It's hard to believe that Labor Day is already behind us -- where did the summer go? I hope you've all had some time to relax and recharge this summer before the days begin to cool and our business schedules heat up.

The Database Marketing Council has some great events planned to help connect you with ideas and tools that will help you meet your goals this holiday season and beyond.

Upcoming Events
Consumer Forum 2004: Delivering Breakthrough Multichannel Customer Experiences is being held on September 19-21, in New York. For details on the speaker lineup and agendas for the two days, visit our events page.

All Council members are invited to attend the Forum as part of your membership. Please RSVP if you plan to join us! We will also be hosting a variety of special member-only events throughout the Forum:

Monday, September 20:
Council members will meet over lunch on the first day of the Forum to discuss the evolving marketing technology backbone. Elana Anderson will lead a discussion around the tools required to create a centralized technology backbone that enables integration of marketing programs across channels and lines of business.

The Council will also meet for dinner at Asia de Cuba on 237 Madison Avenue at 8 p.m. for an evening of good food and lively conversation. If you haven't sent in your RSVP yet, please let me know if you can join us.

Tuesday, September 21:
At lunch, we invite you to participate in a discussion focused on a perennial hot topic for marketing execs: segmentation. Get insight from your database marketing peers as well as your colleagues in email marketing on strategies for effectively analyzing your customer data to yield effective cross-selling campaigns.

Hot Topic: BI Reporting & Analysis Tools
I've received inquiries recently from several Council members about best practices for working with reporting and analysis tool vendors. It's good timing, because we just published a Forrester Wave report looking at the major players in this space " Grading BI Reporting And Analysis Solutions." While Forrester believes vendors are still a few years off from creating an all-encompassing solution, we feel companies should begin the process of standardization today. Keith will provide an overview of the report's findings in an upcoming ForrTel on Sept. 23 at 1 p.m. Eastern time. If you are interested in listening in, please register here or contact me and I will register you.

As always, please don't hesitate to contact me if there's anything we can do to help out (inquiries with analysts, connections with other Council members, etc). I'm looking forward to seeing many of you in New York on September 20!

Best regards,


You are receiving this monthly email update as a member of Forrester's Database Marketing Council. As always, I am very interested in your input. If you would like to provide some feedback on or have any questions about these regular emails, drop me a line at jbruton@forrester.com.

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