Using Trade Shows, Conferences, and Other Meetings to Create Profitable and Long-Lasting Client Relationships

It is important for technology vendors and solutions providers to remember that every single customer touch point presents a valuable opportunity to create affinity. And, events are no exception. By organizing your presence at trade shows, conferences, and other types of face-to-face gatherings with the customer in mind, your organization can leverage your investment in events to build affinity. This, in turn, will lead to the kind of strong, long-lasting relationships that result in optimumclient satisfaction and retention, as well as sustained profitability and growth. Download the complete CMP white paper "Events: Building The Bridge To Customer Affinity.

Chief Marketing Officer Council Encourages Adding Customer Affinity Index To The Mix

Customer centric metrics are taking center stage this year as b-to-b marketers pursue new ways to measure customer engagement, satisfaction and, ultimately, loyalty to a brand.

Measuring customer satisfaction is not a new idea, but as technology puts more control in the hands of users, marketers are seeking out the optimal ways to measure how successful they are with their marketing messages, products and services.

Marketers are divided on how best to achieve this. Some are using an array of metrics and other processes to come up with a view of how they're doing with customers, while others are trying to simplify the process by using a single metric, such as the Net Promoter Score.

The NPS, developed by loyalty expert Fred Reichheld, is a score of customer loyalty based on a single question: "How likely are you to recommend our company to colleagues?"

Marketing organizations are also coming up with new metrics to gauge the customer experience.

Last month [December 2007], the Chief Marketing Officer Council released a study on customer measurement... Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Register to download the free Executive Summary or purchase the full report from the CMO Council's Customer Affinity Website.

[Note: CMP was an underwriter for this CMO Council study.]

The customer is very much on the minds of leading marketing executives these days. Across numerous research initiatives undertaken by the CMO Council, marketers collectively indicate they are spending more time and resources than ever before on understanding and engaging with their customers, including increased investments in customer communities, CRM systems and processes, and customer intelligence and analytics. The CMO Council has been a champion of these efforts, advocating a more disciplined, measurable and integrated approach to marketing, anchored by greater knowledge and more meaningful interaction with customers and customer markets. Now we believe it is time for a new measure of marketing performance – called customer affinity – that looks beyond old brand metrics to support marketing in its critical role of building customer-centric businesses. Register to download the free Executive Summary or purchase the full report from the CMO Council's Customer Affinity Website.

[Note: CMP was an underwriter for this CMO Council study.]

The focus of IT decision-makers next year will gradually shift to software rollouts and virtualization, among other areas, from the current challenges of security, business continuity and compliance, according to a new study by technology publisher CMP.

The study, “Media Engagement & Activation,” is based on Web interviews conducted during August and September with 800 business technology executives. It was designed to provide a deeper understanding of which emerging media are being used by decision-makers and what they are doing as a result of engaging with the various media sources. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline. For more information on this research, email Scott Vaughan.

With audience engagement and activation essential topics for B2B technology marketers, CMP presents the study "Media Engagement & Activation." This in-depth study of nearly 1000 Business Technology decision makers (CIOs, IT Managers and Corporate and LOB Management) will help senior marketing, marketing program and media professionals:

• Gain a deeper understanding of where, when, and why IT and corporate professionals engage with various types of content and media sources
• Build an "engagement blueprint" that maps your message and marketing plan by Corp and IT pros' consumption of specific technology information -- Security, Infrastructure & Networking Hardware, Software Infrastructure, Business Applications Software, Mobile & Wireless, and Business & IT Services
• Understand usage and the roles Websites, magazines, events, search, virtual learning tools, and user controlled platforms such as blogs, wikis and RSS, and the path business technology decision makers take as they move through their personal information journey.

View this webcast featuring Scott Vaughan, VP of Marketing for InformationWeek & the TechWeb Network; Dan Yetso, Director, Global Branding & Advertising, VeriSign; and Scott Anderson, Vice President, Customer Communications Technology Solutions Group, Hewlett Packard for an engaging and insightful look behind the numbers. Moderated by Ellis Booker, Editor, BtoB Magazine and Media Business. View the webcast archive....

This webcast presents only a summary of the available research. For complete details, email Scott Vaughan.

Rapid transformation marks CIOs' careers and their impact on companies, according to InformationWeek's 2007 Defining the CIO research survey of 575 senior business and technology professionals. CIOs are in overdrive and are finally earning recognition as indispensable business visionaries. Their role in shaping business strategy marks a notable shift in responsibilities that's literally redefining what a CIO is and counters the critics who question the value of IT.

For complete details on this 6th annual research survey, email Scott Vaughan.