Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Social CRM: The Latest Evolution for Managing Customer Relationships
The days are long gone when sales representatives could rely on their ability to “read” prospects to make the sale, thanks to buyers researching their purchases online.
The need to better understand online behaviors to convert leads jump-started the evolution of customer relationship management (CRM). With CRM, organizations benefit from increased operational effectiveness, easier access to data and improved collaboration.
Now, as the CRM evolution continues, the notion of social CRM has empowered organizations – especially sales adn support departments within these organizations –to connect with customers and prospects on an even greater level.
Integrating social media with traditional CRM has enabled organizations to:
1. Focus more on conversations than strictly on automated processes.
2. Progress beyond tracking and reporting on prospect information, and instead become integral parts of communities.
3. Attract prospects online who are searching for answers to business challenges by providing relevant content and information.
4. Activate the intersection of marketing, customer services and sales to attract hotter sales leads.
“Social CRM isn’t just about bolting on a new plug-in to your system like a new air foil on your minivan, but instead a new way of doing business,” Jeremiah Owyang wrote in a recent blog post on his Web Strategy blog. “The promise of social CRM says that companies are truly listening to their customers wherever they are, responding, anticipating and making the commitment to improve products and services.”
One very vital element of social CRM is social selling, which leverages Web 2.0 technologies to provide sophisticated sales insight. That insight enables sales to act as experts in the product selection process instead of negotiators.
True social selling tools enable sales to better understand, prioritize and interact with the hottest leads and opportunities to quickly close more business by:
• Receiving updates about lead activity via email or mobile device
• Using Outlook to reach prospects and sending data to their CRM
• Providing the option to pass back leads to marketing for further nurturing
• Using RSS to send different types of prospect information into one system
• Accessing sites like Demandbase, LinkedIn and Jigsaw from the tools already in use
• Sorting leads in their CRM by priority, allowing sales to contact leads when they need the most attention
• Monitoring key moments and behaviors that matter to sales, and notifying them of such behavior
When engaging with customers socially, they have a high propensity to share that experience with their networks. And the efficacy of this is strong – according to Marketing Sherpa, 87% of consumers trust a friend’s recommendation over a critic’s.
With a predicted 34% compound annual growth rate of social media spending through 2014 according to data from Forrester, our prediction for 2010 is the growth of social CRM will be strong.
This article was reposted from Marketo. Link: http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2010/06/social-crm-the-latest-evolution-for-managing-customer-relationships.html
The need to better understand online behaviors to convert leads jump-started the evolution of customer relationship management (CRM). With CRM, organizations benefit from increased operational effectiveness, easier access to data and improved collaboration.
Now, as the CRM evolution continues, the notion of social CRM has empowered organizations – especially sales adn support departments within these organizations –to connect with customers and prospects on an even greater level.
Integrating social media with traditional CRM has enabled organizations to:
1. Focus more on conversations than strictly on automated processes.
2. Progress beyond tracking and reporting on prospect information, and instead become integral parts of communities.
3. Attract prospects online who are searching for answers to business challenges by providing relevant content and information.
4. Activate the intersection of marketing, customer services and sales to attract hotter sales leads.
“Social CRM isn’t just about bolting on a new plug-in to your system like a new air foil on your minivan, but instead a new way of doing business,” Jeremiah Owyang wrote in a recent blog post on his Web Strategy blog. “The promise of social CRM says that companies are truly listening to their customers wherever they are, responding, anticipating and making the commitment to improve products and services.”
One very vital element of social CRM is social selling, which leverages Web 2.0 technologies to provide sophisticated sales insight. That insight enables sales to act as experts in the product selection process instead of negotiators.
True social selling tools enable sales to better understand, prioritize and interact with the hottest leads and opportunities to quickly close more business by:
• Receiving updates about lead activity via email or mobile device
• Using Outlook to reach prospects and sending data to their CRM
• Providing the option to pass back leads to marketing for further nurturing
• Using RSS to send different types of prospect information into one system
• Accessing sites like Demandbase, LinkedIn and Jigsaw from the tools already in use
• Sorting leads in their CRM by priority, allowing sales to contact leads when they need the most attention
• Monitoring key moments and behaviors that matter to sales, and notifying them of such behavior
When engaging with customers socially, they have a high propensity to share that experience with their networks. And the efficacy of this is strong – according to Marketing Sherpa, 87% of consumers trust a friend’s recommendation over a critic’s.
With a predicted 34% compound annual growth rate of social media spending through 2014 according to data from Forrester, our prediction for 2010 is the growth of social CRM will be strong.
This article was reposted from Marketo. Link: http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2010/06/social-crm-the-latest-evolution-for-managing-customer-relationships.html
Monday, June 7, 2010
Interactions, Engagement & Ecosystems
A "media" model composed of paid, owned and earned efforts is nothing new—however it’s useful to think about this landscape in tandem with the different ways we interact and engage which are enabled through technology. There are essentially three forms of digital engagement which can often overlap (engagement in a single initiative can include all three types) but each form can tend to dominate the experience. It’s important to remember that the type of engagement is contextual to what a participant wants to accomplish.
Types of engagement:
Interactive
This type of engagement is, as its name suggests highly interactive by nature, though what’s worth noting is that there is no social component to it. The primary interaction exists between a person and technology or human to computer. Examples of interactive engagement could be an ATM, or an e-commerce experience or microsites. It can also be a game, video, or any other experience where users engage a system or interact with content. The key distinction is that interactive excludes social interactions between participants.
Social
Social engagement requires the interactions between live human beings (not machines) and/or groups with each other. Most common forms of social engagement can occur on off domain networks such as Facebook and Twitter but can also occur on domain such as corporate blogs or by using the integration of off domain services. The key differentiator for social engagement is that it goes beyond human to computer interaction as described in interactive engagement and usually involves social behavior such as “friending” or human to human direct engagement.
Mobile
Mobile engagement happens exclusively on mobile device as opposed non-mobile device such as a desktop computer. It also takes into context the user behavior of individual(s) who are in mobile situations such as traveling or moving from point A to B. Context in mobile behavior is critical as user activity is influenced by the actual state of being mobile. It’s also worth noting that “mobile” itself may gradually be re-defined over time with devices such at the iPad which blend stationary and mobile behaviors as well as geolocation platforms such as Foursquare which makes mobile activity hyper-local.
Where engagement happens:
Engagement can happen either on domain or off domain and initiatives which include any form of media or content can fall into the following categories:
Paid
Paid efforts always require some type of monetary exchange in order to have initiatives placed on properties whether they be traditional outlets such as display advertising or non traditional outlets such as blogs or advertising within off domain such as Facebook. Paid placement in search initiatives also falls into the category of paid as long as results are tied to non organic or paid searches.
Owned
Owned media typically does not require monetary compensation and can occur on both on and off domain properties that the organization has control over (Facebook pages are off domain, where Websites are on domain but both are owned). Owned properties offer organizations the most control as they can decide what media to promote although off domain properties must be monitored closely as they often support social engagement which cannot be controlled but moderated.
Earned
Earned media nearly always takes place on off domain properties such as forums, blogs, social networks and also mainstream publications. Media is typically earned through word of mouth or unpaid but highly visible results in both search engines and social media referrals. Earned media can also be amplified through outreach initiatives. The core distinction for media which is earned is the absence of overt payment to the property owner for the results.
What This All Means
As stated in the beginning of this piece—much of this should not be new, however it does present new opportunities and challenges for organizations looking to stay in lock step with their customers, consumers and employees. The media ecosystem must be purposefully orchestrated and appear seamless to the individual and groups you are hoping to reach. From a technological perspective, this means potentially adding systems equipped with workflows such as Social Talk or Awareness which allow you to better manage your entire social ecosystem. From a people process, this could mean training and staffing differently. But from the perspective of the people who you want to activate—it simply means that you are relevant to their digital lifestyle. This translates to the the following: we must better understand how people want to engage (IE their motivations and behaviors). For example, the context behind when they want to act "socially" or be left alone and when they are “on the move” vs. stationary. Also, each form of media is its own micro ecosystem within a broader macro media ecosystem—Facebook’s latest addition of community pages could potentially create micro-ecosystems within the broader Facebook environment.
Having intimate knowledge of how these ecosystems thrive (or not) will help us figure out how they can work best together. In other words, get ready to go both wide and deep as you plan digital initiatives. The future of communications will require organizations to be effective both in engaging participants via micro formats while taking a step back and managing media and interactions across the macro (all social, interactive and mobile touch points)—and that’s just on the digital front. The bigger picture? Integration between the digital and real world because this is where it all comes together.
Types of engagement:
Interactive
This type of engagement is, as its name suggests highly interactive by nature, though what’s worth noting is that there is no social component to it. The primary interaction exists between a person and technology or human to computer. Examples of interactive engagement could be an ATM, or an e-commerce experience or microsites. It can also be a game, video, or any other experience where users engage a system or interact with content. The key distinction is that interactive excludes social interactions between participants.
Social
Social engagement requires the interactions between live human beings (not machines) and/or groups with each other. Most common forms of social engagement can occur on off domain networks such as Facebook and Twitter but can also occur on domain such as corporate blogs or by using the integration of off domain services. The key differentiator for social engagement is that it goes beyond human to computer interaction as described in interactive engagement and usually involves social behavior such as “friending” or human to human direct engagement.
Mobile
Mobile engagement happens exclusively on mobile device as opposed non-mobile device such as a desktop computer. It also takes into context the user behavior of individual(s) who are in mobile situations such as traveling or moving from point A to B. Context in mobile behavior is critical as user activity is influenced by the actual state of being mobile. It’s also worth noting that “mobile” itself may gradually be re-defined over time with devices such at the iPad which blend stationary and mobile behaviors as well as geolocation platforms such as Foursquare which makes mobile activity hyper-local.
Where engagement happens:
Engagement can happen either on domain or off domain and initiatives which include any form of media or content can fall into the following categories:
Paid
Paid efforts always require some type of monetary exchange in order to have initiatives placed on properties whether they be traditional outlets such as display advertising or non traditional outlets such as blogs or advertising within off domain such as Facebook. Paid placement in search initiatives also falls into the category of paid as long as results are tied to non organic or paid searches.
Owned
Owned media typically does not require monetary compensation and can occur on both on and off domain properties that the organization has control over (Facebook pages are off domain, where Websites are on domain but both are owned). Owned properties offer organizations the most control as they can decide what media to promote although off domain properties must be monitored closely as they often support social engagement which cannot be controlled but moderated.
Earned
Earned media nearly always takes place on off domain properties such as forums, blogs, social networks and also mainstream publications. Media is typically earned through word of mouth or unpaid but highly visible results in both search engines and social media referrals. Earned media can also be amplified through outreach initiatives. The core distinction for media which is earned is the absence of overt payment to the property owner for the results.
What This All Means
As stated in the beginning of this piece—much of this should not be new, however it does present new opportunities and challenges for organizations looking to stay in lock step with their customers, consumers and employees. The media ecosystem must be purposefully orchestrated and appear seamless to the individual and groups you are hoping to reach. From a technological perspective, this means potentially adding systems equipped with workflows such as Social Talk or Awareness which allow you to better manage your entire social ecosystem. From a people process, this could mean training and staffing differently. But from the perspective of the people who you want to activate—it simply means that you are relevant to their digital lifestyle. This translates to the the following: we must better understand how people want to engage (IE their motivations and behaviors). For example, the context behind when they want to act "socially" or be left alone and when they are “on the move” vs. stationary. Also, each form of media is its own micro ecosystem within a broader macro media ecosystem—Facebook’s latest addition of community pages could potentially create micro-ecosystems within the broader Facebook environment.
Having intimate knowledge of how these ecosystems thrive (or not) will help us figure out how they can work best together. In other words, get ready to go both wide and deep as you plan digital initiatives. The future of communications will require organizations to be effective both in engaging participants via micro formats while taking a step back and managing media and interactions across the macro (all social, interactive and mobile touch points)—and that’s just on the digital front. The bigger picture? Integration between the digital and real world because this is where it all comes together.
This article was originally posted by Logic + Emotion: http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2010/04/engagement.html
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