Learn · every claim sourced

Understand integrated marketing, step by step

Plain-language foundations, primers and guides on integrated marketing communications, with a source for every claim. New here? Begin with the short reads below.

ExplainerFoundation8 min read

CRM and loyalty 101: customer data, lifecycles, programmes and retention

How companies use what they know about their customers to keep them: segmentation by recency, frequency and value, lifecycle marketing, loyalty programmes from points and tiers to paid memberships and coalitions, how retention and the Net Promoter Score are measured, and the rules on profiling and loyalty data.

15 October 2026· 19 sources
ExplainerFoundation8 min read

Direct marketing 101: mail, door drops, calls and response, tested

How direct marketing reaches one named person or household and asks for a reply, how its response rates and tests work, what lists and preference services allow, and how the rules on calls changed in 2026, from the UK's TPS and the US Do Not Call Registry to France's move to prior consent.

15 October 2026· 22 sources
ExplainerFoundation8 min read

Email 101: permission, the inbox and the rules that guard it

Email marketing reaches people who chose to hear from you, on a list you own. Whether it works depends on three things: consent that meets each country's law, authentication that Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook now require from bulk senders, and messages relevant enough that readers stay subscribed.

15 October 2026· 17 sources
ExplainerFoundation7 min read

Digital advertising 101: display, video, CTV, retail media and programmatic

How paid advertising on websites, apps, streaming TV and retailers' sites is bought and sold, what happens between a DSP and an SSP in the instant a page loads, how verification and viewability work, what the market spends, and how cookies, consent and the DSA are changing it.

15 October 2026· 21 sources
ExplainerFoundation6 min read

Measuring effectiveness: models, attribution, experiments and triangulation

What brand and activation effects are, and how marketing mix modelling, attribution, experiments, brand lift and the Barcelona Principles each measure part of them. No single method is enough; the answer is to use them together, each for the question it can answer.

15 October 2026· 17 sources