About Forrester
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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.
CMOs Must Take A More Active Role In Business And Technology Strategy
Forrester Research and Heidrick & Struggles recently conducted a global survey of nearly 200 chief marketing officers (CMOs). In this report, you will find out how these CMOs view their relationship...

Using Ancient Greek Philosophy As A Framework For 21st Century Travel Loyalty
The Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that there were three levels of friendships: utility, pleasure, and good. The lowest, utility, describes the current state of travel loyalty programs —...
The Benefits Of A Flexible And Result-Focused Approach To Marketing Planning
Marketing planning has changed little in the past century. It's essentially a linear process built on the development of rigid 12-month plans built around brand and channel metrics. This approach is...
Benchmarks: The Marketing Mix Optimization Playbook
Few marketers have a structured approach to optimizing their marketing mix, often missing the opportunity to deliver better results with the same level of investment or to effectively reallocate...
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...

New Mobile Ad Formats Help Shape The Marketing Continuum
After more than a decade of fast-paced innovation, mobile is creating a link between digital ads and their physical-world counterparts in magazines, billboards, bar codes, and aisles. With new mobile...
Success Will Depend On Measuring The Handoff Between Phases
To get the best returns from the adoption of a customer-centric approach to marketing, Forrester believes that marketers must make the shift from the traditional marketing funnel to the customer life...

Loyalty currently is at the top of my research agenda. Why? I think that marketing organizations have been approaching loyalty with uneven success by adopting established approaches mainly based on...
Assessing Your Marketing-IT Partnership Readiness To Develop A Custom Action Plan
In the future, only companies that understand and anticipate their customers' needs and can consistently deliver unique, tailored customer experiences will be able to attract and retain loyal...

While marketers spend most of their efforts and resources on top-of-mind channels like the Web or TV, two-thirds of consumers report lackluster interactions with brands, leading to low levels of...
Organization: The Marketing Mix Optimization Playbook
Most marketers have earned their stripes through corporate work experience and business-school training that takes a top-down linear approach to marketing planning and optimization. Today, the...
This model allows you to assess your IT/marketing partnership readiness along the three critical dimensions of people, process, and technology. Use this model to identify strengths and weaknesses of...

Mastering The Customer Data Flow Requires Marketing And IT To Join Forces
Today's marketing organization must use technology to deliver compelling brand experiences and drive business growth. Today's IT organizations must tune their efforts to needs of the business. This...
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,...
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...
With the increasing richness and complexity that digital channels and social media bring to the marketing equation, senior marketers increasingly realize that, to be relevant in shaping their...
Marketing planning has changed little in the past century. It's essentially a linear process built on the development of rigid 12-month plans built around brand and channel metrics. This approach...
We have just published my new report on loyalty marketing: "A New Approach To Brand Loyalty." From the interviews with more than 50 marketing leaders, we have learned that more than 40% of chief...
Companies are grappling to maintain their traditional sources of competitive advantage in the age of the customer — a world where empowered consumers, commoditized products, and intense...
Loyalty Marketing Must Take The Brand Beyond Points And Programs
Most chief marketing officers (CMOs) have a tactical view of loyalty marketing. They tell us that their approach, while necessary, has unclear objectives and focuses too much on short-term financial...
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...

No, I’m not Australian . . . at Forrester, "boomerangs" are analysts that, after leaving the research team for a stint in the "real world," have decided to re-join. Clients and...
Forrester believes that chief marketing officers (CMOs) must abandon the century-old marketing/sales funnel and embrace the customer life cycle in order to better manage their customers' interaction...

This model allows you to assess your IT/marketing partnership readiness along the three critical dimensions of people, process, and technology. Use this model to identify strengths and weaknesses of...
