We wrap up our April guest blog series on Big Data with a great post from John Stauffer, CTO of True Fit. John discusses the great point of how to properly use big data to target customers but not spook them with the data collected about them. As a reminder, our next guest blog series starts in May and the topic is Mobile, if you are interested in contributing please e-mail me at taylor [at] MITX [dot] org.

John is a pragmatic software development leader with a 20+ year track record of developing successful product and architecture strategies and leading teams to execute on them. Prior to True Fit, John was Chief Architect at 170 Systems where he led the transformation of the company’s existing product architecture to a modern, scalable, and maintainable java-based architecture, leading to an acquisition by Kofax. Prior to 170 Systems, John was Chief Architect for Oracle’s Retail Business Unit after its acquisition of ProfitLogic. As Chief Architect for ProfitLogic, John was responsible for the creation of products for Retail Markdown, Pre-season Planning, Allocation and Promotion Forecasting and Optimization that are used by the world’s largest retailers.

The catalog sitting on my counter was the single creepiest piece of mail I had ever received. It was full of dog-oriented chotskies aimed at overzealous dog owners. 

As the owner of a pair of English Bulldogs filling out our nearly-empty nest, my wife and I are certainly the target market. I have a Bulldog statue proudly sitting on my desk, and I've given up the fight against the Halloween costumes that my wife insists on buying each year for our bulldogs (Knight and Princess last year, Greaser and Poodle Skirt before that).

Guest post by Brian Cavoli, Marketing Director at BzzAgent. Follow Brian on Twitter! This is one of several guest posts in the MITX 2011 Perspectives Blog Series. Stay tuned for more posts by Boston's most influential thought leaders.

Marketing in 2011 is about the power of the group. If there is one thing we learned in 2010, it was that the collective power of people connecting in social media can drive some serious sales. In the coming year, the social media practices of motivating consumers to get their friends, family, and followers to organize around a purchase activity will be the most effective way for companies to sell online. This won’t be driven by marketers looking for another way to push messages or hoping their viral videos take off -- it will be driven by Social Media’s ability to provide unique group experiences and shared value. The message may come from the marketer, but the marketing comes from the people.

The perfect example of this is the group buying phenomenon Groupon. Everyone’s been talking about them this year - and for good reason. Forbes referred to them as fastest growing company in history. It is always fascinating when a hot company turns down billons from Google, but what makes the Groupon story so important is how it has transformed social marketing and connected the web to massive retail store sales.  

Group buying certainly isn’t new. (Remember Mercata?) Some of the earliest and most well-funded ecommerce sites on the web were attracting like-minded shoppers to get better deals in bulk. The problem was they weren’t social. The deals didn’t get people excited, and unexcited people tend not to share things too much.

The world is different now. The Internet has become a social marketplace. Groupon has cracked the local ad market and spawned countless numbers of imitators, but the next year will bring the expansion of this concept to a wide variety of new industries. Consumers are already sharing their latest purchases with each other for everything from scented soaps to Cisco servers. The companies that can reach a targeted audience with valuable, exclusive offers can turn that buzzing into buying.

Plenty has been written about Groupon clones and high-profile sale sites like Rue La La and Gilt Groupe. But the underlying trend is spreading fast. eBay is bringing group buying to gift giving with GroupGifts, GotGroupBuy.com is offering all types of electronics, and brides can join forces for great deals on jewelry and honeymoons on a new Knot.com site. In China, Mercedes sold 205 Smart cars in 204 minutes on a group buying site. I predict this kind of innovation will crop up in whole new verticals like insurance, financial services, and even health care, to improve the customer buying process. Look for companies to break down the walls around how groups coordinate to buy these products in 2011.

Sites like these are not about advertising. They use a promotional approach to create the kind of buzz that gets a group of people talking and buying. It takes much more than just a great deal. Here are 4 keys for “we-commerce” success in 2011:

Guest post by Janet Muto, Partner, High Start Group. Follow Janet on Twitter! This is the first of several guest posts in the MITX 2011 Perspectives Blog Series. Stay tuned for many more posts by Boston's most influential thought leaders.

2011 is the year smart enterprise software companies will reinvent how they approach product development.  Those that don’t will face shrinking revenues, disinterested customers and lost sales opportunities.  

Most everyone today is a savvy user of consumer technology: using applications of all types on multiple devices every day.  They are surfing, linking, taking pictures and uploading photos, buying and selling, video conferencing and playing interactive games – from their smartphone, iPad or laptop.   This experience with consumer technologies is “setting the bar” for users’ expectations of business applications.

“To create a product that must satisfy a broad audience of users… you will have far greater success by designing for one single person.”
– Alan Cooper (author of The Inmates are Running the Asylum)

For those of us who browse the Internet for information every day, online education is probably not an unfamiliar concept. Although some people are no longer in school, most continue to consume information to better adapt to a rapidly changing work environment. Free tutorials, video classes, RSS subscriptions, and educational webinars are classic examples of online learning.

Have you ever wondered…

I recently had a healthy email debate with a co-worker. The discussion centered around whether an organization should be proactive or reactive when an issue arises. I took the "reactive" side while my co-worker (technically, my boss) was in the "proactive" camp.

Colin Hynes of Staples kicked off the discussion with perhaps one of the most notable shining stars of cross-channel integration of experiences: Target. As Colin delineated the story of his shopping experiences with Target, it was easy for all to understand why integrating across channels is so critical; by creating a practical, positive experience for customers, Target builds loyalty (even from a competitor!). Colin emphasized that Target is constantly pushing mobile, and linking that back to the customer experiences in the stores - because it makes the overall process so much easier to shoppers.

(See Colin explain more of why this is important in his live interview snippet.)

 Last night's event at UK Trade & Investment drew a crowd of diverse sorts with dozens of questions on social media integration and practicality - and industry pros and authors Lois Kelly, Erik Qualman, Larry Weber, and Dan Zarrella, with moderator Robert Davis, were ready to dish their best practices.
Attendees were able to send their questions in advance for the panel to address at the event, which allowed the audience to interact & ask their follow-up questions throughout. Here are some of the great questions and the candid comments the panel had in response:

Clients seem to consistently have a fear in becoming involved in social media because of the doors it opens for negative feedback - How can you get them over that fear?