Since Forrester last published a Wave of Database Marketing Service Providers (MSPs), the landscape and the market have changed significantly. How?

• Consolidation of major players. For example 2 of the 12 vendors in our 2007 Wave were acquired by other Wave vendors (Acxiom acquired ChoicePoint's database business and more recently Epsilon picked up Equifax's direct marketing division which included it's data and database offerings).
• Market entry from non-traditional MSPs. We have seen further consolidation from outside the traditional database players. e-Dialog, an email service provider recently acquired MBS Insight, and in the UK, TV service provider Sky absorbed Experian's UK database business.
• Changes in  how marketers communicate with consumers. Perhaps the biggest change is how database marketing service providers have evolved beyond managing repositories for direct mail to performing as customer intelligence hubs - becoming a strategic asset as a single source of customer knowledge. These customer intelligence hubs, enable marketers to communicate with their customers and prospects not only in traditional direct channels, but across media including digital, mobile, social, and, on the horizon, addressable TV. And, as consumers increasingly control how and when companies communicate with them, marketers must leverage their customer intelligence across inbound, and not just outbound channels.

Lance Armstrong is one of the most recognized athletes on the planet. He’s a cancer survivor and the only person to have ever won 7 Tours de France. But, have you ever heard of Chechu Rubiera? He’s a pretty accomplished professional bike rider too. He has won stages of the Giro d’Italia and team stages in the Tour de France. He has finished in the top 10 in both the Giro and the Vuelta a Espana.

But something else you may not know about Rubiera is that he was on Lance Armstrong’s team when Armstrong won 5 of his 7 Tours. Cycling is an odd sport. I’m an addict. I can watch several hours of guys on bikes riding up and down mountains. Maybe cycling fans are odd too… But what’s amazing and I think unique about cycling is that although one guy gets a victory – wins a stage or a grueling three week race - they can’t do it on their own. Their team is crucial to their victory. The team shields them from the wind, paces them up the hills, protects them from the hustle and bustle within the peloton, fetches food and water, and generally buries themselves in the hope that the team leader can get the win.

What does this have to do with Customer Intelligence? Not much, actually. This post is personal.

Yesterday, I completed my first Forrester Forum Keynote at our Marketing Forum in Los Angeles. That was about Customer Intelligence. The feedback has been amazing – and extremely humbling. I’ve been overwhelmed by the emails, text messages, and tweets complimenting the speech. To all of you that commented, Thank You! I’m delighted to have been able to spend time educating so many people about the role of Customer Intelligence, and how it can make marketing and businesses more successful.

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.

Happy New Year!  Okay, a bit late on that. However, I have some exciting news. I’m thrilled to announce the newest addition to Forrester’s Customer Intelligence (CI) team—Senior Analyst, Joe Stanhope. Joe starts on January 25, and he will be our go-to analyst for site optimization strategy, which includes coverage of Web analytics as well as online testing and targeting platforms.