This is my first official blog post as a Forrester analyst, and I’m extremely excited to be a part of the community. So who am I? Before joining Forrester, I was an interactive marketer, a “traditional” marketer, and also a strategy and analytics consultant on the service provider side. Most recently, I served as director of relationship marketing at the National Basketball Association, where I focused on acquiring, engaging, and monetizing fan relationships through digital channels.

My background centers mostly on interactive marketing and CRM/database marketing, and my research will concentrate on that intersection. Currently, I’m readying reports on innovations in email marketing and developing interactive marketing dashboards. Looking ahead, my research will cover topics such as identifying and targeting influencers, the future of online messaging, converting social media followers into customers, and calculating the value of digital marketing assets.

To help jumpstart new research about data collection best practices for interactive marketers, I’m soliciting feedback through two opportunities:

1. Take this quick 8-question survey about your data collection practices. We’ll share the results with you.
2. Join us for Tuesday’s tweet jam to talk about the challenges faced when collecting data for interactive marketing programs.

Apple has been storing our location. (See article) Sounds bad, but really, is it? My colleague Joe Stanhope forwarded the article to me with the line, “kinda scary.” Is it? Our credit cards track where we are and what we spend. The carriers know where we are all the time — they aren’t storing the information as far as we know, but they could be. Our cars can be tracked. We buy plane tickets and make flight reservations online. What’s a bit different is that many different entities have our information, but not necessarily one.

Your phone will know everything about you going forward. My phone already knows where I go (ok, and Apple is recording), who I call, what sports teams I follow, what games I play, where I bank, how often I visit Starbucks, where I shop, what books I’m reading (Kindle), what music I listen to . . . and the list goes on. What else is my phone going to know about me? It’s going to know:

• What I eat because I want help tracking calories
• How often I run because I track my workouts
• What I watch on TV because my phone is my remote control
• Who I fly . . . because I use mobile boarding passes
• How healthy I am b/c it will track my cholesterol
• Who my friends are from phone, texting, and Facebook
• Where I’m eating b/c it tracks my Yelp searches and OpenTable bookings
• Whether I’m traveling on foot or by car b/c it tracks my speed
• How fast I drive . . .

In the last few months, we've talked a lot about how quickly the mobile marketing space is moving — and with nearly 75% of marketers telling us they're implementing or planning to implement mobile campaigns in the next year, we're not expecting the pace to slow any time soon.

Since we've just switched over to our 2011 calendars, now is the time to make some predictions about what that mobile marketing growth is really going to look like. In our new report, we take a look at:

• The potential for marketer-branded application fatigue. (Warning: Those allergic to puns may want to tread lightly on this section.)
• Emphasis on interactive fundamentals — like display and search — for the mobile marketer.
• The carving out of mobile-specific expertise both within and independent of interactive teams.
• Innovation on the marketing potential of location-based services.

Forrester clients can read the full report here. Whether you're a client or not, I invite you to share your own mobile marketing predictions in the comments below. What do you think will happen in the world of mobile marketing this year?

One of the reasons marketing on social networks is so popular is that the consumers a brand can reach are largely active, vocal and willing to connect -- with each other and with their favorite brands.  But did you know that 22% of US online adults with cellphones access their social networks via mobile at least monthly?   In my new report, I explore research that shows that these particular social networking users are even more active, vocal and willing to connect than the general population.

Consumers who access social networks via mobile over-index on every rung of the Social Technographics® ladder, except for inactives.  More interesting?  Mobile social users have specific, focused intentions that differ from desktop mobile users:  They're interested in immediacy, entertainment, and in knowing which of their friends and favorite places are physically nearby. 

Keeping in mind the specific interests of these extremely socially active consumers, marketers can optimize their already-existing social campaigns to make them even more successful for mobile users.  For recommendations on how to optimize your own campaigns with little additional effort or cost, check out the full report.

Have you already optimized your social messaging for mobile users?  If so, I'd love to hear what you changed and what the results were.  Head to the comments section to share your case studies!