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.
Spend Will Reach Nearly $55 Billion As Interactive Cannibalizes Traditional Media
Interactive marketing will near $55 billion and represent 21% of all marketing spend in 2014 as marketers shift dollars away from traditional media and toward search marketing, display advertising,...

Expect $61 Billion By 2012 As Marketers Distribute Spend Across Channels
Interactive marketing over the next five years will not be dominated by a single revolutionary channel. Forrester forecasts that interactive marketing spend will grow to $61 billion by 2012, an...
Interactive marketing tactics are crucial for marketers who seek new ways to create relevant and engaging customer communications. Forrester's interactive marketing research studies current and...
Spend Will Near $77 Billion As Interactive Gains Legitimacy In The Mix
By 2016, advertisers will spend $77 billion on interactive marketing — as much as they do on television today. Search marketing, display advertising, mobile marketing, email marketing, and...

Although interactive marketing is poised to grow at a 17% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) overall, not all industries will match this pace. Retail and financial services will own the largest share...
Better Goals Will Unlock New Channel Adoption
Consistent with past studies, email, search, and display media are still the most heavily penetrated interactive channels; this year, they reach near ubiquitous adoption. Online video and most social...
How Embracing CORE Directives Will Help You Foster Adaptability
Interactivity is changing life as we know it, a scope too big for most firms' siloed, understaffed interactive marketing organizations. The solution? To customize, optimize, respond, and empower...
Preparing For An Internet Fragmented By Devices And Passwords
The standardized Internet is fraying. Long live the Splinternet. Interactive marketers have thrived in the golden age of the Web, where people access Web sites using standard, similarly formatted PCs...

What Beyond Ad Format Will Improve Display Media Performance
Many marketers believe that ad format determines campaign performance. While ad format does influence campaign results, it is not the only factor that does so. Forrester advises that marketers use...
Forrester's Framework Benchmarks Interactive Capabilities And Provides A Road Map For Progress
Marketers are far from mastering the performance and integration of interactive channels. To mature, they should use Forrester's interactive marketing maturity model to classify their firms into one...
How to Move Past Current Search Marketing Attitudes And Behaviors
Search is well-adopted as a marketing medium — 85% of marketers are using, piloting, or planning to pilot search marketing programs this year. Yet most search marketing programs are tiny, and...
iProspect, iCrossing, And 360i Emerge As Leaders
Forrester's evaluation of search marketing agencies against 72 criteria finds this market more mature than during our 2006 Wave. iProspect leads the study again, this time because of its strategy and...
The Recession Inhibits Firms From Trialing Emerging Channels
Because of the recession, this year marketers decline their use of brand-oriented display media and are particularly shy to adopt emerging channels like online video and mobile marketing. Instead,...
And What You Should Do About It
Search marketing faces a number of changes that will force interactive marketers to think more like business planners than like channel managers. While we expect the future of search to extend...
Introducing Forrester's Methodology For Evaluating And Improving Your Search Marketing Efforts
To move their search marketing programs beyond the basics, marketers must create search experiences that answer users' search needs rather than just promote Web sites. At the same time, they must...
Optimizing a site for good rankings within natural search engine results need not disrupt the user experience of the site. In fact, the fundamentals of Scenario Design correspond well to the elements...
Assessment: The Email Marketing Playbook
This report for interactive marketers explains how to assess your email marketing capabilities as well as the quality of the user experience for recipients of your marketing emails. Like Forrester's...
iCrossing Takes Top Honors, With 360i And Impaqt Close Behind
Forrester's 60-criteria evaluation of search marketing vendors scores iCrossing the best because of its forecast-based approach to campaign planning, qualitative and quantitative research skills,...
Forrester forecasts interactive marketing spend to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 17%. But not all industries will invest in interactive at the same pace. Financial services will spend the...
Marketers Move Toward Multichannel Planning And Execution
Interactive marketers are working hard to keep up with the evolving landscape of channels, tools, and technologies at their disposal for 2011 budget planning. Seventy percent of marketers expect...
Benchmarks: The Email Marketing Playbook
This report helps interactive marketers benchmark their email marketing campaigns against 70 of their peers that Forrester reviewed, from the consumer goods, retail, travel, financial services,...

Online ad exchanges introduce an ad sales model that serves both ad buyers and sellers by opening access to inventory and pricing based on market demand. Smart advertisers and publishers will seek to...
Responsys, ExactTarget, And Experian CheetahMail Lead The Market
In Forrester's 37-criteria evaluation of email marketing vendors, we identified the six significant providers in this category — Epsilon, ExactTarget, Experian CheetahMail, Responsys,...

Email marketers must integrate social media into their campaigns to stay relevant to consumers. Doing so will create new opportunities for email list growth, extend campaign reach, and harness social...
You Should Prepare For A Distributed Organizational Model — Here's How
The question of how marketers should staff and structure their internal interactive organizations is growing more common as the interactive marketing function takes a more central role in overall...