This is my first official blog post as a Forrester analyst, and I’m extremely excited to be a part of the community. So who am I? Before joining Forrester, I was an interactive marketer, a “traditional” marketer, and also a strategy and analytics consultant on the service provider side. Most recently, I served as director of relationship marketing at the National Basketball Association, where I focused on acquiring, engaging, and monetizing fan relationships through digital channels.

My background centers mostly on interactive marketing and CRM/database marketing, and my research will concentrate on that intersection. Currently, I’m readying reports on innovations in email marketing and developing interactive marketing dashboards. Looking ahead, my research will cover topics such as identifying and targeting influencers, the future of online messaging, converting social media followers into customers, and calculating the value of digital marketing assets.

To help jumpstart new research about data collection best practices for interactive marketers, I’m soliciting feedback through two opportunities:

  1. Take this quick 8-question survey about your data collection practices. We’ll share the results with you.
  2. Join us for Tuesday’s tweet jam to talk about the challenges faced when collecting data for interactive marketing programs.

Details about Tuesday: Along with Forrester senior analyst Joanna O’Connell, I’m co-hosting Tuesday’s (Aug. 2) tweet jam about how to use digital channels to ask for customer data and what are the biggest challenges you face. Do you use digital channels like a website, social media, or mobile to collect vital marketing information? We’d love to hear from you. Here are some of the questions we’ll discuss:

  1. In what digital channels do you collect marketing data?
  2. What cross-functional colleagues are involved in your interactive marketing data collection planning?
  3. What channels are the easiest and the hardest for data collection?
  4. What are some of the obstacles you face when asking for customer information and permission in digital channels?
  5. What are some interactive marketing data collection tips and tricks that been successful for you? What has bombed?

To participate, just follow the #IMChat hashtag on Tuesday, August 2, at 2:00 p.m. EST.  If you’d like to learn more about the rules of engagement, visit this community discussion on The Forrester Community For Interactive Marketing Professionals. To read some past archives, visit the documents section of the same community.

Looking forward to this and future discussions!

Ari Osur

Principal Analyst serving interactive marketing professionals

@aosur