In a recent NetworkWorld article, leaders across the Internet industry – including Sailthru CEO Neil Capel – analyzed the major shift moving from Big Data to targeted, personalized interactions with consumers. Whether an online retailer or a truck parts manufacturer, this data deviation remains the same: companies need actionable analytics to help drive sales and marketing in the current competitive marketplace.

Here’s a quick look:

One fast-growing segment is that of website analytics. Google Analytics provides a set of traffic data points for free, but it won’t tell you, say, how old visitors’ kids are. That’s one of the answers that analytics vendor Sailthru provided to Totsy, an online retailer specializing in sales to women with young children.

Marigold Engage by Sailthru’s Big Data approach meant that we could use her browsing behavior to infer what ages she tended to shop for and in what categories,” says Totsy CEO Lisa Kennedy. We’ve seen this provide meaningful lift in both click-through and conversion while being operationally simple to execute.

Go check out “Big Data Jumps to the Cloud” to see what Neil had to say in the discussion!