Jeff Zabin


Jeff Zabin is an American business author and executive who specializes in technology marketing. He is best known for popularizing the term precision marketing, which he describes as a process for capturing and managing customer data, analyzing the data to derive actionable insights, and using those insights to drive more profitable customer interactions. He is based in Chicago, Illinois. In 2009, he founded Gleanster, an IT market research firm. In 2013, he founded Starfleet Media, which focuses on content marketing for niche markets.
Zabin co-authored two business books. The Seven Steps to Nirvana, with Mohanbir Sawhney, and with a foreword by Don Tapscott, was published by McGraw-Hill in 2001. Precision Marketing, with a foreword by Philip Kotler, was published by Wiley in 2004. Both books were translated into multiple languages. Zabin has also published more than 350 research reports and articles over the past decade, on topics ranging from business intelligence and social media monitoring and text analytics to real-time bidding for programmatic media trading. He is often quoted in business magazines like Forbes.
Zabin previously directed the thought leadership practice at Fair Isaac Corporation and served as Vice President and Research Fellow at Aberdeen Group. He served on the advisory boards of the Kellogg Foundation's New Options Initiative and the Taproot Foundation. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He began his career at Houghton Mifflin and later served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia.