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Internet Strategy Briefing (1.4 MB PDF)
Econsultancy’s 46-page Internet Marketing Strategy Briefing, which is is free to download, covers some the most significant online trends and is recommended reading for anyone interested in digital marketing strategy.
The report, which includes case studies and examples of best practice, includes sections on customer centricity, channel diversification, data, social media and content strategy.
Last night Salesforce.com announced version 3.0 of its ServiceCloud product. Today at the Cloudforce event in New York City CEO Marc Benioff revealed more about the new version. Most importantly, ServiceCloud is transforming into a unified communications system for customer support by integrating VOIP and video conferencing technologies - including Apple's FaceTime. Benioff didn't specify, but it's possible some of the new features were built using technology from Salesforce.com 's acquisition of DimDim earlier this year.
How will the ability to contact customer support via FaceTime change the behavior of both the customer and the agent? Face to face video customer support could be a game changer.
“Over the next three years, social CRM will continue its exponential rise, software as a service (SaaS (News
- Alert)) will become routine, salesforce.com will reshuffle the market order, and consultants and system integrators will sell their own CRM software,” said Ed Thompson, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.
The survey suggested that by 2013, spending on social software to support sales, marketing and customer service processes could exceed $1 billion globally. The $1 billion prediction for spending on social CRM compares with Gartner’s forecast of more than $12 billion for overall spending on CRM software in 2012, means that social CRM will encompass approximately 8 percent of all CRM spending in 2012, up from approximate 4 percent in 2010.
Here are the most popular posts according to all of you
A collection of 50+ enterprise 2.0 case studies and examples- I wasn’t able to find a large collection of E2.0 and collaboration case studies online so I aggregated all the one’s I did find and put them together for easy reference
Trends for companies searching for a social media “something”- A quick visual look which scans the job descriptions of job postings to see what companies are looking for as it pertains to “social.”
The many faces of Social CRM- Social CRM has been visualized quite differently by many people so I decided to take the images I found online and aggregate them to show multiple perspectives on the same topic.
Here’s to you, the social media manager!- A little salute and thank you to the social media managers of the world.
An open letter to CRM and social media people- Social CRM is oftentimes discussed as being social media plus CRM but there’s been a bit of arguing between the two camps which I think is unnecessary, there is a lot that everyone can learn from each other, this is my plea to do so.
The evolution of CRM to social CRM- A visual look at how CRM evolved into social CRM.
Social media vs social CRM vs social business vs enterprise 2.0- With so many terms and definitions floating around the web it really becomes hard to differentiate and understand what is what, here’s my attempt to clarify things.
What is social CRM: an introduction (technically from the very end of 2009)- Yes, technically this is from 2009 but it was still a very popular post and worthy of mention here. It’s my attempt to help introduce and clarify the topic of social CRM.
Only when you are confident in your ability to support the collaborative process should you invest in a full-scale social media effort. I recommend following these simple steps:
1. Listen and respond. You should be listening for signals from social media for needs of existing and potential clients. You want to engage proactively: listening at the point of need; as well as reactively: listening for indicators that someone may need help. To provide another personal example, Virgin America effectively and quickly responded to a need I had via social media. Unlike its competitor, Virgin got back to me very quickly, taking care to resolve the issue in the backchannel instead of sending me to an 800 number.
2. Cross-reference social and internal customer data. Is there anything that could have made the Virgin example even better? Certainly! It would have been even better if the company automatically knew my frequent flyer number without me having to message it. To successfully serve someone or give them an unforgettable experience, you need to know what your relationship is with the person who tweeted, your history of communication, as well as purchase history, if it’s a customer. For example, at my company, we help you cross-reference people from the social media stream (either your own or as a result of tracking keywords) to the internal record for a full 360-degree view.
3. Understand context of relationship. Quick caveat: this new level of customer intelligence should be used in context of the relationship. While the customer may want you to get the full scoop on him or her in a customer service scenario, a company should never appear like it is using the personal information of someone who has no relationship with the company.
