The benefits of account-based marketing (ABM) can be enormous, and for the past couple of years ITSMA has been helping a number of member companies adopt our six-step approach to ABM. Well, as we did more and more work around ABM, our thinking evolved, and we recently decided it was time to update our model.

Since its founding in 1984, CDW, a $6 billion-plus technology reseller, has strived to put the customer at the heart of everything it does. But despite all its investment in customer research, the company was aware that there were still things it didnt know about its customers. CDW needed to find a way to truly understand what was important to customers and to uncover what it didn’t know enough to ask.’

In 2005, Cisco Systems made a decision: Marketing was going to enable the company to more effectively sell services to the SMB market by motivating its channel partners to more consistently attach services at the point of sale, renew service contracts, and execute multiyear service agreements. To do this, the company created the Attach, Renew, Multiyear (ARM) Service Incentive Program.

Laura Patterson, president and cofounder of VisionEdge Marketing, recently sat down with ITSMA to discuss what marketers need to do to gain credibility with the CFO, the types of metrics they need to pay more attention to, and why being able to build better business cases can be a big boon for the marketing department.

What a difference a millennium makes! When I started working for ITSMA in 1999, the tech industry and its marketing departments were awash in money, high hopes, and great expectations. We all know what happened after that, and it was a rocky road getting the industry and its marketing groups back on solid footing. Eight years later, as I take my leave from ITSMA, things are looking up again, but with a rather more mature and measured view.

For marketers in IT services and solutions, loyal customers have always meant faster sales cycles, easier acceptance of premium pricing, and all-important references and referrals. But ensuring customer loyalty in todays market isn’t easy. This article outlines four priority areas marketers should focus on to drive customer loyalty and business results.’

Many marketing departments have responsibility for the company Website and email communications, so we thought it would be useful to provide a summary of the regulatory information U.K. companies must now include on their Websites and in their email footers to avoid paying a fine.

In 2003, the Commonwealth of Virginia announced the $2 billion IT Infrastructure Partnership, the largest IT award in state government. Northrop Grumman knew it was well qualified to do the work, but it had a perception problem to overcome: In Virginia, the company was viewed as a builder of ships, and its depth of experience at both the IT and state levels was not well recognized or understood. It used an ABM strategy to turn things around.

Malcolm Frank, senior vice president of marketing and strategy at Cognizant, recently talked about the five key elements for profitably competing in the global marketplace and why employee marketing is so vital to the success of a global firm.

The technology industry is awash in underperforming partnerships, yet the importance of making partnerships work continues to grow. ITSMA has good news for those of you looking to improve these relationships: ITSMA Account-Based Marketing (ABM) processes and tools can be successfully applied to alliances and partnerships.

For its first 25 years, EMC Corporation didnt have a central customer reference program; it didn’t need one. But when the company began to diversify its portfolio through acquisitions, customers demanded proof that EMC could succeed in areas where the company hadn’t played before. The secret to a successful reference program, EMC knew, was to build a program that held as much value for customers as it did for EMC. And so the Customer Success Network was born.’

Fred Reichheld, an author and consultant whom The Economist has dubbed “the high priest of loyalty,” recently sat down with ITSMA to discuss why customer loyalty is central to success, how a measurement tool called the Net Promoter Score (NPS) can help companies generate more loyal customers, and how marketing can help.

For the past few years, marketers have been asked to do more with less. To maximise the value of the marketing contribution and preserve the sanity (and personal lives!) of hardworking marketers, we need to prioritise marketing activities. Sometimes, we even need to just say no.

Symbol had a problem. Services revenues were decreasing, attach rates were low, and Symbols Global Services Division was having a hard time getting the sales force to pay attention to services. To remedy this situation, the services marketing team turned its attention to managing the services portfolio and coming up with a value proposition so undeniable that customers would buy Symbol products just to get the services. Read on to find out if they achieved their goals…’

Lois Kelly, a founding partner of the strategic communications firm Foghound, recently sat down with ITSMA to discuss the trend toward “conversational marketing” and how to hire marketers with the skills to drive conversational marketing throughout the organization.

More than 200 marketing leaders explored five challenges for 2007 while meeting at ITSMAs annual marketing conference on November 15 and 16. They suggested five issues that should take center stage next year as marketing takes on more of a strategic advisory role in the business. Read on to find out what those five issues are…’

Bob Buday, a founding partner of The Bloom Group, recently sat down with ITSMA to discuss why technology services companies need to change the way they develop thought leadership and which marketing activities are most effective at converting interest in a firms thought leadership into genuine leads. ‘

In 2004, Fujitsu Services faced a maturing market and increasing competition. After being rebranded from ICL to Fujitsu Services in 2002, the Fujitsu brand as an IT services provider was relatively unrecognized outside Japan. The company knew that it needed to do something drastic marketing-wise, and it looked to its newly appointed acting CMO to develop a new approach.

Most marketers in a recent ITSMA survey agreed that marketings primary objective is driving growth and profitability. It’s not exactly a shocking revelation. How best to contribute to profitable growth, though, raises all sorts of questions about marketing roles, responsibilities, and priorities. Read on to find out what ITSMA research showed about what marketing should focus on to drive growth.’

Peter Fisk, a strategy and marketing consultant based in London, recently sat down with ITSMA to share his perspective on the major trends affecting marketing for technology services and solutions.

In Fall 2005, the marketing team at Cerner turned its attention to the 2006 HIMSS conference—the largest IT trade show for healthcare in the U.S. To simultaneously wow the audience and demonstrate the strength of its customer relationships, Cerner decided to allow its clients, not its salespeople, to man its tradeshow booth.

According to ITSMAs new Services Marketing Report Card, self-assessments by more than 800 services marketers at 20 top firms suggest that skills in critical areas such as relationship marketing and alliance management fall well short of the high marks that companies need to stand out from the pack.’

We know buyers of IT services and solutions want a more conversational approach. From our side, the question now is whether companies and their marketers can move from interactive experiments to a broader transformation. Can we shift the marketing mindset from packaged promotion to ongoing conversation?

Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School professor, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma,’ ‘The Innovator’s Solution,’ and ‘Seeing What’s Next,’ recently sat down with us to discuss why listening to your best customers isn’t always good for the business and how technology companies can organize to ensure that they don’t miss the next wave of growth. ‘

When people in the tech industry talk about thought leadership, Accenture is one of the first firms that comes to mind. This article, based on a recent ITSMA Viewpoint with Terry Corby, global marketing director for thought leadership at Accenture, outlines the key components of the companys program. ‘