SigmaWay Blog

CMO, the Chief Marketing Officer, has played an important role in the company's boardrooms. They always provided the right direction and techniques to sell products and services. In past 10 years, there has been renovation of techniques. TV and print advertising pales has been replaced by digital advertising and social media. Today use of technology and data by marketers is not limited as previously it was. The increased dependence on technology and data has led to foundation of Chief Marketing Technologist (CMT). They are the strategist, creative director and technology evangelist. Some economists believe that due to data centralization replacing CMO with CMT is not feasible. Both the CMO and CMT have played their role which is important part for business. So neither can replace the other.  Read more at:https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/will-the-cmt-replace-the-cmo

A recent survey on customer retention revealed that insures lose as much as 20% of their customers each year. For the insurance agency this corresponds to approximately £500,000 to £1 million in lost premiums for every 1,000 policies. Customer retention is thus an important issue facing the industry. Three key points can help insurance companies to eliminate customer churn.
• Firstly, they need to properly understand their customer, which means determining overall market segmentation to understand cross sell and up sell opportunities at individual policyholder level.
• Secondly, insurance companies must be able to provide tailor made policies for each individual and also have a unique selling point in comparison to their rivals.
• Lastly, companies need to realize that they have to listen to their customer’s preferences rather than the customer having to choose from the list of policies the insurer has to offer.
Should the above be kept in mind in a company’s planning and operations customer churn can certainly be minimized if not completely eliminated.

For more information visit:
http://blogs.sap.com/banking/2015/06/19/preventing-customer-churn-with-better-data-analytics/

Customers today are aware about social media, and are willing to try stuff out and maybe even write a review based on their experiences with a brand. In an ideal world blog reviews should take care of it provided the product is good. Sadly, the world is anything but ideal.
The success of a product does not depend solely on its quality but rather on the advertising that goes behind it. The traditional ways of advertising are costly and often beyond the financial reach of new companies. This is where social media marketing comes in.
Here is a guide to get your marketing strategies take flight:
• Start your product launch campaign with research: Before you start developing your products, try to gauge what your target audience will actually notice and respond to.
• Plan a campaign that creates interest: Make sure that the campaign keeps the interest of fans high and urge them to actively participate in them.
• Video – your most effective marketing tool: It is estimated that by 2017, video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic, and video-on-demand traffic alone will have trebled.
• Involve influencers: Influencers are people with followers and fans who quickly respond to any endorsements and recommendations.
• Celebrate the revelation: Celebrate the campaign by rewarding fans who participated, with special gifts and rewards.
• Don’t kill the buzz: Case study videos are a great way to keep the buzz, around your campaign for a while. Read more at:


For more information visit:
http://www.germin8.com/blog/6-steps-to-social-media-marketing-success-product-launch-for-startups/

Recently, email marketers are using the coupons. It was found in a research that 71% of the population say coupons sent in emails very useful.  Email coupons can work very well as a promotional tool and can be effective when they are personalized by product preferences. Jordie van Rijn (author) in his blog writes how we can improve the usage of coupons to improve business. Read more at: http://blog.getresponse.com/making-your-email-coupons-work-harder.html

While data has always played a part in ad campaigns-like whether a potential customer was more likely to see an ad on billboards, TV, or radio-big data has enabled a new era of advertising. With the advent of big data, brands can finally turn to actual numbers and metrics to make decisions-and use technology to help automate those decisions. Specifically, the programmatic advertising industry has deployed big data technologies so that companies and brands can be more precise about who exactly they're targeting. They can rely on exact data generated from GPS on mobile devices, social networks, actual purchasing behavior, and direct customer contacts, and analyze it to pinpoint their target audience. By analyzing this diverse data stream along with 1st-party advertiser data, we can play the right advertisement at the right time for the right person. It’s no longer a question of whether or not you want to utilize big data—it’s a question of how you utilize it.
For more information visit:
https://www.mapr.com/blog/how-big-data-advancing-programmatic-advertising#.Vb-xSPmqqko

Customers are delighted to get gifts for companies. But, some companies fail to do so in a consistent manner. Companies might begin with good intentions, but sometimes they lose their way. Jake Sorofman (a former CMO), writes in his blog how companies sometimes fail to keep consistency. For more information, visit: http://blogs.gartner.com/jake-sorofman/in-customer-experience-consistency-is-the-new-delight/

Every company has some dissatisfied employee who all are best at what they do or they are de motivated for some reason. The set of employees give negative vibes and complain about the organization with or without any reason. The company needs to identify the cause and rectify it for a better prospect. The employees don't participate in the normal working process of the company and hence there is always an urgent need to determine the actual cause of disappointment. The manager needs to ask and listen to communicate with them and get the reason for their unusual act and behavior. The approach should be professional enough to even tackle the worst situations and apply some good management strategies to handle situations. There is a need to let go and move on with the healthy and dedicated people. The key to avoid the problem is to appoint people in such a way that there is no or negligible chance of such dissatisfied employees in an organization. Read more at- http://www.business2community.com/human-resources/how-to-manage-a-disgruntled-employee-01278001

Sepsis is a serious medical condition that occurs when the body releases the full force of the immune system in response to an infection. The immune chemicals trigger widespread inflammation that can result in impaired blood flow and thus leading to failure of the body's organs. This disease is consuming major cost for the healthcare industry. Here Data Analytics has stepped in and provided a solution. The solution consists of a disposable wireless Band-Aid-like biosensor (the FDA-certified HealthPatch), which helps in real-time processing of patient data, and consumable analysis that allows medical professionals to take immediate action.
 The smartphone app transmits the patient clinical data to a cloud-based repository, where it is integrated with existing patient data from other data sources (NoSQL and SQL-based data sources, premium data sources, etc.). For more information visit:
http://www.cio.com/article/2949854/big-data/how-big-data-analytics-help-hospitals-stop-a-killer.html

In order to increase standards of the capital markets post-crash and other unprecedented events, few regulations enforced by the market regulators are forcing the market participants to have a more thorough background research. Thus demand for data in capital markets is increasing as never before. The analysis reports are now being made at real time to increase the efficiency, and quality. But the problem at hand is how well firms can handle this data. Can they afford the data within their profits? Can data can be made available to all in proper usable format to all the participants at minimum price. How can the data made available be kept clean and free from corrupting? To read through some of these issues go through-http://www.automatedtrader.net/articles/feature/153959/the-data-deluge

The term Internet of Things was coined in 1999 by Kevin Ashton, cofounder of the Auto-ID Center, an RFID research project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. IoT is about intelligent devices talking to enterprise apps. Its important to focus on the basic building blocks as the success of an IOT initiative depends on them. However, you must overcome  challenges before the IoT can be fully realized. A lack of unified standards , Complexity are some of the challenges. If you're starting from scratch, it's important to ask, "What's the No. 1 business problem you want to solve?" Once that's answered, it's time to look at the systems you need to connect and the capabilities you must put in place. The most important point is to bring your structures and unstructured data together in a meaningful way. 

Read more here- http://www.cmswire.com/internet-of-things/get-ready-for-the-iot/

During the past decades, it has been seen that farming industries have made use of big data in a very efficient way. Many attempts were made to improve the crop yields of arable farming using big data. One of the evidence is that diary industry in Netherlands made huge margins after adopting big data. The data from farmers, soil type, soil analysis, and also analyzing weather can be used to predict the degree of accuracy in time for applying seeds and, fertilizers and chemicals. Read more at:https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/how-can-big-data-positively-affect-farming

Big data will play a major role in shaping the future of businesses. The two major areas that are going to undergo significant changes are as follows:

(i) Previously, once data had been used, it used to be deleted. But now, as predictive analytics makes use of historical data, so data needs to be stored for an indeterminate period of time. This is against the current laws and thus requires amendment. In future, well-defined laws about collection, distribution and storage of data are going to be the key to success for businesses using Big Data.

(ii) With technological advancement, data is being collected at a faster rate than before. Also new and improved technology is being used to sort it. In future, frameworks will need to be robust in nature and analytical processes should be improved in terms of speed and accuracy. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/big-data-and-the-future-of-business

With the rising popularity of mobile apps, it has become a necessity for businesses to have a mobile-first approach. Before adopting a mobile-first strategy, the following factors should be kept in mind:

(i) Businesses should be familiar with the platform they use. Familiarity with advertising budget and the ability to hire professional web designers and developers is also required.

(ii) Apps should be built with a goal in mind. Apps can be made to boost sales, retain old customers or some other purpose.

(iii) To stand out in the crowded app market, marketing the app needs to be useful and purposeful.

(iv)  Apps should be unique in experience and significantly different from the company's website. Apps should be able to provide a simplified customer experience.

(v) Apps should be tested before being launched as a bad experience will have a negative impact on the targeted customers. Read more at:https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/7987-is-mobile-first-right-for-your-business

Data mining has taken a new form termed as a Dark Web. Law enforcements have made use of dark web to analyze data on websites and concluded that in 2010 over 100,000 sites contained extremist and terrorists' content. Today, dark web has become popular in finding and shutting down websites that can be used to facilitate criminal activity. Big data is also making use of such technique to collect data to better understand criminal behavior. Dark web has made it easier to keep an eye on illegal activities. Making use of dark web can stop these criminal activities which would ultimately results in favor of people. Read more at:https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/mining-in-the-dark

Does your analysis show more revenue than what is actually being generated? Or you are getting results that are too skewed to make actual sense? Make sure you follow these 3 ways to avoid making data driven mistakes

1) Get right data: make use of latest data and look for duplicate, missing values and outliers. It is also imperative that you have enough data while drawing an analysis.

2) Ask questions: Sometimes analysts apply techniques they haven’t really examined. Asking questions makes you better understand the problem at hand

3) Make productive use of spread sheets: if while looking at data, you are looking at spreadsheet, remember to keep data and formulae separated.

Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/teradata/2015/07/08/how-to-make-a-bad-data-driven-decision-in-three-easy-steps/

Social media has emerged to be the answer to several marketing problems. Be it improving interactions with customers or finding new ways to boost sales, social media answers it all. Using social media, companies can directly interact with their customers instead of just advertising to them. Companies can emerge as social media powerhouse in the following three ways:

(i) Companies should not concentrate all their efforts on a single social media platform. Instead, they should make their presence felt in several social media channels so as to avoid alienating many prospective customers.

(ii) Social media marketers should maintain uniqueness when it comes to creating content and producing strategies.

(iii) Companies should raise their voice in social media. This helps to maintain brand consistency and create associations with customers. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/become-a-social-media-powerhouse

With the analytics boom, businesses are treading the data-driven path. But organizations should realize that not every data is useful- one needs to sift through a huge amount of data to find out the useful ones. Often having a large database doesn't indicate a successful data program, instead it implies a program requiring considerable amount of work. The problem with a large database is that the data does not possess a reasonable degree of accuracy hence making it difficult to make accurate business analysis. Knowing more about the data- what it is and what it represents- will enable companies to filter, categorize and analyze data. Cleaning up data isn't something that can be easily achieved through technology. Data gathering system should be developed keeping in mind what data is being collected and why it is being collected. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/your-data-is-garbage

It is often difficult for CIOs to determine the most appropriate strategy. Hardware vendors who are at the core of the cloud debate safeguard their own interests by hindering the transformation of their customers. This delay by the vendors has generated significant strategic problem for CIOs. However, organizations have started to realize that the actual problem is not with the cloud but the various non-programmatic inefficient devices that employ on it. Various companies have emanated that increases scalability, reduce cost and also improve performance. It is necessary for CIOs to look at the comprehensive strategy while handling these strategic issues. Strategies and tactics are coiled together therefore the tactics used must be in line with the strategies knowledgeable to the companies.

Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/it-s-time-for-cios-to-separate-strategies-tactics

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract customers and ultimately drive profitable customer action. Every company has different type of content depending on the product it offers in the market. Content Marketing furnishes a platform to communicate with the customers instead of selling to them directly. For, a content marketing to work efficiently, it is important that it must work simultaneously with a good social media strategy. This is also true in the case of web content. However, content marketing faces several challenges like measuring the Right of Information (ROI) is very difficult and it is essential to have a call-to-action so as to attract customer for purchasing the products.

To know more about this study, please follow the link: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/why-content-marketing-is-important