics capabilities to drive strategic and competitive advantage as executives struggle to come to grips with the new realities of data-driven decision making.

The majority of organisations that have bridged the cultural and operational hurdles around big data analytics are seeing significant, measurable impact on their revenues. Yet there are still a raft of organisations struggling to have a data-driven strategy universally accepted in their organisation.

A fundamental disconnect between the way technology and business teams perceive customer data is resulting in lost opportunity for marketers, a Forrester Research principal analyst claims.

Data analytics is being touted as the new ‘black magic’ of marketing, but there are still a range of Australian organisations struggling to get a handle on how to make data work for them.

CMO speaks to a range of senior marketers, industry experts and content marketing leaders to find out where their content marketing dollars will be spent in 2014, and what they see as the top trends influencing content strategy.

The unprecedented threat to privacy presented by big data means marketers need to become extremely vigilant in how they use customer intelligence for future gain.

Big data is increasingly seen as a tool to fine-tune the marketing mix, but one Australian retailer has used data analytics to create a new and successful take on the customer loyalty program.

The new frontier of data is full of possibilities, but marketers need to be aware that not all data is created equal, a leading marketing scientist warns.

It’s hard to see a customer’s lifetime value if you’re only taking a 30-day view of engagement.

In the realm of marketing, data is definitely the new black. But to hear it spoken of at conferences, you might also assume it is the new black magic, capable of doing everything from enabling accountability of every marketing dollar spent through to predicting customer behaviour. Either concept would be considered fantastical, were they also not increasingly becoming true.

Today’s marketer must adopt a bigger and earlier role in the customer’s purchasing decision lifecycle if they’re to help their organisations succeed, says the CMO of storage and data solutions vendor, CommVault.

Influencer marketing, also known as word-of-mouth marketing, is popping up increasingly in the headlines thanks to social media’s dominant role in marketing and customer engagement.

Brands ramping up their analytics capabilities need suitable frameworks in place to translate data into business insights that can be actioned by the right teams for maximum benefit, Bupa’s strategy leader claims.

Despite their obvious importance, digital and social remain distinct activities within many marketing teams. But CMOs must integrate these channels into the one customer journey if they’re to remain at the top of their game, Adobe’s digital chief claims.

What does it take to be a digital CMO? According to new research from analyst group, Gartner, success comes down to a host of factors including strategic campaign investment, staff skill sets, consistent customer experience and telling the right story with the help of data analytics.

Customer propensity modelling is the next gold mine for marketers and is already becoming a reality for Australia’s largest female fashion retailer, Specialty Fashion Group, thanks to its growing data analytics capabilities.