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The holiday season is upon us; even those uninitiated in the ways and means of retail can see it in the Halloween decorations and candy that are now so plentiful on store shelves. For the initiated -- that is, anyone who expects to make a buck off of the holiday shoppers this year -- not only is the...

Commence earlier this month debuted version 5.5 of its CRM application with key enhancements including a new internal chat system, new Microsoft Word and calendar integrations, and a click-to-dial feature on mobile phones. Commence provides an array of CRM tools, including salesforce features and, f...

Real-time bidding holds numerous benefits for mobile marketers, but there are downsides to the ad technology as well. In particular, the dominant theme to that downside is that RTB -- at least for mobile ad formats and mobile platforms -- is still in its early days. More specifically, while the tech...

With its ability to match ad-inventory supply and demand in real time against the attributes of any given viewer, real-time bidding is starting to make its way into the delivery of mobile ads. For marketers, it can be a very good thing. When it works as it is supposed to, it makes mobile marketing m...

It's a fact of life in market research that the success of any survey will depend at least in part on its accessibility to the intended respondents. Toward that end, Qualtrics has released Qualtrics Mobile, a new app designed to help reach respondents on the go. Qualtrics Mobile works alongside the ...

It's no longer uncommon for marketers to customize the messages they send via email, but such personalization capabilities haven't typically been extended to Web content. Enter Silverpop, which last week released a beta version of Smart Content, a new product designed to enable just that. Smart Cont...

There is something odd happening between Americans and their usually intense love relationships with their cars. One survey points to a slight, but still worrisome, drop in customer satisfaction with vehicles and light trucks this past year; another shows that Americans are driving less. Is there an...

Real-time bidding, or "programmatic buying" as it is sometimes called, is remaking the online ad industry with its approach of matching supply and demand of ad inventory in real time against the attributes of any given viewer. Now this trend is starting to creep into how mobile ads are delivered. Fi...

Delta Air Lines has outfitted its more than 19,000 flight attendants with Windows Phone 8 mobile devices that it expects will further customer service and facilitate on-board transactions. Specifically, the flight attendants are now using Nokia Lumia 820 devices equipped with a Delta-specific applic...

Echopass recently unveiled a new enterprise edition of its software for corporations that use the cloud to manage their contact center operations. The offering consists of more than 40 applications and services aimed at centers that support between 500 to 20,000 agents. One early adopter typifies th...

Top brands continue to push the envelope in customer service generally, but that's particularly true in the online sphere. So reports StellaService, which just this week published new data that ranks the top retailers in terms of customer service performance over the last month. "Some of these guys ...

As mobile marketing evolves, so do its risks. The Federal Trade Commission last month released its updated "Dot Com" guidelines. An update long in coming -- the first since the report was released in 2000 -- the guidelines take special note of mobile. In short, they state that the same rules that ap...

When the expected surge in mobile video advertising arrives, it's not just consumers who will have adjustments to make. Rather, marketers will also have to make some changes to accommodate the growth in this up-and-coming format. In this new world, the motto will be "short and sweet" -- as in 15 s...

Wireless customers are generally much happier with the quality of service they receive from providers via the companies' self-service websites than through other outlets, a new survey from J.D. Power reveals. In addition, they're happiest with AT&T among service providers, the study found. The s...

SugarCRM and BroadVision have teamed up to integrate their respective products -- SugarCRM's namesake CRM app and BroadVision's Clearvale enterprise social networking platform -- to give users a fuller view of what is happening in the enterprise, the companies announced this week. This is not a full...

Millennial Media announced on Tuesday that it will acquire competitor Jumptap in a stock transaction worth approximately $225 million. Under the terms of the agreement, Jumptap shareholders will receive approximately 24.6 million shares of Millennial Media. The combined company will be able to offer...

As an onslaught of mobile video ads threatens the digital advertising landscape, it's sobering enough to realize that more than a few brands are not fully prepared. Even more concerning, however, is that our wireless infrastructure is not ready for it, either. Perhaps worst of all, consumers do not ...

Nice Systems has introduced a Contact Center Video Recording platform to its Nice Interaction Management suite. While not in great demand yet, this feature surely will draw more interest if customer service and regulatory trends continue on their current trajectory. The feature allows organizations ...

Zozi, which connects customers to activity-related adventures or trips -- say sailing lessons or rock-climbing tours -- rolled out a CRM system earlier this year that is an offshoot of an acquisition the startup made at the end of 2012. The name of the CRM system is "Zozi Advance," and it is a build...

Mobile marketers beware: A new ad format is poised to become very popular -- and there are questions whether the mobile ecosystem will be ready to handle it. That format is online ads. Of course, it is a channel that has been around for a while, and mobile sites have adapted to it. However, "it's re...