For Marketing Leadership Professionals

Understanding The Marketing And IT Relationship

by Suresh Vittal, Jennifer Joseph McGann, March 31, 2009

Forrester surveyed 224 direct marketers to understand how relations with internal and external partners affect technology adoption. Across the board, marketers recognize the need to improve customer information systems and measurement technologies in . . .

For Interactive Marketing Professionals

Agencies Must Build Digital Skills To Survive

by Peter Kim, April 11, 2008

Traditional advertising agencies face significant technical difficulties. Clients are shifting business to digital shops, and consumers have turned away from media channels that built the agency industry and toward emerging Internet media. Ad agencies . . .

For Marketing Leadership Professionals

The Direct Marketing Services Ecosystem

by Dave Frankland, May 16, 2007

Most marketers who outsource tasks to support their direct marketing efforts work with several service providers. Unfortunately for marketers, there are a multitude of vendor options across many overlapping submarkets. The result? Confusion, frustration, . . .

Epsilon Buys Abacus: Good Fit, Bad Timing

Epsilon Gains Retail Capability But Will Struggle With Overlapping Business Units

by Dave Frankland, January 4, 2007

Acquisition-hungry, Alliance Data Systems' Epsilon business makes its fifth buy in 15 months with Abacus, DoubleClick's data and analytics business. The $435 million cash deal brings Epsilon some needed retail prowess, but it introduces an overlapping . . .

Publicis + Digitas: Interactive Goes Mainstream

$1.3B Acquisition Brings Media Scale, But Digital Skills Integration Will Lag

by Peter Kim, December 22, 2006

On December 20, 2006, Publicis Groupe announced that it would acquire interactive agency Digitas for US$1.3 billion in cash. With the acquisition, Publicis will become the world's third-largest advertising agency holding company and will have the ability . . .

The Database Marketing Services Landscape

A Directory Of Suppliers That Build And Manage Marketing Databases

by Eric Schmitt, March 8, 2006

Database marketing service providers address the growing need for outsourced services that combine marketing, technology, analytics, and operations expertise. We recently published an evaluation of 10 companies that we consider to be the leaders of this . . .

The Forrester Wave™: Database Marketing Service Providers, Q1 2006

Analytics Propel Epsilon, Merkle, and Allant To The Top Of Our Evaluation

by Eric Schmitt, January 10, 2006

Firms hire database marketing service providers to manage, cleanse, and integrate customer data. In many cases, they also pay for marketing operations, analytical services, and strategy support. To assess the state of the market and see how the leading . . .