Business and Marketing

Shop hard, advises one provider at the Marketing&Tech Summit. Make no assumptions and take it for a rigorous test drive.

IgnitionOne CRO Jonathon Baron

Personalization can be summed up in five simple words, Ignition One CRO Jonathon Baron told attendees at Direct Marketing News's Marketing&Tech Innovation Summit yesterday: “Show me you know me.”

Baron's long experience in merging data management with marketing efforts for clients such as General Motors, AIG, and Intercontinental Hotels taught him that, if you get it right, the customer will listen. Then he told how a shoe company recently didn't get it right with him when—while searching for snow boots on a PC he shares with his wife—he was retargeted with an ad for high heels.

“I kept getting retargeted with that ad for days and why? Because the ecosystem is still based on cookies,” he said. “With real-time buying, an ad buy is placed in 9 milliseconds. You have to get the right data to vendors quick enough to have an impact.”

Baron gave attendees at the New York conference some tips in shopping for data management platforms (DMPs):

• When you think about managing your data, don't thing about data for video, data for display, and data for email. “Think about how all your data is going to work together in less than 100 milliseconds,” he counseled.


• Take your time investigating and make no assumptions about what providers promise. Make sure they can deliver what you need because “like your database in the Nineties, a good DMP is going to stay with you for 10 to 15 years."


• Be like Ronald Reagan when he made the arms limitation deal with the Soviet Union: Trust, but verify. “You want integrated products, not integration projects,” Baron advised.

Business Breaking News: ZTE Grand X Max Plus: Top 3 Business Features

ZTE's Grand X Max Plus is a solid business phablet at an affordable price. The mammoth, 6-inch (15 centimeters) smartphone offers a bright, colorful display, long battery life and good performance for just $199 off-contract, via lesser-known carrier Cricket Wireless. If that sounds like a lot to pay for a budget phone, consider that buying a smartphone outright — instead of opting for a subsidized phone with a pricey two-year contract attached — can save you a lot of money in the long run. That's because Cricket Wireless offers cheaper monthly data plans than carriers like Verizon or AT&T.

So what do you get for your money? Here are three features that help make the ZTE Grand X Max Plus good for work.

Big display

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