We’re just weeks away from Forrester’s Marketing Forum 2011 in San Francisco, and the whole Forrester organization is gearing up for a productive, insight-filled, (dare I say, “fun”?!?) event.

For my part, I’m excited to be leading the charge on the Interactive Marketers’ track, where we’ll dig deeper into the key concepts of CORE (Adapting Your Marketing Organization for the Next Digital Decade), a brand new piece of research that my colleagues Emily Riley and Chris Stutzman will unveil in their keynote presentation on April 5^th.

To bring CORE to life for Interactive Marketing professionals, we’re devoting each of our four track sessions to the four pillars of CORE:

• Customize marketing experiences: Nate Elliot will dig into ways in which marketers can strategically leverage interactive tools to tailor a brand for multiple audiences. Nate will address questions such as:
  • How tailored can — and should — online brand advertising be, and how can marketers identify the best audiences to target in this way?
  • Which marketers and vendors are leading the way in customized online branding — and what can the industry learn from them?
• Optimize decisions and processes: I’m excited to spend some time giving marketers practical advice on how to kick their display remarketing program into high gear to achieve maximum return. To really take things to the next level, marketers need to expand the scope of their remarketing program by leveraging additional assets (like email), carefully selecting a vendor based on their specific needs and challenges, and adhering to a number of best practices (like frequency management). All will be covered in this session.
• Respond to consumers: Melissa Parrish will give a robust primer on social management tools – including social publishing platforms, social point solutions, and community platforms — and how marketers can leverage them to increase brand responsiveness. She’ll also spend time discussing Forrester’s recent community platforms Wave — with an explanation of the key inputs and some detail on findings.
• Empower staff and customers: Michael Greene will close out the track with a conversation with some successful change agents within marketing organizations. He’ll explore questions including:
  • How can the support of senior management be acquired and kept throughout the change process?
  • What are the professional risks of being a change agent, and how can they be mitigated?

We’ll also be on hand for one on one conversations, so if you’re not able to catch one or more of our track sessions and want to catch up, don’t hesitate to let me know.

Hope to see you in San Francisco!

Joanna