Nearly all of our focus is on driving incremental revenues through predictive analytics via sales. That’s all good, but what prospects and customers see and use, interact with and judge are the actual sales and marketing communication vehicles. No matter how precise the analytics and the lead scoring in marketing automation systems, there needs to be an option for the recipient to “just take a break.” We call it correcting for outliers. We faced one such moment on an overseas trip. When I powered up the Blackberry, a message popped up from the carrier: INTERNATIONAL ROAMING: Calls $2.50/min, Data $0.008/KB. Internet use and emails can really put a shocking dent in your Euro budget (or Rupee or Yen).  Like my finding out later it cost $40 per hour of connectivity via the satellite card. Sure, I could limit how many minutes I’d spend on calls, but with email it’s not easy to keep track of data in KB units. I really liked the convenience of getting emails on my Blackberry without messing with new devices or sim cards. Determined not to be taken in by my carrier for all the non-work email communications, I wanted to “opt-out” for a limited …Read More