Loyalty, the Holy Grail of Marketing:
A cross-industry look at the challenges and rewards of driving customer loyalty

(We will be tweeting live throughout this event May 13, 2010 at 3:30 p.m. ET at twitter.com/cmgpartners. Follow us to receive real time updates of the conversation.)

“Marketing is about being customer-centric and the first step in driving loyalty is creating attachment,” said Rich Beatty, founding partners of CMG Partners, opening the Loyalty Lab Client Summit panel discussion on April 8, 2010 and setting the tone for the conversation. He went on to explain that “Driving attachment impacts behavior, which drives financial results.”

These two statements lead to the same conclusion … customer loyalty drives financial results. With customer loyalty tied directly to performance of your bottom-line, marketing leaders cannot ignore this critical piece of the marketing puzzle. Read more »

Will the pocket protector-wearing mathematician replace the stereotypical, stylish marketer?

Maybe not (although we might have one at CMGP), however marketers today are working with data more than ever to inform their strategy as well as creative outputs. AdAge posted a great article this morning about the emergence of the next generation of sophisticated data analysis and how it was recently used by Mercedes to persuade a target market perceived to be intensely attracted to and capable of affording a unique (and expensive) “green” Mercedes. The result was a small and precisely targeted campaign that sold all of the available cars - quickly and profitably.

A quick and interesting read about the future of marketing, data, analytics and how it all can work together -Unlock the Possibilities Within Data

When we asked leading marketers about their roles and priorities during our recent CMO Agenda study, we heard a lot of commentary on the need to step up and drive major change inside their organizations. One CMO of a mid-sized CPG summed up these responses perfectly by describing his main priorities as “defining marketing as a verb rather than a noun” and “taking proactive leadership” that allows the brand and its main steward, the CMO, to be at the center of efforts.

Read more on the idea of how to make marketing a verb within your organization in our article “Marketing: Noun or Verb?” recently published on MediaPost’s Marketing Daily Commentary.