By Richard Boire In many of the seminars and courses in data mining and data science that I have delivered segmentation is always considered a core topic. But what does it really mean and how should be used in the context of delivering business value? The first task is always …

By Howard Lichtman Every company faces challenges in attracting new revenue. The solution is actually obvious: growth lies in reaching new immigrants to Canada. Immigration is a growth strategy for the Government of Canada and so it should be for your business. The numbers speak for themselves: one in five …

By Sean Taggart Seniors—Canada’s fastest growing generation—have become an increasingly important demographic group for marketers. Their population expected to grow by 50% over the next ten years, according to Statistics Canada. In fact, one-third of adult life is now lived after the age of 65. We spend 8,000 days between …

By Niraj Sinha Over the last two decades or so, Canadian marketers have approached their marketing plans in the context of two distinct segments—the General Market or “mainstream”—and the Multicultural Market or “ethnic” (also referred to by Statistics Canada as “visible minorities”). While the mainstream has been largely considered to …

By Ishan Ghosh Putting efficiency over effectiveness is a trap into which many a marketer falls victim. But flipping that around confers powerful benefits. Did you realize that your brand could be part of the $154 per week South Asian’s shopping basket? Or that you can share the $136 per …

By Bryan Segal Today there is a wealth of advanced audience segmentation available that allows marketers to zero in on the most relevant potential customers. Utilizing advanced data leads to insights on your audiences and being able to bring those to fruition in your actual campaigns only drives success at …

By David Yee Understanding the customer’s needs and behaviours, and pairing it with the right content, delivery channel and message, dramatically increases the odds the content will pique their interest. So, with technology playing a greater role in understanding consumer behaviour, it’s worth asking why so many brands still rely …

Interview with Mitch Joel By Stephen Shaw Mitch Joel is one of Canada’s foremost experts on digital marketing and a renowned podcaster, speaker and author. Just when most traditional companies are getting used to the idea of doing business digitally, a new wave of technology is coming that will put …

By Sean Gordon The constantly shifting pace of communication requires companies to regularly explore new and creative ways of transforming their customer service experience. Using video is an absolute must in delivering the kind of service, including support, that customers will latch onto and continue coming back for. Fortunately, it’s …

By Kevin Deveau Standing out from the crowd is more important than ever for businesses. Market saturation, rising customer expectations, increased competition and growing regulatory requirements are motivating businesses to identify areas where they can improve on their customer engagement. Being able to directly market to customers, and provide them …

By Chris Kneeland The world’s most significant businesses—known affectionately as “cult brands” given their irrational levels of fan adoration and customer affinity—typically display five key attributes. These companies: 1. Enjoy above-average brand attachment, which is a specific metric measuring audience engagement, more so than awareness or likelihood to refer. People …

By Richard Boire Creating customer personas is one of the core deliverables of marketing analytics. The assumption is often made that with a defined customer persona, “I can then use this information to target customers”. This is misleading and does not provide the real value of customer personas within the …

By Brendan Read The June issue of DM Magazine published an article, “Letters to the president”, to Canada Post Corporation president and CEO Doug Ettinger. It was a compilation of open letters written by Patrick Bartlett, executive director, National Association of Major Mail Users (NAMMU), Steve Falk, president, Prime Data …

By Corey Kotlarz Think about your last handful of interactions with a customer support representative. You probably think you know which of those conversations featured a company employee working out of a corporate office. You’re probably wrong. In reality, more and more companies are adopting and expanding call centre outsourcing …

By Jim Green Jatinder Rai gets very concerned when clients think a multicultural community is homogenous. Language, values and beliefs can vary significantly within communities and neighbourhoods, explained the founder and president of Response Advertising Inc. Marketers targeting a multicultural audience need to take the time to learn about the …

By Nicole Andani Many North Americans still watch over three hours of television daily. But that amount has been declining1. More importantly, the manner in which consumers watch has dramatically changed. Traditional TV watching has now changed to “personalized content on the go”. Programming is being streamed or PVR’d and …

By Stephen Shaw Niraj Dawar is a professor emeritus, marketing, at Ivey Business School, University of Western Ontario, which is one of the premier business schools in the world. He is the author of the book Tilt: Shifting Your Strategy from Products to Customers. Most marketing leaders say that driving …

By Sara Clodman “Publicly Available Information” isn’t necessarily what you think it is. We live in a digital and interconnected economy, where consumers want to benefit from increasingly intuitive products and services to match their evolving expectations. So, when individuals publicly share information about their tastes and preferences on a …

By Jackie Sebesta The emerging core market of e-commerce is coming to the forefront at Lowe-Martin. We are now faced with the challenge and the often-competing priority of delivering products faster and in perfect condition, while still maintaining our commitment to protect the environment: including reducing our carbon footprint. When …

By Mike Robitaille Yesterday’s business playbook remains seductively simple: make a product, sell it, collect money for it, and spend as little as possible in the process. The game was straightforward: companies held all the cards and the general public was happily oblivious and, for the most part, powerless. Life …

By Christopher Alexander The Coalition Avenir Québec’s (CAQ) success in the 2018 elections was a major blow to three major Canadian pollsters, which had predicted a much closer race between the CAQ and the Liberals. Failed prognosticating is certainly nothing new. But polling difficulties in both Canada and the United …

By Cami Zimmer According to a 2018 Retail TouchPoints study, last-mile (or kilometre) services have risen by 50% in the last 18 months, with most of the increased demand coming from the business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce segment1. This has numerous implications for both customers and brands and is changing the way …

By Brendan Read When companies are faced with disasters the question becomes how best to respond in order to ensure a customer-accepting customer experience (CX), customer retention, loyalty and brand reputation. This perennial issue came recently, dramatically and tragically back into spotlight with the fatal crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX …

By Karl Swannie As a marketing professional, are you fully prepared for a data security breach? When it is determined that confidential customer data has been stolen, and there will likely be a hefty price tag attempting to fix what went wrong, will you know how to react? Finally, when …

By Miki Velemirovich In Canada, small business is huge, accounting for 97.9% of all businesses across the country. Out of an estimated 1.18 million enterprises, 1.15 million are those with fewer than 100 employees1. A community this size deserves attention. But in order to reach it effectively, marketers need to …

By Greg Brown E-commerce continues to transform global retailing, and in Canada it is picking up steam. Online retail sales grew 30.6% (C$15.65 billion) in 2017: twice that of U.S. merchants1. International sales are likely an important key to this momentum. Canada’s geography also makes e-commerce a natural as much …

By Stephen Shaw The rapid growth of direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands may seem like a replay of the dot-com bubble in the Web 1.0 era. But what makes this new generation of DTC brands different is a genuine love for their customers. They have infiltrated just about every consumer category—clothing and …

By Saul Klein Traditionally, focusing on an organization’s higher purpose has been the purview of social enterprises and not-for-profit organizations, or seen as an element of corporate social responsibility with limited impact on business practices. More recently, however, we have seen a paradigm shift in the way customers and employees …

By Larry Filler For years Tourism New Brunswick sought to answer two seemingly simple questions: who visits the province and how do they spend their time during their trip? The answers to these questions would have direct implications on the government-run organization’s marketing strategy. These insights would help it determine …

By Seth Patin For companies that rely on the holidays the clock is ticking to Black Friday and the holiday season. One thing is very clear: consumer expectations of excellent e-commerce fulfillment are on the rise. Distribution and fulfillment is the critical last step of the perfectly executed holiday push …

By Aleena Mazhar Raptors fever took over Canada in late May and early June of this year. It broke when the Toronto, Ont. team won, for the first time, the National Basketball Association finals on June 13. We knew we had something special as soon as the playoffs started, but …