As the number of online communities grows, marketers not there yet may be temped to rush into the fray. Be careful. A headlong approach instead of a well-planned strategy can be “disastrous,” warns Dave Hersh, CEO of Jive Software. Why? A rushed approach can lead to piecemeal, siloed communities that have no integration points. Yes, a company may want to have several communities – for example, for support, feedback, affinity, developers, etc. – that have different goals, but ultimately, those
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Most people who are familiar with the term "avatar" know what one is from Second Life or video games. Most require a human to make them move, talk, and interact with others in real time, but not all avatars are representations of actual people. In today's issue of The Marketing Xfactor, we write about Gonzaga University's community ambassador avatar, Spike. Spike has an intimate knowledge of Gonzaga's Web site and internal database, and he can answer visitors' questions by speaking
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When Katherine Lee, the 33-year-old red-haired, blue-eye beauty, beat out 82 other Delta flight attendants to star in the airline's new safety video that will be shown on all aircraft next month, she probably didn't realize that she'd become an instant star. And Delta, maybe inadvertently, got itself a vibrant viral marketing campaign as a result. But that's exactly what has happened since Delta posted the new video on its blog in February. Delta asked passengers to watch the video
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Widget-based viral marketing campaigns are still working on monetization and measuring success, but it’s hard to argue with what RockYou! has done in this space. The San Mateo, CA-based publisher and developer of applications and other social network services is the most successful widget maker for the Facebook platform in terms of total installations. Now developing widgets for MySpace and Bebo, RockYou! hit something of a motherlode last fall with Sony Pictures' branded RockYou/Facebook game, "Zombies," which featured Resident Evil:
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Have you ever had your personal information compromised? Most likely no, but the odds grow higher every day. Most of the time it's due to employee error -- a laptop gets left in a car and gets stolen, or personal information inadvertently gets posted to the Internet. From the company perspective, these mistakes can be prevented by teaching employees to think about customer trust.
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Many companies have been using inserts in direct mail pieces for years. It may be time to consider using “onserts” instead, according to Sandra Zoratti. (She defines onserts as ad or offers printed directly on a bill or account statement, otherwise known as transpromo.) Of course she would say that, you say. Zoratti is vice president of strategic development and transformation for InfoPrint—so it’s her job to evangelize transpromo, i.e. the marriage of transactional and promotional documents. But wait, Zoratti
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I’ve been shopping at Amazon.com for years. I have an Amazon rewards credit card, I send gift certificates as birthday and Christmas gifts, and I’ve placed over two dozen orders in the last year. I’ve always enjoyed great service, fast shipping, and overall an excellent experience buying from the company. For the first time yesterday, I was actually frustrated with Amazon. The reason why might surprise you, since nothing about Amazon or their great customer service suddenly changed.
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While the Feds are busy cutting interest rates and deficit spending to quell the current recession (or mild downturn, depending on who you ask)—companies may feel the pressure to start cutting valuable programs such as marketing or customer service, at the detriment to customers. These areas should remain in tact in the coming months because they will not only help companies weather the mounting storm, but will give them the edge they need to emerge on top. Here are a
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With 74 percent of Americans thinking the economy is in a recession, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released yesterday, and Bear Stearns recently finding out just how bearish the market has become, any company that wasn't already seriously reassessing its strategy is doubtless doing so today. Not everyone's running up the white flag, however, as I found out at last week's Digital Hollywood Media Summit. CBS Corporation president/CEO Les Moonves wasn't talking bears in the Summit's March 13
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Back in 2001 I flew to London for vacation. I left my wallet on the counter at the newsstand in Heathrow Airport, and didn't realize it until I was back at Newark airport. I figured it was lost forever, but I called Virgin Atlantic anyway to see if there was anything they could do. Within 24 hours the airline staff had retrieved the wallet from the Heathrow Lost & Found (with all the cash still in it), gave it to
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I just left Istanbul, after spending two days in that engaging, tumultuous, thriving city. Peppers & Rogers Group’s largest and most successful consulting operation is based in Turkey, and I was there to meet the CEO for one of our larger clients, address his senior staff, and talk to the press. The night before the event, around an outdoor fire on the terrace of a beautiful restaurant overlooking the Bosporus, I chatted with the dozen or so consultants on the
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I’m doing a presentation next week for Gartner’s CRM conference in London on the incompatibility of innovation and operations. That is, the characteristics that make for a highly innovative company – experimentation, trial and error, creativity, diversity of opinions and resilience – are fundamentally at odds with the characteristics of a company that is capable of conducting its operations in a highly efficient manner – fixed routines, process invariability, and attention to detail.
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The CEO of LifeLock guarantees that his company will protect consumer’s identities. He’s so sure that he gives out his own social security number on radio ads promoting the company’s monthly service to protect its customers from identity thieves who seek to steal their personal information and ruin their credit. How can he be so sure LifeLock can protect its customers? It uses several controversial methods to ensure its harder for thieves to get hold of personal information, and credit
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Most consumer brands are still struggling with social media and Web 2.0 technology when it comes to customer engagement and building relationships, so what chance does the B2B industry, which typically lags behind its B2C counterpart? It turns out many B2B companies are adapting to social media and starting to grasp how it can help in their market as well. In today’s Marketing Xfactor lead story we discuss the state of B2B as it relates to social media, and how
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It seems like marketers these days are taking liberties with a data collection method called Voice of the Customer (VOC). While born out of the quality movement in the 80s to improve product development, the process only recently has caught the attention of sales and marketing for data collection methods. But companies today seem to use the term to refer to almost any type of market research—and it’s a bit of stretch.
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We here at 1to1 find ourselves regularly trading stories about customer service. Or the lack thereof. Whether it's how an online store mangled a Christmas order, or how rude and unhelpful a Best Buy manager was when a couple of my colleagues had the gall to ask for a rain check on an advertised deal, we're constantly shaking our heads at how often even the simplest tenets of customer service seem beyond the grasp of so many. But even we
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This year's presidential election will be largely influenced by the online activity of its supporters. In terms of individual participation, email, social networks, and online polls are the most common ways supporters are communicating about a candidate, according to the JupiterResearch report, Political Communication: Mobilizing Online Voters. Like with any customer strategy, the goal is to engender trust and provide a two-way dialog that provides value for all. McCain, Obama, and Clinton are all working online to create such a
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Or should I say, some things just don’t change, as baffling as it may be to some of us who do. One of our readers, and a prolific blogger, Eric Karjaluoto, recently pointed me to two of his posts that coincidently have a common thread: bad habits die hard. One talked about his buying experience with an unscrupulous and unfortunately old-time-stereotypical car dealer—the point of the post, "Blogs Can Kill Brands," was actually about the impact blogging can have on
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Last month specialty retailer Brookstone made a play for its competitors’ customers. It didn’t try to lure them away with lower prices, or create a loyalty program; it didn’t have to.
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Couple of days ago in The New York Times (Monday, March 13 in the Business section) I saw an article about Wal-Mart’s new blogs, being authored without Wal-Mart’s corporate interference or editorial control, by the actual individual merchandisers at Wal-Mart. These blogs are full of their honest opinions about various items of merchandise, including quality and price value, along with a lot of purely personal observations. Real blogs, by real people, who just happen to be responsible for the products
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The success of any business can almost always be traced back to motivated employees. And when an organization is implementing a customer-focused strategy, it’s the employees who will collectively work to make it a success. Unfortunately, motivating people is far from an exact science. Good managers and executives, however, shouldn’t be intimated to implement new and innovative methods to motivate their culture because they think employees might reject the idea or that the organization won’t be able to support and
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Fortune magazine yesterday published its annual list of the 20 most admired companies, and – surprising very few – Apple topped the list. The survey, asking over 3,700 people from dozens of industries to select the 10 companies they admire most, ranks firms in such areas as innovation, social responsibility, quality of management, and quality of products/services. “It is a tribute to its CEO that Apple, which ten years ago seemed headed for the slag heap, is No. 1,” the
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"You're getting all emotional." I've heard people say this to others as a negative, but in business, it can be used as a positive. Forget sales stats, balance sheets, and inventory counts. All customers make decisions with their hearts, so the more you can understand their emotional state, the further you can go to build a strong customer relationship.
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