Hi, I'm John Balla - I co-founded the SAS Customer Intelligence blog and served as Editor for five years. I held a number of marketing roles at SAS as Content Strategist, Industry Field Marketing and as Go-to-Marketing Lead for our Customer Intelligence Solutions. I like to find and share content and experiences that open doors, answer questions, and sometimes challenge assumptions so better questions can be asked. Outside of work I am an avid downhill snow skier, hiker and beach enthusiast. I stay busy with my family, volunteering for civic causes, keeping my garden green, striving for green living, expressing myself with puns, and making my own café con leche every morning. I’ve lived and worked on 3 contents and can communicate fluently in Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian and get by with passable English. Prior to SAS, my experience in marketing ranges from Fortune 100 companies to co-founding two start ups. I studied economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and got an MBA from Georgetown. Follow me on Twitter. Connect with me on LinkedIn.
As mentioned in a previous post, We had the pleasure to sponsor the eMetrics Marketing Optimization conference again this year with a marketing lab. Our featured story was an innovative use of customer analytics by Organic, a digital marketing agency and SAS customer. We highlighted how Organic worked with their client Pulte
I've had the pleasure to work closely this year with the Association of National Advertisers on a Thought Leadership Sponsorship. One of my favorite outcomes of that effort was an e-Magazine titled, "Measures for Success - How to become a more accountable marketing organization." The title article of that eMagazine
My friend and colleague Amartya Bhattacharjy led a roundtable discussion today titled, Merging Art and Science in Marketing at #PBLS11, which I've tried to distill for you here. He began with the traditional view of marketing in terms of two types of activities that had their own mindsets: Brand marketing (mass
My colleague and friend Colleen Cruz led a roundtable discussion at #PBLS11, titled How to Boost Effectiveness with Marketing Operations Management (MOM). There was a robust discussion that brought out some of the main advantages of a marketing operations management solution, and I captured three main ones to provide a summary: Boost efficiency with
I’ve discovered that bestselling author Jim Collins is both a great writer and a great speaker because his keynote address at #PBLS11 has been absolutely riveting. And his lessons on greatness can certainly apply to marketing, so I’ve summarized it for us here: He started by stating that greatness is
Andy Swenson, VP of Database and Revenue Management at Pinnacle Entertainment outlined their approach to customer loyalty, which included some great takeaways for companies in any industry. The gaming resorts leader partnered with Teradata to provide the database and with SAS to handle the marketing solution that enabled them to differentiate
Scott Hudgins, VP of Customer Managed Relationships at The Walt Disney Company shared details about how Disney has approached CRM and the guiding principles and key learnings that have driven their success. They began their CRM process in 2001 knowing that most of their customers were somewhere in one of their
Jim Bampos presented in a session today at PBLS11 titled, Driving the Total Customer Experience with Data. He described the extraordinary journey he’s led his company on to manage customer experience and how it literally transformed EMC to be centered on the customer. Prior to embarking on that journey, EMC saw itself as a data
As a marketer, I couldn’t be more excited about the CMO panel on the main stage at PBLS11 . As previously mentioned, the CMO panel moderated by Professor Tom Davenport, included SAS CMO Jim Davis and his peers, Paula Puleo at Michaels Stores and Scott Hudgins from The Walt Disney
I have thoroughly enjoyed hearing General Colin Powell share his viewpoints about leadership as the keynote speaker for PBLS11. I have found that so much of what he’s shared is relevant for marketers, because great marketing happens by teams of people, all working for the same purpose. It’s an environment
