For Customer Experience Professionals

Member Registration Plagues Health Plan Sites

Interviews Of 17 Health Plans Uncover The Need For Email Addresses

by Elizabeth Boehm, November 20, 2009

The Web is becoming a bigger part of health plans' member service and member communication strategies, but health plans struggle to drive adoption. Forrester recently interviewed customer experience professionals responsible for member service Web sites . . .

For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

How Dutch Consumers Use The Net To Research And Buy Financial Products

The Web's Role As A Sales Channel Is Growing Fast In The Netherlands

by Alexander Hesse, November 20, 2009

The Internet's role as a distribution channel for financial products is growing fast in the Netherlands. Nearly half of Dutch Net users researched at least one financial product online in the past year, compared with 40% in 2007, and one in five bought . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Design Sites To Work In A High-Resolution World

The Decline Of 1024 x 768 And What To Do About It

by Ron Rogowski, November 20, 2009

The proliferation of high-resolution screens that well surpass 1024 x 768 adds a new layer of complexity to site design. Not only is there no standard resolution to design for, but higher-resolution screens pose usability challenges for sites that were . . .

For Customer Intelligence Professionals

Marketing Dashboards Advance Strategic Thinking Across The Enterprise

by Julie M. Katz, November 20, 2009

Dashboards allow Customer Intelligence (CI) professionals to better influence marketing strategy and drive corporate activities beyond marketing. But many firms don't use them. Absent a culture of sharing, sufficient resources, and clean data, dashboard . . .

For Customer Intelligence Professionals

Case Study: The UK's Channel 4 Decodes Customer Engagement

How To Measure Engagement To Drive Business Results

by Julie M. Katz, November 20, 2009

Despite Forrester's four-part engagement definition, many Customer Intelligence professionals struggle to find the best way to measure engagement. When Channel 4 (C4), a media outlet in the UK, shifted its teen programming from TV to online, it needed . . .

For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

Online-Influenced Sales Exceed Direct Sales In Financial Services

How The Internet Influences Sales In Other Channels

by Brad Strothkamp, November 20, 2009

In 2008, the majority of US online adults who researched a financial product did so online, and the majority of those online researchers applied in a channel other than the Web. These cross-channel shoppers illustrate the importance of online-influenced . . .

For Interactive Marketing Professionals

Navigating The Twittersphere

How To Market On Twitter

by Nate Elliott, November 19, 2009

Successfully engaging with consumers on Twitter requires both the right overarching strategy and a series of small best practices. Interactive marketers must ensure that consumers can find their brands' accounts, confirm that they are legitimate, and . . .

For Consumer Product Strategy Professionals

Inquiry Spotlight: Consumer Wireless Strategy, Q3 2009

by Julie A. Ask, Seth Fowler, November 19, 2009

Mobile is rapidly expanding as a medium for interacting with consumers, and it will only continue to do so. Many of Forrester's nontelecommunications clients — from the travel industry to consumer product goods to automotive companies to financial firms . . .

For Consumer Market Research Professionals

A Deep Dive Into Asia Pacific Consumers' Online Behavior

by Olesia Klevchuk, November 18, 2009

For the past four years, Forrester has been tracking consumers' online and offline behavior in Asia Pacific. This is a dedicated report about Asia Pacific consumers' online behavior aimed at understanding the changes in this emerging medium. This year's . . .

For Consumer Product Strategy Professionals

The Psychology Of Early Adopters

Three Concepts From Academic Psychology Can Help Sell Newer Products

by Abe Garon, James L. McQuivey, Ph.D., November 17, 2009

Understanding how and why consumers experience the drive to adopt new products can help consumer product strategists trying to sell newer products. Concepts from academic psychology can be wedded to Forrester's Technographics segmentation to demonstrate . . .

For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

B2B eBusiness: Preparing For Online Liftoff

by Carrie Johnson, Elizabeth Davis, November 17, 2009

As more and more traditionally nonconsumer brands begin to move online, questions abound: How do we sell online? What do we sell to — or how do we service — our customers online? How do we organize to optimize the channel? The good news is that B2B companies . . .

For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

Travelers Are Cashing In On Loyalty Programs

How US Online Travelers Redeem Travel Loyalty Points And Rewards

by Henry H. Harteveldt, Elizabeth Stark, November 16, 2009

Travel loyalty programs may be old news, but that old news pays the bills and generates revenue in the billions of dollars every year for travel companies. Forrester data shows that half — 52% — of all US online travelers actively use travel loyalty programs, . . .

For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

eBusiness Professionals: Plan Your Customer Intelligence Strategy Now

How To Develop A Focused Customer-Centric Approach

by Brian K. Walker, November 16, 2009

The importance of eBusiness professionals to the customer intelligence (CI) effort is clear. As owners of the online profit and loss (P&L), they must align with the CI command center to drive a true multichannel, multipronged approach, which Dave . . .

For Customer Intelligence Professionals

The Privacy Exchange Disconnect

Marketers Must Show Value For Consumer Information

by Dave Frankland, November 16, 2009

Consumers and marketers have contradictory impressions of the value marketers provide in exchange for the consumer data they collect. Marketers claim they deliver more relevant products, services, and ads based on the consumer information they capture. . . .

For Marketing Leadership Professionals

Favorite Online Brands Succeed On Traditional Brand Values

How Marketers Can Position Their Brands With Online-Friendly Attributes

by David Card, November 16, 2009

Google remains consumers' favorite online brand, with Yahoo! and Amazon not far behind. In the minds of their fans, the top online brands exhibit very traditional attributes such as trustworthiness, helpfulness, and relevance, all at the expense of more-predictable . . .

For Consumer Product Strategy Professionals

US Pay-TV Forecast, 2009 To 2014

by Bobby Tulsiani, November 16, 2009

The pay-TV category is a nearly fully penetrated market, reaching 82% of US households today. With little room to increase the market, cable, satellite, and telecom TV providers are fighting an intense battle for market share. Forrester expects telecom . . .

For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

Adaptive Brand Marketing: An eBusiness Perspective

by Sucharita Mulpuru, November 13, 2009

Adaptive Brand Marketing is a flexible approach in which marketers respond quickly to their environment to align consumer and brand goals and maximize return on brand equity. We expect marketing professionals to embrace this new approach in order to keep . . .

For Consumer Product Strategy Professionals

Will Radio Survive The Media Meltdown?

by Sonal Gandhi, November 12, 2009

The amount of time that US adults spend listening to radio has been on the decline. The trend is especially marked among young adults, who have taken to other audio platforms at a much greater rate. But radio as a format continues to be popular even as . . .

For Customer Intelligence Professionals

Assessing Your Customer Intelligence Quotient

A Diagnostic Tool To Gauge Your Firm's Customer-Centric Prowess

by Dave Frankland, November 12, 2009

Forrester introduced the concept of a Customer Intelligence (CI) quotient that indentifies three levels of CI maturity in firms: functional intelligence, marketing intelligence, and strategic intelligence. At the highest maturity level, the Customer Intelligence . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Sixteen Voice Of The Customer Recommendations

Insights From 40 Companies With Voice Of The Customer Programs

by Bruce D. Temkin, November 11, 2009

To understand the best practices in voice of the customer (VoC) programs, Forrester analyzed the 40 applications it received for its Voice Of The Customer award. When we examined the advice that applicants listed for other companies, we found 16 recommendations . . .

For Consumer Product Strategy Professionals

Connected TVs Need To Sharpen Their Value Proposition

TV Makers Can't Reinvent TV Without Dramatic Steps

by Laurence Meyer, November 11, 2009

Connected TVs offer a huge advantage compared with legacy interactive TV and Internet TV platforms; they will also be in more than one-third of European TV households by 2014. With more than 150 million potential European users in 2014, connected TVs . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Four Mistakes To Avoid When Hiring An Interactive Agency For Design Projects

by Vidya L. Drego, November 11, 2009

Finding the right agency is difficult for clients and agencies alike. With so many agencies to choose from and so many skill sets to evaluate, narrowing a list of similar players down to one can be an overwhelming task — one fraught with potential missteps . . .

For Interactive Marketing Professionals

US Interactive Marketing Forecast By Industry, 2009 To 2014

by Shar VanBoskirk, November 11, 2009

Although interactive marketing is poised to grow at a 16% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) overall, not all industries will match this pace. Retail and financial services will own the largest share of all interactive marketing, while brand advertisers . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Top Customer Experience Takeaways From SpeechTEK 2009

by Adele Sage, November 10, 2009

Forrester recently attended SpeechTEK 2009, where presenters focused on using speech technologies to improve the phone self-service customer experience. Among speakers' top recommendations: Don't ignore customer experience, do focus on target users and . . .

For Consumer Product Strategy Professionals

Publishers Need Multichannel Subscription Models

Charging For Online Content Is Just One Part Of A Multichannel Product Strategy

by Sarah Rotman Epps, November 10, 2009

Newspaper and magazine publishers' current monetization models are broken: They are overly reliant on the "free" model of having advertisers subsidize consumer usage. But shifting more of the burden of payment to consumers is no easy task. In this report, . . .