Every now and then you read something along the lines of “more words will be published in the next 30 minutes than in the whole of human history up to the battle of Lepanto”. Whether this is literally true or not (and who could know?), there is certainly more data sloshing around than ever. This is partly because there are so many more transactions, partly because each transaction generates so much more detail, and partly because so much previously hidden data is now exposed on the Internet. The frustration for marketers is that they know this...
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
Thursday, 22 May 2008
For Behavior Detection, Simple Triggers May Do the Trick
Posted on 14:04 by Unknown
I was in the middle of writing last week’s post, on marketing systems that react to customers’ Web behavior, when I got a phone call from a friend at a marketing services agency who excitedly described his firm’s success with exactly such programs. Mostly this confirmed my belief that these programs are increasingly important. But it also prompted me to rethink the role of predictive modeling in these projects.To back up just a bit, behavioral targeting is a hot topic right now in the world of Web marketing. It usually refers to systems that use...
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Demand Generation Systems Shift Focus to Tracking Behavior
Posted on 12:26 by Unknown
Over the past few months, I’ve had conversations with “demand generation” software vendors including Eloqua, Vtrenz and Manticore, and been on the receiving end of a drip marketing stream from yet another (Moonray Marketing, lately renamed OfficeAutoPilot). What struck me was that each vendor stressed its ability to give a detailed view of prospects’ activities on the company Web site (pages visited, downloads requested, time spent, etc.) The (true) claim is that this information gives a significant insight into the prospect’s state of mind: the...
Thursday, 8 May 2008
Infobright Puts a Clever Twist on the Columnar Database
Posted on 18:25 by Unknown
It took me some time to form a clear picture of analytical database vendor Infobright, despite an excellent white paper that seems to have since vanished from their Web site. [Note: Per Susan Davis' comment below, they have since reloaded it here.] Infobright’s product, named BrightHouse, confused me because it is a SQL-compatible, columnar database, which makes it sound similar to systems like Vertica and ParAccel (click here for my ParAccel entry).But it turns out there is a critical difference: while those other products rely on massively parallel...
Friday, 2 May 2008
Trust Me: Buyers Worry Too Much About Software Costs
Posted on 08:49 by Unknown
I ranted a bit the other week about buyers who focus too much on software license fees and not enough on differences in productivity. The key to that argument is that software costs are a relatively small portion of companies’ total investment in a business intelligence system. This is self-evident to me, based on personal experience, and seems fairly widely accepted by others in the field. But it’s always nice to have hard numbers to cite as proof.In search of that, I poked around a bit and found several references to a 2007 study from AMR Research...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
