Mondy Beller, the VP of eCommerce for PacSun, spoke just before I did at the Responsys event about the integrated marketing programs PacSun is developing. Here are the lessons I learned from her:

• Your biggest priority should be to build a unified customer database. Beller gave some great examples of multichannel campaigns — running email or Facebook messages that match with customers' recent purchases or daily promotions that are running in store. None of these work without a single customer database that stores all of the customer information.
• Develop trust with your customers. Beller said PacSun is lucky because its young target audience is both technology savvy and wants to engage in an interactive relationship with PacSun. This makes it easier for PacSun than for other brands to gain customer permission, registrations, and behavioral data. But PacSun still works to nurture trust with its audience. It uses QR codes in stores to get shoppers to log products they browse or to register for mobile promotions. It will also be using iPads to help sales reps show fashions or register customers for email or Facebook while they are in the store.
• Use Facebook for research and relationship building. PacSun certainly uses Facebook to distribute promotions. But it also uses it to converse with customers. It reads and responds to comments fans post. It posts questions and conversation starters. And it listens to the community to test product ideas, pricing, and the buzz about current promotions. 

Would you classify your marketing organization as "highly accountable"? What I mean is, are you always able to accurately measure the true business value of your marketing efforts, and do your senior leaders trust the results? If you're like most marketers, the honest answer to that question is a resounding "no". Proving the business value of multichannel marketing is getting progressively harder—and more important—because:

• Traditional marketing measurement practices are rooted in stable but inflexible tactics that leave marketers ill-equipped to keep pace with the real time nature of channel digitization.
• CFOs wield ever-more influence over marketing budgets, which is driving your CMO to lean harder on you to measure business results with scientific rigor.
• Your customers are in control; uncertainty and unpredictability are the norm; and marketers that can't adapt appropriately are doomed to fail.

This is where you come in. I believe that Customer Intelligence professionals are remarkably well positioned to address these challenges head on, and improve marketing accountability across the enterprise. Why? Because you sit at the cross-section of unfettered access to mountains of customer data from a dizzying array of online and offline sources. "Big data" as the recent article data, data, everywhere in The Economist puts it, is big business. CI professionals are right in the middle of it all helping firms capture customer data, analyze it, measure business results, and act upon the findings.

Wondering if many of you, like I, have a love/hate relationship with a couple of brands?  You know:  love the product, hate the customer service; hate the website, like the store; like the experience or the prestige, but the product is so so…and so, so on. 

It’s the disconnection that grates on me.   My secret annoyance is with Apple; for which I’ve been a fan ever since my first IIci, bought at great expense two decades ago (gads!  and I admit it).  However, getting product hics and melted mother boards repaired have been real trials. Their customer service is certainly not as intuitive or as easy to use as their products.  My Apple ‘fandom’ is a bit…bittersweet. 

[Posted by David Cooperstein]

Twitter: @minicooper

This morning my first new document at Forrester went live since 2002. I remember the thrill of having a whole new set of things to talk about at business meetings when those reports came out. Having shed my history as a Telecom and Retail expert, I am now more firmly focused on the issues that face Marketing Leaders, as they try to marry traditional and interactive marketing efforts.

This first report is a quick study on how low consideration brands, like soap, snacks, and sinus meds can be relevant online with some case studies from brands -- like Suave and SunChips