"The long-term goal for most marketers out there is to gain customers and successfully keep them coming back for more," writes Kristen Gregory at the Bronto blog.

So how do you encourage their ongoing patronage, and invite them to explore additional products or services?

That's where loyalty programs come into play—and for email marketers, they fall into two general categories:

You might think of customer experience as a synonym for brand positioning or brand experience. But Christine Mauro says it's much, much more. "In reality, customer experience is the result of how you implement your brand and how customers experience it across every touch point," she writes at MarketingProfs. So get ahead of your competition—you can bet they're developing customer experience strategies, too—with tips like these:

Though many companies are now using social media to acquire new customers and increase brand awareness, few are using social media channels for customer-service objectives, according to a survey from Alterian.

Among surveyed top-brand senior-level marketing executives, 30.1% cite customer acquisition as their most important objective for social media and 26.5% cite driving brand awareness.

by Tony Schwartz | HBR Blog

What do all people who achieve true excellence and consistently high performance have in common?

The answer isn't great genes, although they're nice to have. It's the willingness to push themselves beyond their current limits day in and day out, despite the discomfort that creates, the sacrifice of more immediate gratification, and the uncertainty they'll be rewarded for their efforts.