Have you accepted the CORE mission yet? If you are an interactive marketer, our document about CORE provides you with a road map for leading change in your organization. But if you would rather see me talk about it, check out my speech from the Marketing Forum.

In my speech, in addition to introducing the CORE mission, I outlined how FedEx is acheiving its CORE mission. One person, Dennis Shirokov, created a comprehensive business case for CORE that ended up on the desk of the CEO. Now, Dennis has the cash and the directive to make sweeping changes that will enable customized interactions, optimized execution, and responsive engagement. Dennis knew that O was the foundation for C and R, which is why he focused his business case on investments in technology in analytics that would drive more efficiency and cross-channel synergy.

In a few weeks, my co-author, Shar VanBoskirk, will be publishing the results from the CORE survey attendees took at the forum. This research will be published in a maturity model framework that will provide interactive marketers benchmarks and clear next steps so that you can focus your business case just like Dennis. Stay tuned!

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

In a recent survey of over 2100 IT professionals who buy or recommend telecom and networking solutions, we found buyers turn to peers and colleagues first, followed by vendor, industry trade, or professional Web sites, to inform their purchase decisions. In fact, 88% said Web sites were important in helping them decide what to buy. However, many tech buyers visit vendor Web sites many times to learn about and compare products, yet few register or leave evidence of their activity.

[Posted by Julie Katz]

Omniture acquires yet another solution to complement a growing application set for interactive marketers. Last week Omniture announced that it was acquiring Offermatica. I can’t say that I am surprised by the announcement. Omniture had signaled its intent to aggressively pursue its vision of an integrated solution for online marketing with its acquisitions of Touch Clarity and the announcements of SearchCenter and the Genesis platform in the last year. At that time we thought it was a good idea but Omniture needed to – 1)integrate multiple acquisitions 2) handle a large and growing network of partners and 3) learn to compete in new markets. While these imperatives remain true today, two additional themes become particularly relevant. The need to: 1) harmonize the platform around one single data collection and optimization engine and 2) convince the partner network that they intend to collaborate on integrating their tools. The second theme is particularly challenging – What signals is Omniture sending its burgeoning partner network when it cherry picks point solutions like Offermatica?