Marketing Trend for Retailers, Digital Disruption, and Market and Sales

Q2 is officially underway! The birds are chirping, the snow is melting, and pipelines are full… Spring is definitely in the air. Rather than ask if you accomplished all your goals for Q1, I’ll ask you if you’re ready for the next three months? Since you definitely are, take a few minutes to start the quarter with some great insight in marketing and technology news…

Why Retail Marketers Need to Jump on the Real-Time Communication Trend – CMS Wire

Retailers have evolved from their brick and mortar past and into the digital era. Digital technology has been blamed for many a retailer’s demise, but that’s not really a fair sentiment. The demise has come from an unwillingness or inability to invest in digital technology. Retailers have the great advantage of being able to implement one of the most effective marketing strategies: real time. Read More

Why the Future of Retail is Not About the US – Rockstar CMO

This in tune article on an offbeat digital magazine site where the best and brightest in marketing can throw their proverbial luggage into the pool, Ted Rubin prophesizes that the future of retail, specifically ecommerce, lies in densely populated and increasingly wealthy Asian countries. Find out what Alibaba is doing which many others are sure to follow. Read More

AI in Marketing: 4 Crazy Myths You Need To Stop Believing – Entrepreneur

Artificial intelligence doesn’t sound very user friendly or even attainable for many companies, but this article debunks myths like those. AI, like any function in a software suite, is as useful as the people using it, so it isn’t the silver bullet you thought it was or your replacement as you might have feared. Read More

Digital Transformation, Disrupted – Gartner

While digital transformation entails positive tactics to transform businesses from analog to digital, digital disruption often implies that something negative is happening in an industry. Digital technology is evolving just as living species have been evolving for millions of years, only before our eyes. As a result, disruption and transformation should be considered a linked part of the process. Some companies will disrupt an industry and more will be disrupted. This article from analyst group Gartner, explains why disruption (or non-disruption) should be written into a digital strategy. Read More

Why there is ‘no excuse for misalignment’ between marketing and sales – Marketing Week

As the age-old mystery goes, ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg?’. It’s not uncommon for both marketing and sales to think of themselves as coming into being before the other. The reality is that neither would exist without the other, so it’s vital that marketing and sales are aligned, meet regularly, and think of themselves as a single team rather than as two siloed departments. Read More