Once again, Rosetta is the Platinum Sponsor at the IBM Global Smarter Commerce Summit kicking off on May 21^st, and ending on the 23^rd.  What does that really mean? John Davidson of IBM said it best, “We are stronger as a result of doing work collaboratively with partners like Rosetta.”  The Rosetta and IBM partnership fuels the future of commerce by enabling us to deliver commerce solutions on a global basis.

Marketers expect more results from their marketing automation and commerce delivery solutions. IT teams often struggle with complicated implementations of multiple products that claim “out of the box integrations.” Marketers are searching for truly integrated solutions, which Smarter Commerce provides.

The combination of IBM’s vision and innovation is transforming the day-to-day lives of consumers in a connected world. Explore the future of global commerce at the IBM Global Smarter Commerce Summit, which includes 70+ marketing sessions.

Some recommended sessions:

• Implementing Search Drive Solutions with Adam Brown
• Global E-Commerce Platforms with Mark Eckman and Steve Schwarz
• Industry analysis and predictions from Forrester Research, Web Analytics Demystified, and other experts
• Best practice presentations from well-known IBM customers such as Cisco, Delta Air Lines, and Sears
• Findings from the new IBM research on the state of marketing, merchandizing, and more

I encourage you to stop by the only #IBMSCGS Platinum Sponsor’s booth this year to learn more about our IBM Partnership and award winning Smarter Commerce solutions, including ecommerce and EMM. Discover how Rosetta and IBM have executed a scalable, enterprise-wide system across five brands in multiple countries.

I didn’t think the Rosetta marketing engine could top our branded global expansion Lego airplane from last year, but you will not want to miss our top secret giveaway.  Stop by our booth, G-1, to claim yours. We look forward to another successful Summit of great conversations and innovative discoveries.

Would you like to schedule a meet-and-greet with us at Smarter Commerce? Connect with me on Twitter @MikeBrunst or send me an email (mike.brunst@rosetta.com) with any questions or comments.

Big data provides digital marketers with the ability to target customers—at key moments during their personal-decision journey—with tailored experiences that have been proven, through innumerable transactions, to better engage and convert.  But is that enough to be relevant?

A brand that understands the customer’s mindset as he bounces along his unique journey from awareness to advocacy has the power to be contextually relevant. But does that brand have what it takes to be meaningfully relevant—and drive real brand engagement?

To create truly meaningful relevance to a consumer and drive engagement in the current digital environment, your brand needs to connect with what a customer is doing and why that uniquely motivates him. Brands must develop the ability to link customer motivation with customer behavior, and use that link to create a clear and actionable personality profile. This is the secret to developing a customer  experience that goes beyond context and creates a lasting engagement over an entire customer lifecycle.

Rosetta’s Personality^®-based Segmentation tool was developed to uncover and capitalize on that combination of motivation and behavior. We have performed more than 500 segmentations and have served 1 out of every 5 companies ranked in the Fortune 500. Our consulting teams are expert in using deep customer insight and behavioral data to uncover the fact-based foundational consumer personalities that populate your market, and this knowledge will allow your brand to (A) execute measurably superior targeting of higher-priority consumers and (B) tailor messaging and experiences to more deeply engage them. As a result, we have seen repeated examples of double-digit lifts to engagement and conversion across industries. When these personality-based segment strategies are activated with the right creative and technology to support a customer’s engagement from awareness to advocacy, your brand is executing Personalized Lifecycle Management. This will lead to meaningful relevance, marketing efficiency, and increased sales.

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Would you like to discuss more about our Personality^®-based Segmentation tool? Contact Patrick McDaniel (patrick.mcdaniel@rosetta.com) with any questions or comments.

Name:
MaryBeth Okorn

Team/Vertical/Spa:
Paid, Owned & Earned Media

Favorite person(s)/organization(s) to follow on Twitter?
@PositivelyCleve @Mashable @Marketingland @DowntownCLE (Check out some of my followers @mbokorn216)

How long have you been at Rosetta?
10 months

Where did you grow up?
Born and raised on the east side of Cleveland.

What’s your educational background? Favorite college memory?
In May of 2012, I graduated from the University of Dayton with a degree in Business Marketing and a minor in Communications. My fondest memories at UD include hanging on friends’ porches, St. Patrick’s Day festivities, and embracing the welcoming community within the student neighborhood.

What inspired you to enter the world of Marketing?
I switched my area of study freshman year of college when I realized the wealth of knowledge and skills that can be gained through Marketing and applied in any business-related career. Marketing not only perfectly aligns with my personality and goals, but has also opened an abundance of opportunities for my career.

What would be your advice for a College Grad entering the Marketing field?
Don’t pass up the opportunity to try something new, ask questions, set goals, build as many bridges as you can (without burning them), and gain experience early and often.

What does a typical day look like for you at Rosetta?
Within the POEM spa, I’ve taken on the role of a marketing generalist for clients within the financial and retail vertical. As a marketing generalist, I have invested my efforts in becoming an expert in paid and organic search, as well as in being cross-trained in online display. Day-to-day tasks include campaign management, creating client deliverables, and generating overarching strategies for our clients.

What has been your most memorable experience at Rosetta (so far)?
During my time at Rosetta, I’ve met the most diverse and integrated group of talented people that enjoy what they do. My most memorable experiences with the agency include practice-meeting happy hours, where we’re able to celebrate the successes and reflect on the failures from the previous quarter.

What does the One Rosetta model mean to you?
The aspect of the One Rosetta model that most resonates with me is the core list of values our agency holds and consistently conveys. These beliefs range from collaboration to trust, laughter to discovery. They are what define our behavior and culture.

How do you incorporate this model into your day-to-day at Rosetta?
Rosetta’s mission is to build trusted relationships that drive measurable business impact. To incorporate this mission and the overall meaning behind the One Rosetta model, I strive to align Rosetta’s values with my everyday work. By building both internal and external relationships, the opportunity to collaborate and blend our ideas enables a transformation in the unique services we provide.

MaryBeth is one of the first employees to be included as a part of our ongoing employee spotlight feature on Facebook, The Dashboard. As part of our One Rosetta initiatives, we will be choosing participants for The Dashboard from each of Rosetta’s nine locations every month. For more information on this and on ways to nominate someone for The Dashboard, please email Mindi Rosser (Mindi.Rosser@rosetta.com) or Lauren Welch (lauren.welch@rosetta.com)

INITIATE mobile strategies by leveraging various content platforms based on the consumer, context and constraints.

Mobile cannot be an afterthought. It is a critical touch point for consumers and business organizations, and brands must agree on the importance and urgency of connected devices. Initiation of a mobile strategy should always begin with thinking about the basics: consumers, context and constraints.

Consumers – Who are your customers and who are you trying to reach?

Context – What is the use case in which the target will be engaging with the experience?

Constraints – What are the technical barriers and what mobile content platforms will be leveraged?

Mobile Web, mobile applications, SMS/MMS, NFC, campaigns, mobile coupons and geo-location are all very different and accomplish varied objectives within a mobile ecosystem. It is essential for brands to understand when and how to use each tactic. To create more value through mobile, brands must prioritize mobile, beginning with increasing their mobile budget in 2013.

ACCELERATE by evolving strategies based on consumer need and integrating them across the customer lifecycle.

Once brands have initiated activity within the mobile space, they must evolve their strategy alongside their customers to fully take advantage of mobile’s unique competencies,. To become market leaders within the mobile space, brands must identify key learnings from previous efforts and stay current with evolving consumer use cases.

The mobile medium is a powerful instrument for delivering contextually relevant experiences for consumers. Brands who successfully tackle today’s mobile variables will provide consumers with experiences that are unique, highly relevant and deeply personal.

Additionally, by identifying specific use cases within the customer journey, brands can integrate mobile touchpoints across the purchase cycle through a multiscreen strategy. Brands can leverage mobile to achieve meaningful engagement to directly influence the customer, whether at home, in-store or on-the-go.

INNOVATE to keep up with the pace of change and maintain market leadership.

As the mobile industry continues to develop, brands should focus on innovation and incremental improvement to stay ahead of competitors. Brands should invest in test-and-learn opportunities that result in an agile, iterative and emergent development process. By deploying market-first micro-strategies, brands are led to big insights and meaningful growth, as opposed to large-scale executions with a traditional approach.

Brands should also build a mobile center of excellence to govern and transfer knowledge to infuse best practices and cutting edge strategies across their organizations to achieve meaningful innovation.

Rosetta’s connected devices team measures client growth and plots mobile maturity across the Initiate, Accelerate, Innovate spectrum. This method enables the team to implement mobile strategy based on client readiness as well as current level of consumer engagement. Growth is visibly measured as a brand demonstrates incremental improvement, moving from stage to stage across the spectrum.

Would you like to discuss this mobile strategy with Esha? Contact Esha via email at Esha.Shah@Rosetta.com or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Millennials are weird. We are Urban Dictionary trolls, meme machines, and lovers of corgis. If a visual activity feed of our brains was on display, a scrolling marquee of hashtag punch lines, Nigel Thornberry GIFs and selfies would be speeding by faster than you can say ERMAHGERD.

Often we are reprimanded for being as addicted to our smart phones as Gary Busey is to showing off his large teeth. And while some old-school boomers are snubbing us for ignoring their insights on Model T cars or whatever, we’re busy curating and sharing bits of information that are culturally relevant, whether they’re humorous, political or just plain cray (Urban Dictionary translation: crazy).

Take it from Kmart

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Whoa! Kmart? The I-thought-it-went-out-of-business-in-2002 stepchild of hip-and-trendy Target? Yes, Kmart sent LOLZ from left field, and it’s because of a potty-mouth rhyme. While racy humor isn’t the secret to any Millennial campaign, it sure tickles our funny bone. Everyone loves the funniest guy at the party, right? I’ve already yelled “I JUST SHIPPED MY PANTS” obnoxiously one too many times. Brands should note the virality of campaigns like this and explore avenues for their next Millennial-targeted campaign. Humor as a marketing tool, when used properly, triggers memorability and likeability.

Share Everything

Millennials are share freaks. We’re constantly sharing to Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and Reddit from our mobile devices and computers. Because of that availability, our time spent on our devices is bumping up faster than Justin Bieber’s Klout score. An article published by Nielsen supports this assertion, reporting that young adults between the ages of 18-24 have increased their mobile and Internet video consumption over the past year. Yes, even science proves we’re officially addicted to the Web. But despite how this skews your perception of our daily lives, not all of us are pale Internet vampire goblins who hunch in dark corners watching YouTube all day. Not…all of us.

And when it comes to gamification, our numbers are promising. According to one survey discussed in USA Today, over half of the Millennial pool said they would share personal information if they received something in return. Young people these days will give anything away for a free Beyoncé MP3 download (well, I would). With hesitance, I admit it: we’re that easy.

Videos like “Ship My Pants” are fun to share because it makes us laugh. It also uses a simple hashtag (#shipmypants) slipped in at the end of the video for easy circulation. An opportunity has sprung from this emerging social-meets-technology-vortex to create Millennial-style campaigns (hint: cat memes): sneak in an offer in exchange for valuable customer information, and let the Millennials market for you.

Write Clever Copy

We love something smart, witty and edgy. Brands like Old Spice capitalized on this a few years back with their shrewd commercials, badgering men who wear lady-scented body wash. After Old Spice’s triumphant success we exhibited the rise in popularity of copy-centered campaigns like Dos Equis’s “The Most Interesting Man in the World” and Dollar Shave Club’s promo video. All of these brands put thought into how they were going to use humor to target their audience. While these manly brands cashed in on chest hair and mustaches, Kmart cast a wide, family-centered net. Regardless of the audience, humor is the common denominator.

Bottom Line: Be Edgy.

Campaigns like “Ship My Pants” blur the line between risqué and clever, which earns a blue ribbon for Millennial audiences. Sure, some reviewers are calling it a sophomoric and recycled joke, but Millennials are snort-laughing, hashtagging, and building brand awareness without thinking twice. Who knows, maybe Millennials will start shipping their pants. Marketers should digest these facts and observe, adjust and cater their campaigns to our oddball interests.

Want to chat about marketing to Millennials with Kelly? Connect with Kelly Cooper on LinkedIn, follow her on Twitter @kellyccooper or send her an email at kelly.cooper@rosetta.com.

I recently had the pleasure of attending a Silicon Valley marketing innovation event called “EVOKE.” During this meeting, we had a facilitated session on a strategy technique called “backcasting.” In this exercise, we were asked to envision our lives and environment in the future and then rewind to look at the things we had learned on our journey to this future state. The goal was to think about key things we observed in marketing innovation as we looked back over the last 10 years, from a position of being in the future.

Information today is already becoming ubiquitous and personalized. Innovations like Google glasses, technologies enabling contextual information from connected devices, cars that pilot and configure themselves for the occupant or occupants, and vehicle heads-up displays are all changing the way we behave and, I believe, will dictate the future direction of marketing.

As I look back from my hypothetical future state:

1. Convenience is a given.

The race for convenience takes on new dimensions. Augmented reality offsets the need to try things on at stores. More and more manufacturers sell directly to consumers, once their brands are established and brick and mortar retailers have disappeared. Drop shipments happen within 12 hours in major urban markets and 24 hours in more rural settings. There are still small boutiques in restaurant enclaves, but the big merchants are gone. What does all of this mean for digital marketers?  Digital combined with connected devices will turn marketing into analytical gymnastics <Tweet This> to the point where everything is driven by analytics and science.

2. We become lifelong learners.

There was a time when we learned information by either searching for it or going to a destination to learn, either physically or online. “Inline” learning begins to take hold in 2020. Information is available contextually, either as we engage in activity in our lives or via augmented reality. Opportunities to learn come to us seamlessly through our glasses, our heads-up displays in our cars, as we are performing a task, or when we want to learn about the Roman Empire in augmented reality. What did I learn as a marketer as these new technologies took hold? Relevance is the new capital of commerce. The information that makes this possible is the currency of the market.

3. Loyalty is experiential.

Points, recognition and rewards are perceived as manipulative as people come to value relevant and high-value experiences over all else. In the absence of this, they immediately go elsewhere. Tolerance for irrelevant information virtually disappears. Marketers and businesses learn to keep it simple, on target, and contextually relevant, or they will fall to the wayside. At odds with this will be the requirement to develop more granularly relevant messaging and creative.

4. Information is ubiquitous.

There was a time that search was king. Search shifted for a while to contextual search. But as personal information takes hold, it’s no longer necessary to search. Information we need is anticipated and provided based upon our preferences, behaviors and needs. Companies make offers and present opportunities by seamlessly integrating into the stream of information that is presented to us ubiquitously.

5. We get help when we need it.

Predictive models detect frustration or sense that someone is not getting the most from a product or service. Rather than waiting for a customer to abandon a product/service or get frustrated, help comes automatically to assist the customer as they are using the product or service. No one goes to a help site, support site, or needs to call someone at a call center. All this comes to the user from automated tools. This level of care becomes a standard. As people want more from a product or service, this becomes the basis for upsell and, in some cases, cross-sell.

To summarize, contextual relevance will become increasingly critical in the future. In this state, digital marketers will need to understand and leverage personal insights and customer data , as well as marketing automation and predictive models to dovetail ubiquitous information seamlessly into life’s experiences. While there will still be a need to develop compelling creative experiences, the constraints on how these experiences are deployed will depend heavily on detailed personal data and analytics. The days of Mad Men advertising and brand building will give way to a new type of individually relevant content experience.

Have comments or questions? Contact Mike Norris (Mike.Norris@Rosetta.com) to discuss backcasting and other take-aways from the last Evoke meeting.

This year’s Pubcon was held in New Orleans for the second time since 2005. Pubcon is a combination of search and social media training and holds a reputation for cutting-edge content. The opening keynote embraced that reputation with strategic insights from the Obama Campaign’s former CTO and Chief Integration and Innovation Officer, Michael Slaby.

Here are five take-away lessons from Slaby’s keynote.

1. Integrate data and content.

His ability to integrate technology, content, social and community has earned Slaby such accolades as Chicago’s prestigious 40 Under 40 List, as well as a seat at the table with Eric Schmidt’s venture capital fund, TomorrowVentures. TomorrowVentures helps companies and start-ups with their community and organizational strategies.

His lofty goal of creating a high-tech, data-driven approach integrated with a strong social and content strategy was a “force multiplier” in helping Obama win the 2012 election. One of his bigger challenges from a data perspective was creating infrastructure that allowed the campaigns’ databases to talk to each other. His data integration project (called Narwhal) was the foundation for the campaign’s strength. Narwhal was the vehicle to make the campaign more efficient and more engaged.

2. Identify your audience.

Slaby’s perspective on winning a Presidential campaign aligns very closely with winning a marketing campaign. The ability to identify an audience, tell the stories that matter most to that audience and win hearts and minds with messaging is tantamount to success. Audience identification and segmentation should occur before any content strategy is developed.

3. Create culture from the top down.

Slaby warns that fragmentation results when strategy is created from the bottom up. Building company culture from the top down ensures that philosophy, messaging and processes are consistent and coherent. Culture innovation is prized as much as a culture of cutting-edge technology.

Rosetta embraces a similar approach to customer engagement.

4. Do your research.

His message to other innovators is to focus on customers. For Slaby, this focus on customers entailed aligning voter sentiment and keywords “polling”, “contribution”, “healthcare”, or “education” gathered via email, phone and website to the right staffer. The dashboard allowed staffers to identify trends by state or city. Leveraging location and personalization research allowed for deeply focused messaging.

5. You cannot choose the channel in which your target consumes content.

In less than 2 years, re-election efforts were fortified by a technical, data-driven solution that helped them identify their target. The tool, though proprietary, was created with proven technology. Then they engaged their target by microtargeting voters based on social and text sentiment to drive stronger, more relevant engagement for the Obama team. By sharing relevant content to the right audience at the right time, they deepened engagement with voters.

The overarching goal of market share acquisition is best achieved by a communications and marketing strategy that utilizes multiple channels and realizes that brands cannot choose the channel where their target audience consumes content. That reality is constant, whether the goal is for votes or for sales.

Our mission at Rosetta is to be a catalyst for growth, driving business impact by translating deep consumer insights into personally relevant brand experiences across touch points over time. Our trademarked Personality-based segmentation helps us get the right message to the right people at the right time.

Want to discuss these customer engagement take-aways from Pubcon? Contact Lisa via email at Lisa.Williams@Rosetta.com, follow her on Twitter @SEOPollyanna or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Twitter announced the availability of keyword targeting in its feeds, which will increase the advertiser’s ability to identify and market to users. This new targeting capability focuses on understanding user intent on Twitter and serves ads that are based on specific keywords within their tweets. Keyword targeting is anticipated to have a profound impact on marketers, as it offers an opportunity to increase consideration and awareness almost immediately after a tweet is posted. Twitter will be the first social media platform to leverage this type of targeting.

Twitter expects that the user experience will improve with the keyword targeting feature due to the increased relevancy it provides. Keyword targeting is driven by both context and intention. Every tweet sends real-time signals that create an opportunity to market to consumers in the most relevant way at a specific moment. During this critical moment, advertisers are able to better understand the user’s intention.

Advertisers who have historically used Promoted Tweets on the basis of geography, interests, and/or gender now have a new option. With the intent to improve the overall user experience on Twitter, advertisers need to consider keyword targeting within their Promoted Tweet strategy. Early results from Twitter show that the new targeting feature sees a much higher engagement rate than other forms of targeting options.

The new targeting option shares many similarities with search advertising, in which keywords trigger highly specific and relevant ads. This keyword targeting option has proven to be successful in popular search engines, and it is unknown how this will translate to the social space. Historically, social media has been a vehicle for conversation and brand-awareness drivers, as opposed to conversion. Marketers should implement keyword-level targeting as a way to capture users during a period of time in which they express interest in a product or service.

Advertisers should also consider the potential impact to the cost of Promoted Tweets. The new, more enhanced level of targeting could come at a higher price to advertisers. Competition in the space can be expected to increase as more advertisers begin testing this new targeting option. In order to justify these additional costs, advertisers should closely monitor key performance indicators, looking at the incremental spend and effort of the new tactic versus that of historical tactics.

Optimizations can be made on the basis of two key sources: keyword-level reporting and real-time consumer responses. The platform provides reach and engagement metrics at the keyword level that can be used to refine strategy and targeting. Consumer responses can be used to gauge overall interest and engagement on a specific topic.

This new targeting option gives marketers the opportunity to reach a target audience in a more granular manner, on the basis of keywords. It is not a tactic that should be used by itself, but rather in conjunction with current Twitter strategies.

The Digital Marketing landscape is never in short supply of new buzzwords and proclaimed game-changers. Over the past few years B2B marketers have seen more than their fair share of these, particularly for a landscape that has traditionally been satisfied to stay the course while the B2C space blazed new paths. But the landscape has changed. B2B marketers are leveraging customer insights, developing customer journeys, launching content marketing programs and implementing marketing automation platforms. Through these tactics they are pursuing real-time, one-on-one experiences and developing a 360° view of the customer. B2B Marketers must adapt to be successful in this evolving space as the expectations of customers and leadership have increased. How is this done? You guessed it. Another game changer:  Lead to Revenue Management (L2RM).

Of all the new marketing must-haves, I like L2RM the best. It cuts to the chase. We are trying to grow revenue, and in our B2B world we need leads—good leads, and lots of them— that turn into loyal, profitable customers. It also puts our older, established tactics into perspective. Will they help generate more leads or be more effective at converting leads into revenue? If so, they have a role in an organization’s L2RM programs. If not, why bother? But L2RM is not just a concept by which marketers can qualify potential marketing programs. It is a tool to quantify the results of those programs and use those learnings, in many cases, to change course. <Tweet This> The real challenge is taking those next steps. Because that same visibility—that direct tie between marketing programs and revenue that L2RM provides—shines a bright light on how well marketing initiatives are doing, good or bad. As quickly as L2RM unlocks new budgets for marketing programs that are driving growth, it can bring an end to programs that are not contributing to the bottom line. Companies must be ready to act, and quickly.

The reality is if companies just apply the technologies that enable L2RM to the same marketing programs they have had in place to date, the results probably won’t be pretty. As the saying goes, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Before L2RM, companies could not effectively measure the impact that digital marketing had on traditional, off-line B2B sales. Programs that have previously been good enough may not hold up very well under the revealing light of L2RM. At Rosetta, we understand the new game of B2B marketing. We help our customers strategically rethink how they market as they implement new marketing platforms. This sets our clients up for success and enables them to get better as the new measurements lead to better management. In the coming weeks, I’ll talk about some of the pitfalls that must be avoided for L2RM to be successful and how to steer clear of obstacles while keeping the program’s bearings set for revenue growth.

If you’ve been keeping up with current events, you may have noticed quite a bit of buzz around some high profile women in the workplace. From the controversy surrounding Marissa Mayer’s decision to eliminate Yahoo’s work-from-home policy to Sheryl Sandberg’s latest project, Lean In, the conversation about women and their roles in the office has shifted to the forefront of the conversation. Office politics and shedding light on existing men-to-women dynamics are top trending topics around company water coolers.

Discussing Career with Riddi

In an effort to facilitate this type of discussion, the Rosetta Women’s Network and Rosetta Mom’s Group sponsored a Women Helping Women event last week, with Special Guest Riddi Kline, CMO of Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores. The audience comprised Rosetta team members across our offices, so members participated in person and via phone. Attendees engaged Kline in a Q&A session about her career path and about discovering passions without sacrificing womanhood.

Becoming Leaders in Organizations

“I want to be one of the guys, but I’m not willing to give up being a woman to do it,” Kline expressed. <Tweet This> The point Kline makes of being a female in a male-dominated industry is pivotal. She addressed both the need for more women in leadership roles and also the need for cohesion among male industry leaders.

Seeking Mentors in Leadership

When asked about the female mentors she’s had during her career, Kline mentions, “I’ve never had a formal, professional mentor, but there still are not many of our faces in leadership positions to mentor.”  Kline suggested some of the best mentoring comes from peer-to-peer mentoring, as it opens the doors to learning from those who are in similar positions.

Supporting Women at Rosetta

To end the event, the Rosetta Women’s Group collected formal attire, business suits and cash donations to support national women’s groups, My Fairy Godmother and Dress for Success. The mission of both organizations is to promote the economic independence of disadvantaged women by providing professional and ballroom attire, a network of support and the career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life. By supporting these organizations, Rosetta encourages women to participate in volunteering and fundraising initiatives.

Want to learn more about the Rosetta Women’s Network and the Rosetta Mom’s Group? Contact Jessica Endress, Margie Stahl or Mary Malbasa for more details about the event.