One of the most difficult marketing challenges is differentiating a service business from its competitors. One strategy is to market the knowledge and experience of the firm’s employees. Another is to focus on how the firm’s employees make customers feel. Case in point: Tom, my UPS delivery guy. Here are 5 lessons in how to create loyal customers from a UPS driver in Cleveland.

The 2011 Social Media Habit Report by Edison Research and Arbitron, reported on Hubspot last week, provides a wealth of statistics that prove the ubiquity and influence of social media.

But what’s most fascinating about this new research is the window it opens on the habits of the 46 million Americans who check social sites several times a day.

Who are these habitual social media users? And what can marketers learn from their extraordinary level of engagement with social networks?

Here’s what this important study shows and three takeaways about social media for your smart marketing strategy.

Are you hard at work on next year’s marketing strategy? If so, there’s a critical first step you should take for a more effective marketing plan: A thorough assessment of your best customers. If your company is like most, you have a core group of customers that drive a large percentage of your sales. Here are seven things you should know about your best customers in order to develop a smart marketing strategy.

Call it contact management, lead follow-up, or just good salesmanship: One-to-one communication from sales representatives to prospects is vital to a smart business-to-business marketing strategy. But how do you do it well? Here are five tips for creating a one-to-one sales communication plan that engages prospects in a dynamic sales dialogue with your company and converts leads to sales.

EZ Pass, the electronic toll collection system, finally has come to the Ohio Turnpike. Since I often drive the turnpike from Cleveland to Toledo, I was eager for EZ Pass to arrive in Ohio, and it was worth the wait.

Every time I zip past those poor folks paying tolls with paper tickets and fumbling in their pockets for cash, I feel great about the time I’m saving. E-Z Pass has added huge value to my busy life, and therein lies a lesson for marketers about creating the type of customer satisfaction that leads to loyalty.

Loyal customers are a marketer’s best source of new sales and referrals. That’s why smart marketers treat their best customers like gold, and why earning customer loyalty is the goal of every smart marketing strategy. Except at Toyota. Their recent direct mail campaign to a loyal Toyota customer broke many of the rules of effective direct marketing and harmed a 25-year customer relationship. Here’s why this campaign failed and what Toyota should have done instead.

Savvy direct marketers are using data and digital printing technology to develop engagign creative approaches and compelling direct mail campaigns that are almost fully customized to the individual recipient. Here are five ways to use data to develop great direct mail creative.