About Forrester
Forrester Research, Inc. is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology.

Shar serves Marketing Leadership professionals. She is a leading expert on how businesses can leverage interactive marketing channels and technologies to drive sales and deepen customer relationships. During her 12 years with Forrester, Shar has been instrumental in the development of many of the company's interactive marketing program evaluation methodologies, training courses, and marketing planning tools and has also been part of Forrester's sales and consulting organizations.
Shar's research focuses on overall interactive marketing strategies; crafting efficient, effective interactive programs; organizing for interactive marketing; and integrating interactive channels into the rest of the marketing mix. Specific subjects addressed in Shar's research include email marketing, online advertising, search engine marketing, ad serving and targeting, interactive budgeting and forecasts, and interactive marketing organizational models.
Shar returned to Forrester in 2004 after several years away working in marketing consulting. Shar served as research director for marketing research boutique, TideWatch, where she led internal strategy efforts and client strategy projects. Shar was also a consultant with Carlson Marketing Group's Business Strategy Consulting team, developing CRM and email programs for clients including British Airways, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, and Home Depot. Shar began her career at Forrester in 1997 during the early days of the Internet and has written research on customer loyalty, ad networks, and marketing measurement and planning.
A popular speaker, Shar has been seen on stage at ad:tech, MITX, DMA, and the Email Service Provider Coalition events, among others. She is on the board of SEMPO — the search engine marketing professionals organization — and is also widely quoted in the press including such media outlets as BusinessWeek, Fortune, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal and is a frequent guest on CNBC and National Public Radio.
Shar is a graduate of Harvard University.
Maximize Display Effectiveness By Optimizing Your Approach
New upstarts like Dotomi and FetchBack have recently invigorated interest in the value of remarketing, but it's a tried-and-true display tactic that's been around for years. Marketers can...

Although social media gives interactive marketers the opportunity to gather more data than ever about customers, few marketers use this data to improve the performance of their email marketing...

Promote, Find, And Attract The Mass Influencers Who Matter
Introducing The Forrester Marketing Flywheel For Assessing Budget Allocations
The tech industry is returning to expansion mode, and tech marketers must gear up to drive profitable revenue growth for their companies. However, unlike previous generations of tech industry growth,...
Use Technology To Move From Experimentation To Driving Results
In 2012, CMOs will need to embrace technology to help them handle big issues like: 1) addressing the maturation of social media from cool tool to critical connector with customers; 2) determining how...

Promote, Find, And Attract The Mass Influencers Who Matter
Fans and followers are helpful for brands, but the people who bring the greatest value in social media are not just fans but advocates — people who can and will support, engage, and share...
Over the past year, marketers have made the shift from learning about the meaning of gamification to incorporating it into their strategies. But so far, the results have been mixed, as the...
Choose A Social Marketing Management Vendor Focused On The Specific Needs Of The Financial Industry
Clearer compliance regulations are making financial services (FS) marketers more confident about entering the social channel and growing their existing presences — but the burden remains on...
Work With Key Collaborators To Identify And Engage Influencers
Interactive marketers are often responsible for influencer marketing programs, particularly within business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations. But identifying and engaging influencers is both complex...
Hewlett-Packard, a leading technology provider with a global footprint, saw an opportunity to significantly improve its digital marketing efforts by creating a universal framework for user-level data...

MarketShare, Marketing Management Analytics, ThinkVine, And SymphonyIRI Are Leaders
The marketing mix modeling market is undergoing a transformation as marketers increasingly demand that vendors provide solutions that are updated frequently, can easily aggregate data streams, can...

Performance Management: The Marketing Mix Optimization Playbook
Successful optimization of the marketing mix requires careful coordination of multiple data streams, generation of insights from marketing mix models, and careful review of budget allocation...
Performance Management: The Social Marketing Playbook
You've no doubt heard the question: "How do we know that social marketing drives sales?" But just as not all TV spots or billboards are intended to drive direct response, not every social marketing...
Executive Overview: The Marketing Mix Optimization Playbook
When making their investment decisions across the marketing mix, senior marketers face the constant challenge of coping with the proliferation of communication and engagement platforms while facing...

Strategic Plan: The Customer Life-Cycle Marketing Playbook
The customer life cycle provides a better explanation of modern marketing than does the traditional marketing funnel, but most marketers have not yet moved their organizations to the customer life...
Interactive attribution is a key measurement strategy that provides a deeper understanding of the contribution of each digital marketing contact along the customer journey. By using attribution,...
The Nine Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
Since Forrester published its first Wave™ evaluation on marketing mix modeling in 2011, the market has undergone significant growth and evolution as marketers demand more in-depth, real-time,...
Why Firms Need To Share Data To Become Customer-Obsessed
Enterprises seeking to better understand their customers, market, and competitive landscape can't afford to limit their insights to only what they already know — the data they generate...
How Interactive Marketers Must Make Digital Messaging More Engaging
As a marketer you want to be timely and relevant when you send a message and basic triggered messaging has addressed one side of this equation — timeliness — for many marketers. But when...