Nick Martin discusses innovation and a new kind of ‘personal assistant’
Speaking at the Travel Technology Initiative’s Innovation Summit (London) last year, Continental Airlines’ senior director of merchandising and ancillary revenue, Chris Amenechi, said the industry would have more intelligent approaches to the phone.
“Wouldn’t you rather talk to someone who knew you and you can talk [...]

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Nick Martin discusses regulations looming over the use of cookies.
Late last year, the European Parliament and Council set the scene for a potentially dramatic challenge to the way online advertising is developing, enabling targeting of advertising content based on online activity collected via cookies.
Online behavioural advertising (OBA) uses information to target consumers with advertising messages [...]

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Nick Martin discusses winning and retaining the attention of consumers.
How many consumers start a transaction, only to drop out before agreeing terms or completing payment? 
The truth is, winning the attention of consumers and then proving the value of your product or service in an increasingly frictionless environment, is tougher now than ever. 
In a recent consumer [...]

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Nick Martin puts the brakes on customer management ‘trucks’ in favour of sleeker, more specialised vehicles.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently made a comparison between PCs and trucks, vehicles that once dominated the car market in the US, but which got killed by smaller cars as the US consumer got real.
In an article in the Wall Street Journal, [...]

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Nick Martin discovers email marketing is poised for strong growth this year, at the further expense of traditional offline channels.
In FEDMA’s first European Email Marketing Benchmark report, published in April 2010, 19 per cent of the respondent Email Service Provider (ESP) base expected their clients to increase volume of email marketing between a quarter and [...]

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Nick Martin discusses the UK Electoral Roll and how changes to it will affect marketers. 
My eldest daughter attained the age of majority last month and duly received an application to be included in the register of electors.
I clearly need to learn to let her stand on her own two feet, but I sat down with [...]

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 Nick Martin explores the impact of new legislation on direct marketers across Europe.  
The importance of citizen trust cannot be overstated. 
As marketers with more and more personal information at our fingertips, it’s essential for citizens to respect us as worthy custodians of that knowledge. So, it’s in our own best interests to act responsibly and [...]

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It’s all about balance, says Nick Martin.
It’s every marketer’s dream to know everything about the consumer and their prospects so they can improve brand loyalty and generate sales by understanding exactly what the customer wants and when they want it.
But how can marketers know, from the consumer’s perspective, when they have gone too far [...]

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. . . long live acquisition, says Nick Martin.
Marketers need to wake up to the fact that the world of direct marketing is under threat. Now, leaflets through letterboxes and even email targeting have limited effect on customer acquisition, as belts are tightened.
With consumers reluctant to respond to direct messaging, has the marketing [...]

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Nick Martin says data insight is key to ‘convergence marketing’ and is now back in fashion for marketers.
There is an urgent need for marketers to make sense of the behavioural information they are gathering online, so they can see what is significant as opposed to what is just background noise. It’s becoming more pressing than [...]

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