Merkle (www.merkle.com), a leading customer relationship marketing (CRM) firm and the nation’s largest privately-held agency, today announced keynote speakers for its ninth annual CRM Executive Summit, being held June 6-8 at The Ritz-Carlton in New Orleans, Louisiana.

 The theme of this year’s CRM Executive Summit is “Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage through Customer Strategy as a Business Strategy.” Revered for excellence and thought leadership, the Summit offers forward-thinking perspectives from Merkle experts, together with some of the nation’s leading consumer, nonprofit and b-to-b marketers. This year’s sessions will include topics such as media measurement, global marketing, breakthroughs in social media marketing, shared data ecosystems and the empowered customer. The keynote presentations and breakout-sessions are designed to provide attendees with actionable ideas and solutions to create sustainable competitive advantage through connected CRM.

 Keynote speakers for this year’s event include John Nicoletti, Google’s director of agency development; Manish Bhatt, SVP of US ebusiness for MetLife; Fatemeh Khatibloo, senior analyst with Forrester Research, Inc. and Jay Henderson, global strategy program director for IBM.

 Mr. Nicoletti is responsible for developing Google's business strategy as it pertains to marketing, customer support, and overall revenue management for digital advertising agencies in North America. Mr. Nicoletti also serves as head of Google's San Francisco office and remains closely aligned to Google's ad product organization. Mr. Bhatt is responsible for managing MetLife's corporate website, emarketing, ecommerce and self-service efforts. Before assuming his current responsibilities he served in many departments at MetLife, including licensing and registration, recruiting and selection, market research and analytics, life insurance marketing, lead generation and customer retention. Ms. Khatibloo of Forrester Research, Inc., serves customer intelligence professionals, helping companies better leverage customer knowledge to improve marketing and business performance. In addition, Ms. Khatibloo covers the trends and issues around privacy, identity, data portability, and the emerging consumer data economy. Mr. Henderson brings over 15 years of experience in multi-channel marketing and customer analytics. He leads product strategy for cross-channel marketing within IBM's Enterprise Marketing Management group. His team is responsible for market analysis, customer insight, and product innovation functions.
 

In addition to the keynote addresses, the Summit will offer a number of joint presentations with Merkle subject matter experts together with industry insiders from world-class brands, such as Dell, Kimberly-Clark, Disney, The Arthritis Foundation, GEICO, Lexmark International, Lifeline Screening, 1-800- Flowers and others.

 “As we approach our ninth CRM Executive Summit, we are thrilled with the range of experts and speakers who are participating,” Merkle’s EVP and CMO, Craig Dempster said. “Bringing together innovators and trend-setters from across the business landscape in an intimate setting will undoubtedly spark creative energy and create blueprints for future marketing tactics. This year’s lineup looks to be one of our most exciting since the Summit’s inception.”

 To find out more about the conference, visit the Summit event site to get the latest information on the agenda, speakers and activities.