The era of cold calling, is over!

Does rejection excite you? Nah, me neither but in many cases it is just 'part of the job' and more often than not it is delegated to the junior in the team!
Sometimes you get lucky, perhaps 1 in 5 companies you 'carpet bomb' get you a meeting? But even then, you have to invest a lot of 'manual labour' to research your new prospect, what are they doing (what aren't they doing??), any recent wins/losses, expansion/growth opportunities and plenty more. And to make matters 'worse', all that effort and time doesn't include activity on the social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn among others.

So, a quick math calculation puts all this effort to approximately 1-2 hours per prospect. A successful sales person will need at least x20 that number to ensure they hit their number - so, how can you separate the 'Wheat from the Chaff'?
It's easy - you need a managed, cloud based (no hardware or people skills to source then!), internet and social media analysis platform that is 'always-on', an always 'in your pocket' news service that alerts you every time a company and keyword are matched BUT (and here is the magic) *with ranking heuristics, natural language and text mining service* which supplies the relevant contextual insights required specifically for you. In short, it will change the way you do business and will make you hugely successful and more productive - the era of cold calling is, finally over!

Such a service exists today - it won't hurt you to check out www.artesiansolutions.com to find out more!

Social CRM - and why you should do it!

Some people think CRM doesn't work; some don't see the value in Social Media. But those that spend just 30minutes of their time very quickly realise how the two technologies come together to make their lives easier, more productive, make them more successful and get/keep customers!

I'm talking about Social CRM - the new phenomenon brought alive by Artesian Solutions who are a British company based in Reading (UK) and are headed up by a team of veterans who know what they are doing!

Before you dismiss the thought of engaging in Social CRM yourself, consider this; how long does it take for you or your staff to do market research before you/they pick up the phone and cold call a prospect? I would guess a good hour or so (for each prospect).
How about conducting your own competitive insight - who else is claiming to do the same as you and possibly taking some of your custom away?
Now imagine having all of this information (and so much more) at your finger tips every morning (whether in your Inbox, Salesforce or as a standolone interface), saving you the trouble of scouring web sites, blogs, social media channels such as Twitter or LinkedIn.
Yesterday, I did exactly this for a new user at an existing customer - showed him how he could bring value to his asset management accounts by keeping an eye on the competition and also empowering him with information which one of his accounts will find invaluable.
Another previous example resulted in one of the account managers going back to his desk after some short training, and secured shortly after (same afternoon), a seven figure sum value deal with a new customer.

I use this service daily and it is very interesting to note how much real news slips through the traditional medium net! There are tons of golden nuggets in Twitter for example, some of which never make it into the traditional mediums such as TV, radio or print!

You might be thinking all of this is going to be very expensive, but you would be wrong. It's cheaper than filling your car up with fuel by a significant margin (and of course depends on the number of cars you own/run and people who would want to use such a service).

Individual insight - now more important than ever!

It seems 2012 is the year for digital Individual Insight. Everyone is asking for it, but why should you consider it? That, is what I hope to clear up in this post today.

First of all, what is 'Individual' and what does it mean to me and my business?

Individual is exactly that, a single instance of a person and anything/everything that person says or does.

Why should I care about knowing what an individual says or does?

Knowing someone has been on the web site, failed to complete a process and then left means your business is failing to convince an individual to do something online (that translates into lost opportunity)! When that individual calls into the call centre and completes their transaction offline, understanding why and what the outcome was will help you better tailor your efforts in channels they are less effective.

Take a scenario, someone has just been on Facebook and told their 100+ friends how bad a particular service your company offers, is. Think about the potential impact that might bring to your business - those 100+ friends also have 100+ friends each, taking the total level of exposure of something good or bad to well in excess of 10,000 people! If one in those 10,000 people were about to buy from the same company (or maybe the same product or service), but now don't due to a 'Friends' update, think about the impact that now brings to your business - now consider what if 10 or 100 of those 10,000 people were about to buy from you?

So, knowing the 'individual' activity is highly important, and that is only in the Social world - have you considered your own web site? Imagine the opportunity that awaits you in your own online shop; you know what every individual does that comes to your web site; you know what products they always look at but never buy; you know they like discount items - so next time you run your Sales email marketing campaign, send them a personalised and relevant email.

It may all seem like a no-brainer - after all, why wouldn't you want to get to the level of the 'individual' activity?! They have the ability to give you so much input into what is and isn't working for your business. The reality is no one has really considered or thought about this level of detail, mainly due to not realising such technology actually exists to help them achieve it.

Well, it does exist and I urge any organisation that wants to better target individuals

What can I expect to achieve if I adopt a platform that gives me 'individual' insight?

That promotion you have always wanted? It could happen, if you help shift the mindset of a business to think more laterally. Individual insight will help your business go from good to great, how can it not? Individual insight is now about aggregated views of data; individual insight gives a business the power to know, the power to change, the power to deliver - look at the success Unica and Bluesheep have had over the years, mostly derived from non-online individual insight. Imagine the value your business would get if it were possible to replicate the level of detail known about an individual from the online world in the same way the offline technologies have done so in previous years?

Still not convinced? Individual insight has demonstrated to businesses how they can save £250,000 per annum in adword campaigns, without impacting sales.

It has demonstrated uplift in excess of £1M in incremental revenue every time a Sale email marketing campaign is sent.

It has helped save in excess of £1M in online fraudulent transactions taking place on a web site with multiple credit cards, or shipping to known fraudulent hot-spots, OR individuals getting insurance quotes who chop and change their personal and historical circumstances to achieve a better price...

Individual insight just works! It can bring huge benefits to any organisation, you just have to try it for yourself to appreciate the value it brings.

Who wouldn't want the 'Visibility' piece online (and my 2012 prediction)

So you think you have perfected the online website channel; conversion rate is optimal, revenue stream is consistent, acquisition spend and performance is spot on (lucky you!).
So, where do you go from here? Sure, you could take an early Christmas and kick your feet up, sit back and enjoy the goodies people bring in to the office to spread the Christmas Cheer. Or, you could be doing something unique - something no one else has mastered yet and something that will make you hugely popular should you master it. I'm talking about the 'Visbility' piece, of course.

I coined this phrase back at the start of the year and it's meaning is very simple; "to provide businesses with visibility of what is happening in the social world and effectively merge it with the web site behavioral data", all in realtime.

Just think about it for a second - you have already achieved your ideal KPI's for the performance of the online channel, but what if you could make it even better, with no real significant change needing to be made to your online business, effectively letting you continue what you are doing well already? (low risk then!). What if I could help your business learn how to target new customers or help your business understand who your influencers' are (to keep them influencing), what your poor performing products/services are (social networks is where most people complain or praise something), what content you should be serving to the individual who arrives on your web site based on their likes/dislikes/hobbies and more.

Now, you have the ability to target each individual with what they want to see (before they even know it). It increases your engagement rate (you already know what they like/dislike, so serve appropriate content), likely conversion rate increases, improve satisfaction rate, help promote loyalty and as a bi-product of these improvements, take more revenue online!

It's a no-brainer really but who does this today? No one. In fact, there are technologies (no single vendor... yet), that exist independently that 'could' do it, if only they woke up and smelt the coffee! Think about the business benefits to you, the customer, the vendor and the Industry as a whole - it's a win win win really.

I predict 2012 will see the introduction to such 'theories' whereby they will become a reality - personally, I'm really looking forward to it!
Customer Insight and Social Networks, merging to provide true 'Individual Visibility' - just got to coin a new, whizzy marketing name/phrase for the new internet phenomenon that is imminently (over?) due!

Online Individual Insight - Is It Really A New 'Big Brother' Practise?

Standing on the Celebrus Technologies booth at ExactTarget Connections UK 2011 yesterday, I had a couple of references made to me that got me thinking "That's a bit Big Brother like to me...". That may be true in the online space, but you telling me most of us who drive a car, use a debit/credit card, travel on the train, walk into a high street shop, are naive enough to think that you're not being 'tracked' by an even bigger brother?

Every road near the office has a road 'traffic' camera on it - but are we sure it's only traffic they're monitoring? Are we sure they don't take down your registration number and count the number of times a day you use that road?
What about when you walk into a shop - what are they doing with the camera footage they have taken of you?
What about every transaction made on your credit/debit card? How much YOU spent, where YOU spent YOUR money, WHO you paid it to and so on.
What about the London Underground - what station did you enter, which station did you leave - what was your route?

You see, BIG BROTHER is everywhere - isn't it therefore only 'normal' that some online monitoring is also taking place? Perhaps more to the point, if I really can make your experience better (online or offline - and I really do mean, make it better!!), then is a platform that performs detailed observations a bad thing? After all, if the platform is genuine and not malicious in any way, you can always 'Opt-out' by the click of a mouse button...

Either way, the choice is yours. Personally, I encourage it.

The Emergence Of Social Networks Has Not Just Changed How People Communicate And Share Information With One Another

The emergence of social networks has not just changed how people communicate and share information with one another. It has the power to fundamentally change business in ways that are just beginning to be discovered. The social network is no longer just an interesting technological showcase; it is a cultural phenomenon and the most disruptive technological force in society today.

Consider this, you are a representative for Sports personalities; you make money off the back of the success (or failures) of individuals through PR. The people or personalities you represent are high profile, always in the limelight and sometimes get things wrong, or very right!
Wouldn't you, as their representative, like to know the value (and risk) the individual holds in the Social Networks?

That is where you need individual 'customer' insight. This term 'Individual Customer' insight, is often associated with end-user web sites where personalised content can be promoted or served based around the ongoing profile being built around an individual, from the very first click! But, such technology now exists to analyse in microscopic detail the behaviours that are occurring on Facebook, for example.

Facebook is the world’s biggest self-updating data source, with over 750 million members, who willingly give up around 150 crucial bits of lifestyle information about themselves.

Consider the value of knowing a high profile personality has 250,000 fans - now consider the marketing opportunity you have to those 250,000 fans. Perhaps you can establish partnerships with leading brands such as Adidas or Nike, Cannondale or Scott, BMW or Mercedes and so on. Suddenly, 250,000 fans in the Social Networks have a seriously attractive financial attraction - increase the wealth of your Sports personality, keep their loyalty and increase your own wealth and portfolio by becoming increasingly more successful and popular.

You have the connections, technology exists to feed you with the valuable insight you are yearning for. What are you waiting for?

Heard it all before...

Again, I have read another article which suggests traditional visitor insight platforms are capable of providing detailed and actionable insight on the behaviors exhibited by people like you and I on their web site(s). They articulate it in a way that fools you into believing they can actually do it - I challenge anyone to show me a working example?

I hate to say it, but it's all tosh! They cannot get to the low level of visitor insight and I can vouch for that having used most of the leading platforms in the business today. IF (and that's a BIG IF) they can/could get to low level visitor insight, what can they do with it in realtime? Surely, any organisation that wants low level visitor insight wants it to do something with it other than build pretty charts and graphs?
What if you could promote complementary/cross-sell products based on a previous purchase? Or, perhaps proactively let someone know via SMS that their car MOT is due for renewal (before it expires!)? Or, maybe deliver to them a personalised message/offer based around their sentiment on posts in Facebook or Twitter? Perhaps they dislike your prices (and they are a high value, existing customer?) so they have told the world about a deal they got with a competitor? Surely you don't want to lose low risk, high value customers? If you didn't know, it costs approximately 6-7 times more money to re-market a lost customer than it does a brand new customer...

When we live and talk about making cost cuts, why do we never really consider where we can make significant savings on the web rather than throw our money at prospects who will never buy, unlikely to buy or as in the home utilities markets (such as Electricity, Gas or Water suppliers) have bought in to a story/vision but then had such a bad experience they left? We need to know who these people are, in advance and preferably before they leave without buying or have bought and don't buy again through poor performance on 'our part'? The problem, from my own experience, is these companies factor 'defective traits' into their business models. What if, for once, they didn't and it was increasingly important to every energy company to keep hold of an existing customer. What might that mean to wholesale energy prices? What would that mean in fiscal terms to our household bills?

At the end of the day, to do any of the above you need low level, realtime visitor insight. Such platforms exist today but they are not your traditional insight platforms. You might also be surprised to learn the time to data and insight using such platforms is VERY short - a few weeks versus a few months/years/never?

In my humble experience (15years+), I'm yet to see a traditional insight platform deliver such insight to an organisation which yields such significant insights, revenue, customer retention, increase loyalty and more.

I will happily 'eat my hat' if I'm proven wrong (so please show me what I'm missing, if anything?).

Can you bend technology too far?

I hear it all the time. I need this tool to deliver this, that tool to deliver that then a year or few later, they retire to the fact that the technology will never be capable of delivering on a 'false promise'. It didn't stop the vendor selling the software and happily taking Mr Customers money though, did it!

So, perhaps we are now living in an era where there really is no-one platform that is capable of providing a definitive business platform. After all, I'm sure (like me) you have worked on projects where horrendous amounts of time have been spent (as well as money!!) to deliver on 'false-promises'. Add up the amount of money spent, then work out the ROI on that spent cash! I bet its not as good as you were hoping for, huh?

I find myself speaking more and more to businesses that can and do provide a solution to address the modern day business pains, but it's not by using one business reporting platform. Businesses need to consider what it is they need/want to deliver and then work out what they need to deliver it.

For example (and speaking from an Analysts point of view), I might need full, rich data from every data silo, including the search platform, telephone/ivr platform, email platform, web platform, marketing attribution platform and more. In fact, the more data I have, the better an Analyst I can be and the better the insight I can provide! I need BigData then! Problem with 'BigData' is it can sometimes be too much!
So, I need a Business Intelligence platform that can handle BigData; one that is with me at all times, not just restricted to the desktop and one which is scale-able and quick to deploy (and one which won't hurt the budget!!).

So, which vendors make claims to be able to do all this today? I know a few and I also know a few end-users who have a lot to say about a vendors inability to deliver on the promise, now known to me as the 'false-promise'. And that's after a VERY EXTENSIVE tagging discussion, time consuming and detailed documentation and testing processes... I really believe businesses are tired of tagging everything they want insight on. There are alternatives, Atomic Labs with their PION platform or Celebrus Technologies spring to mind - both working very differently but neither requiring 'tags'.

Disparate data needs to come together, I appreciate that. If you think back a few years ago, this was a big problem with such badly fragmented data, however now platforms exist which can 'power customer data hubs' and I can speak from 15 years experience, that these platforms ARE delivering a step change within organisations, are winning awards and and delivering on the promise (with customers shouting about their successes - how many have done that before?!).

Perhaps now then businesses need to step back a bit and take a look at their infrastructure, where they want to be, how they plan to get there and the value to the business on getting there sooner. Cloud based storage is now cheap enough, fast enough, efficient and secure enough to become a possible hosting platform for most types of business, business platforms can feed into 'the cloud', tag-free platforms exist, cost effective BI exists, individual visitor level tracking exists, real-time communication exists... Need I go on?

What Do Visitor, Weather, a CDH And Online Performance Have In Common?

We all know that today we live in a world of readily available technology gadgets providing almost an unlimited ways and means to access information on the WWW. We also appreciate that Social Networks can now play a big part in driving traffic to our web site, as well as away.

But what happens when the weather outside is hot or cold? Wet or dry? Have you, as a business, considered the effect weather plays to your online and high street sales? Usually, it's one or the other; strong high street sales in nice, warm weather or strong online sales in nasty, cold and wet weather. But could you literally have your cake and eat it by addressing online better, regardless of the weather outside?

Which brings me to my purpose of this blog posting; you can now feed Weather data to your Customer Data Hub (CDH for short) which is THE place to store all your offline and online data. Couple that with a Real-Time engine and you have a powerful combination for providing relevant content to the appropriate people!

Recently, Google launched its own Weather API. So, Consider this theory with an online retailer:

With real-time content injection into a browser now possible, based around various attributes known or unknown of a visitor, a business can promote relevant items which a shopper might well be in the mood for buying.

For example, let's assume for a minute that I'm visiting your web site in October and I'm from Southern England. It's now Autumn and according to Google Weather, it's windy, raining and chilly (but not freezing cold) and I happen to be in the market for something that will take the chill off a chilly day whilst I'm out walking the dog, keep me dry for the rainy days and hopefully keep me from being too windswept!
So, when I arrive on your web site, why are you promoting big winter coats, scarves, bobble hats and gloves?
However, in northern England, it's bitterly cold, significant amounts of snow have fallen in the higher grounds and I'm in the market for a big warm coat, scarf and gloves.
Your current web site setup is only really appealing to 50% of your customer/visitor base today.

When it comes to relevant and appropriate communication, we need to consider the above scenarios. Just because we have seasons doesn't mean the current weather reflects the season we're supposed to be in.

If, as a business, I know weather for the region a visitor is coming from, surely as an online clothing retailer, I can promote the relevant products, to the right people, at the right time. Better still, if I know their purchasing history, also at the right price!

Simply putting the location you're interested in at the end of a Google Weather API string, I get back a vast amount of information back about the weather forecast for the rest of the week: http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=Newbury

Give it a go and change your location from Newbury to somewhere else above and look at the XML returned. This could take online clothing retailers to the next level of offering personalized, relevant content. All you need as a business is the location (and you can gleam that from a registration process).

Social Networks, are you monitoring them?

When it comes to social networks, positive and negative connotations spread fast. It is usually the negative ones people write most about and they are the ones anyone should be most afraid of.

Earlier, I blogged about how telecommunication companies should be monitoring their web site behaviors more than they do already. I articulated the potential loss in revenue over a 12-18month contractual period could be as much as £3M if patterns in individual visitor behaviors are not spotted early enough - this could and most likely is through defection to another network provider.

So, continuing the theme, Social Networks also play a huge part in pushing potential losses further for a business that is failing to keep its customers 'happy'.
Take the scenario that a visitor is unhappy. The customer tries to solve the unhappiness, whether it be online, offline in the store or on the phone, but fails to do so. They go to Twitter or Facebook and rant about the mobile phone operator. The update is broadcast to the 'unhappy customers' 500+ friends on Facebook who then join in on the 'conversation'. There is a good/high chance that 1 in 3 of those 'friends' on Facebook have a mobile phone account with your network. Therefore, the 'unhappy customer' has a high degree of influence and that should be of concern to your business.

By using a Social Network insight platform, you can get one step ahead of who is saying what, where and when. By combining that with an Individual Customer/Visitor Insight platform, your business can hopefully appease the disgruntled 'unhappy customer' when they call in the store, on the phone or even visit the web site with a token gesture 'gift' or reduction in tariff or free line rental.

I'm sure you can think of better examples to appease 'unhappy customers', but the important bit here is reaching out to someone who could hurt your brand, image and reputation before the damage has been done. Surely, that is worth saving?

Social Media And Its Uses In Business

I often speak to people who still consider Social Media to be Facebook. They don't really get it, don't understand its purpose and value. Then when you ask them about Twitter, they like to make jokes about being a 'twit'.

I have read emails, forum posts and heard in conversation that Social Media within businesses is mostly used for PR (Press Releases). Really? I personally use Social Media to either learn something new about something I'm interested in, follow the news/travel/weather updates (more reliable than radio or TV in my opinion). On numerous occasions, Social Media has pulled through for me and given me what I wanted so for that reason, I passionately believe it WORKS!

Honestly, businesses need to really start embracing technology beyond the traditional means of telephone and email. Social Media is here to stay; it is cheap/free to use, has fantastic geographical reach, is incredibly viral and as a Technologist (and futurist), I like to think businesses will one day embrace Social Media to give them the competitive advantage they always yearn for. After all, what business/brand wouldn't like to know what someone thinks about a product or a service they offer?

So, I have a question to all my readers: How valuable would knowing who has said what, where and when be to your business when they visit your web site or call the call center? If you know the visitor is happy, unhappy or undecided, would you communicate differently to them if you knew 'details' in advance?

Thanks for reading.