Data Management

Aprimo reported new data-integration capabilities for Aprimo Relationship Manager (ARM), the company's suite of marketing automation tools designed to create and manage multi-channel marketing campaigns.

The new feature, called Extended Data Source (xDS), will be integrated with existing campaign management and analytics capabilities built into the ARM platform. Marketers can use xDS to pull information from third-party databases – including data from service desks, inbound and outbound call centers, and transactional systems – into a Teradata database that serves as a central data-storage repository. A marketing organization can then use this integrated data within new or existing ARM marketing campaigns.

After coming off a disappointing fourth quarter, Harte-Hanks executives say the company is poised for faster growth heading into 2012 – including a series of efforts that have expanded the company's position in the B2B marketing and demand generation space.

For the fourth quarter, the company reported operating revenue of just under $225 million, or a 4.8% decline from a year before. For the year overall, Harte-Hanks reported operating revenue of about $851 million, or about a 1% decrease from its 2010 total revenue.

"While there were many bright spots in 2011, we are not satisfied with our profit performance," said Larry Franklin, Chairman, President & CEO, Harte-Hanks. Franklin also noted, however, that restructuring efforts during 2011 impacted the company's revenue and income, yet the changes also poised the company for faster growth during the coming year.

As marketers continue to adopt a variety of interactive tools to mix up campaign initiatives, new research has found that the significance of email is continuing to grow. Marketers, however, are not fully leveraging email’s most powerful capabilities, according to recently research from Emailvision, a software as a service (SaaS) company specializing in email, mobile and social marketing.

The findings were based on a survey of more than 700 online marketing managers globally, a vast majority of whom (89%) declared that email remains the same or more important to their overall marketing strategy versus two years ago. Positive ROI implications aside, marketers still find a disconnect between the collection and usage of customer data, which, according to the report, remains an untapped source of opportunity for their online marketing.

Extraprise, a provider of revenue optimization services for BtoB and BtoC enterprises, reported more than 50% growth in customer interactions in 2011 from multi-channel marketing campaigns executed by its i2i database marketing and demand generation services. Extraprise clients span across several vertical markets, including high technology, financial services, pharmaceuticals, business services, publishing and travel.

According to the company, the explosion of data and customer interactions is driving demand for right time revenue optimization services. Enterprise data is expected to grow at 650% in the next five years, with 80% of that data being unstructured and driven by customer conversations in call center notes, social media posts, CRM systems and email, according to Gartner.