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.
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...
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,...

Benchmarks: The Search Marketing Playbook
Forrester applied an adjusted version of its search marketing review methodology to 300 paid search ads from the retail, travel, consumer packaged goods (CPG), media and entertainment, financial...
Processes: The Email Marketing Playbook
This report highlights key processes that constitute best practices for interactive marketers whose responsibilities include email marketing. In an FAQ format, we address long-standing issues such as...
Continuous Improvement: The Email Marketing Playbook
This report for interactive marketers is part of Forrester's email marketing playbook and provides our current recommendations for how to continuously improve your email marketing programs. By...
Vision: The Email Marketing Playbook
This report lays out Forrester's vision of email marketing for interactive marketers: Integrate email into a multichannel conversation that includes a number of non-email communication vehicles. Why?...
Landscape: The Email Marketing Playbook
Forrester periodically surveys marketers to get a pulse on how they employ the most veteran of tools in their interactive toolkits — email. We've found that more business-to-consumer (B2C) than...
The Ultra-Connected Customer Will Upturn Marketing
In 2013, the ultra-connected customer base will grow at a staggering pace, destabilizing marketing as you've come to know it. This report identifies the changes you'll see in your customers'...
Assign An Owner To Digital Strategy, Governance, And Execution
To survive the destructive forces of digital disruption, firms must use eBusiness and interactive marketing capabilities to become customer obsessed. Yet most current digital organizations are too...

Performance Management: The Email Marketing Playbook
This report, part of the email marketing playbook, provides interactive marketers with advice on email marketing performance management, with a focus specifically on list maintenance. We've outlined...
360i, iCrossing, And Performics Lead The Way Toward Discovery Marketing
In Forrester's 25-criteria evaluation of search marketing agencies, we researched, analyzed, and compared seven agencies that have search marketing services at their cores. This report details our...
Introducing Forrester's Search Marketing Review Methodology 2.0
Paid search marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) are still mainstays in the interactive marketer's toolkit. And many legacy best practices still apply to paid search and SEO. However,...

Road Map: The Email Marketing Playbook
This report provides a road map for interactive marketers responsible for email marketing. It will help you unify your customer view, organize your teams by customer instead of by channel, and...
Rio SEO Leads, With BrightEdge Following As A Strong Performer
Forrester's 21-criteria evaluation of SEO platforms evaluates the four largest providers of tools for organic search auditing, ranking support, measurement, and project management: BrightEdge,...

Tools And Technology: The Email Marketing Playbook
This report helps interactive marketers select tools and technologies for email marketing. Most email marketers outsource the delivery of their email marketing programs because it unburdens internal...

Strategic Plan: The Email Marketing Playbook
This report articulates a strategic plan for how interactive marketers can improve their email programs today and create humanized, integrated messages in the future. We recommend marketers build...
Kenshoo Leads, With IgnitionOne And Marin Software Following As Strong Performers
In response to growing demand for bid management software, Forrester evaluated this category in addition to two others in separate Forrester Waves™: search marketing agencies and SEO platforms....

China Dominates A Rapidly Growing Yet Cautious Market
By 2017, marketers advertising with online display and search media in India, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and China will grow their investments at a 23% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to...
In 2011, marketer-collected data — specifically email addresses — became the target of highly sophisticated hacking scams launched against businesses and email marketing service...
A New Way For Emailers To Defend Themselves Against Email Fraud
Hundreds of brands are hijacked by phishing scams every month, costing companies and ultimately their end customers billions. And existing methods to fight phishing like email authentication...