2011 |Alterian Blog | Social Media, Email, Web Content & Campaign Management

Archive for 2011

Moneyball, Social Intelligence and Extracting the Gold from Social Media

Thursday, October 20th, 2011

When my colleague, Scott Briggs, presented this analogy of Social Intelligence as today’s “Moneyball” opportunity for business at Social Media Masters Tour, Toronto, I was intrigued. Not knowing much about Moneyball, (aside from Brad Pitt’s involvement in the new movie) I asked Scott to clue me in so I could share his thoughts with you:

Metrics to Win

In the late 1990’s, the Oakland A’s, faced with a common business problem of limited resources, decided to flip the process of choosing new players on its head. Instead of using the traditional methods most MLB teams had been using to measure player success, they created their own darn metrics – banking on finding winning players who would be overlooked by their rivals. They predicted they could use this strategy to win while spending less money, since they would avoid a bidding war with more well-financed rivals. Their new way of measuring player success would be just as accurate, if not more so, and would save them money.

The A’s, against the advice of “traditional” baseball minds, implemented their strategy and began winning games, slowly igniting a revolution in the way baseball players were evaluated. Their strategy worked (though arguably better for the Red Sox, who went on to apply this strategy to win two world series). And the rest, as they say… is history

Extracting the Gold

So what does a Major League Baseball team (or a Brad Pitt movie, for that matter) have to do with marketing success or social media? The Oakland A’s developed a strategy that applied new data in non-traditional ways to gain a competitive advantage. Similarly in the social space, many brands are measuring, but a select few brands have become truly sophisticated in the way they use social intelligence to drive business strategy. Just as Moneyball looked beyond how players were evaluated by utilizing new data and metrics, while social intelligence looks beyond how business decisions are made today to add insights never before available.

Social Intelligence provides businesses the best opportunity they have to gain a competitive advantage. There is untapped potential that the data collected from all those social networks can provide to businesses, that goes far beyond where social media is typically applied today in marketing and communications.

Do you agree with Scott’s analogy? Is your company using social media as a predictive tool to measure product success or any other advanced application of social data?

Want to learn more about how smart brands are moneyballin’ their way to competitive advantage using social media intelligence? Join Scott Briggs for our upcoming webinar: Moneyballin’ – Mining the gold from social media with Social Intelligence. Scott will share some of the advanced techniques that brands are using to move from simply collecting data to truly analyzing and drawing insights that are fueling smart business decisions.

Tags: Analytics, Moneyball, Social Intelligence
Posted in Social Media Marketing, Web Behavior Analytics | No Comments »

JUMP at the chance to get value out of a tradeshow

Monday, October 10th, 2011

Having attended many tradeshows it is clear that iPads are the current give-away of choice. Yes, we give them away on occasion too, but has it become too predictable a prize? I can only imagine that if I were to wind the clock back, the fax machine was the prize du jour in the 90s. I understand from a colleague who was on our stand at DMA in Boston last week that one company was giving away a Smart Car! That’s great but…

The thing that bugs me about tradeshow give-aways are that they use very little imagination. The barrier to entry can be too low for the value of the prize, and therefore the data you collect is more likely to be a measure of how good the honey on your stand was and not a reflection of your efforts to have the right people on your stand for the right reasons.

A tradeshow prize needs to offer value to the recipient and be in keeping with your target audience. In the last few years we have upped our game at offering something of value to visitors of our stands at various shows around the world.

As a starter, we offer for free our ‘Little Books’ series, and that is because the content delivers high value on every page. It doesn’t preach or sell; it shares knowledge more than any donut, key-ring or bottle of water can ever achieve.

Competitions on stands will always to exist, but when you offer a prize, you should have some kind of barrier to entry (Hint: This is where you can get truly creative). At Social Media World Forum in London, we identified the type of people that would attend the show and what we would be demonstrating and wanting to talk about –our social media products and services in this instance. Therefore, it made sense to run a competition that would deliver a prize of high value (higher than an iPad) and would have absolute resonance with those wanting to enter – detailed social media insight relevant to your business.

We gave one of our social media insight reports away, and the uptake on the competition was very successful. The conversations we had with prospects in order to enter the competition were fruitful for both parties and made a lasting impression beyond a squeezy stress toy, boiled sweets or mug.

If you are in London on Wednesday 12 October and you will be attending JUMP, come and visit us on Stand C3, ask us for one of our Little Books of Customer Engagement (numbers are limited so be sure to make an early visit), and ask us about Alterian Alchemy^TM .

As for value-added output from our stand, we are not going to be running a competition to give-away a prize on this occasion, but instead, we are hosting social media insight clinics with Patrick Massey and Luke Moore. As part of the JUMP event sign-up, attendees can register to attend a number of clinics. Most of our appointment slots are now booked up, but keep an eye out for last-minute availability via @Alterian tweets on the day.

Tags: contest, DMA, giveaway, incentives, JUMP, Social Media World Forum, trade shows
Posted in Campaign Management and Analytics, General Marketing, Social Media Marketing | No Comments »

When does a potential crisis yield a great outcome? – Behind the scenes at the DMA

Friday, October 7th, 2011

I just returned from a few days at the DMA conference in Boston. As usual, Alterian had booth space at the show, and we also participated in the Event Triggered Marketing Solutions session, a real-time showdown with two of our key competitors, Unica and Neolane. This session, run by a neutral moderator, gives each participant a campaign challenge and scenario long in advance, asks them to set up the challenge in their systems, and then each have a 15 minute portion of the session to show the audience how they would solve the particular challenge with their software.

While we have done this many times before, the difference this year was a potential crisis. The crowd filling the room looked to be in the typical range of 150 or more people. Up front were the representatives from each of the three companies, talking amongst themselves. But as the conversation went on, Mike Fazio, our presenter quickly realized the scenario they were discussing did not match his. After inquiring further, he realized the campaign challenge scenario he had built was for the NCDM conference –not the DMA challenge – and in no way compared to what was about to be shown. The other two presenters empathized with Mike’s situation and agreed to go first. They suggested he watch what they presented and try to just talk to it, since his campaign set up did not match, and they both agreed there was no way there would be time to build a new one.

Instead, Mike used the 30 minutes before his presentation, sitting at the presenters table in front of everyone, to start from scratch and build a completely new campaign including analytics, segmentations, customer triggers and calculations, and more. He then stood up 3^rd in line and presented the full scenario and campaign in a flawless fashion, unbeknownst to anyone else but those 3 presenters in the room.

The moderator and two other presenters were amazed he and our software were able to build up all steps of a real scenario and campaign both in that amount of time and in front of all the people without anyone realizing it, let alone Mike’s ability to present it in front of everyone flawlessly. Even though I had seen dry runs of his presentation, I did not notice what he was doing. And though the presentation seemed different to me, I did not catch on until I was told later.

Obviously, congratulations go out to Mike for the great job he did. I told him such, and he came back to me with an enthusiastic response excited with what our software allowed him to do. The fact that I didn’t even know what was going on was what he was most proud of. He later told me, “That was the most rewarding part – knowing that no one in the audience could tell what I had just experienced, even those who had already seen a dry run. I could have never accomplished this using another solution, or even the older versions of our software. But most of the credit really goes to Alchemy and to our developers. They have really created something special.”

Once the stress of the potential crisis was over, he could enjoy the excitement of pulling off such a challenge in such a time frame. It doesn’t get much more “real” than that, and as Mike reflected, there are always times in a marketer’s life when they realize something is wrong in a campaign and they have little to no time to solve it… but have to.

What could have been a real crisis turned out to be the best demo I’ve ever seen. Especially when I learned the details behind it. I just wish we had been allowed to tell everyone in the presentation what had just happened. It would have impressed them all the more.

Tags: Alterian Alchemy, Direct Marketing Association, DMA 2011, Event Triggered Marketing Solutions
Posted in Campaign Management and Analytics | No Comments »

Event Triggered Marketing Solutions at DMA 2011

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

I’ll be packing my bags this weekend and heading to Boston for DMA2011. This is always an exciting event for marketers, and of course my favorite part of the DMA each year is the Event Triggered Marketing Solutions session… Or as I like to call it, the “campaign shoot-out.”

Alterian will once again face off against two other campaign management competitors, using Alterian Alchemy^TM, its framework for multi-phase, multi-channel, interactive customer engagement. We accepted the challenge last year while Alterian Alchemy^TMwas still in beta, and now that it’s in General Availability, we’ll be able to showcase even more functionality.

Moderated by Bernice Grossman, president of DMRS Group Inc., this event is always one not to miss! Attendees will see how three different marketing solutions address the same event-triggered issue, all within just 20 minutes each.

Last year, this session was standing room only, and I can only imagine it will draw the crowds in this year as well.

We would love to see you there and would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Event Triggered Marketing Solutions

Track: Real-Time & Trigger Marketing

Date: Monday, October 3, 2011

Time: 11:15 AM – 12:15 PM

Location: Room 151B

Description: See how identical event-triggered marketing campaign requirements are addressed by three different companies. Learn how each vendor translates a set of requirements into a fully detailed event triggered data flow.

Tags: Campaign Shoot-Out, DMA 2011, Event Triggered Marketing Solutions
Posted in Campaign Management and Analytics | No Comments »

The Impact of Influence on Social Media Measurement

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

Guest blog post by Sam Fiorella, Chief Strategy Sensei, Sensei Marketing

Analysts love metrics. Specifically, metrics that can be easily selected, tracked and added, which when aggregated provide the raw data resources to create benchmarks and predict how the audience may behave in the future. To analysts – at first anyway – Social Media seemed God-sent because it allowed direct access to that audience and provided immediate and unfiltered feedback. No longer did we have to run costly focus groups with representative samplings and impose those findings on the whole. We now have access to the entire community and the ability to solicit feedback from the entire group.

So why is measuring Social Media still such a debate?

We’ve all seen the statistics on the growing number of people that continue to flock to social channels to share their experiences and opinions. According to a JC Williams Study, 91% of those surveyed indicated that customer content is their primary decision criteria. In a similar study, Marketing Sherpa reports 87% trust a friend’s recommendation over a critic’s review. We all know this; what we don’t know is how to effectively quantify its value to the business.

Marketers have begun to map how Social Media influences the sales cycle, yet it’s that influence that business executives and marketers struggle with. Blogs, Social Networks, Mobile Check Ins, Product Reviews, etc. all have an impact on the sales cycle. It’s been estimated that 1 word-of-mouth conversation has the impact of 200 TV ads but there’s an evolving threat to the purchase decision beyond simple social commentary. We are now beginning to understand the importance of the nature of the engagement that consumers have with each other, the product and the brand’s employees. These relationships directly (those your customers are engaged in) and indirectly (those that are being observed by others) form an impression that has more influence over the sales cycle than user-generated content.

Measuring the nature of that influence is what has so many analysts perplexed when it comes to gauging the effectiveness of social media engagement. How do you measure the “nature of influence” on the sales cycle in linear, numerical statistics that executives demand and are accustomed to? Tracking and reporting social activity such as likes, follows, referrals, purchases, etc. does not translate to this new requirement.

The Common Measurement

There’s one common measurement denominator that many social media marketers have been avoiding but that can solve this dilemma: profit. Measuring anything in a business is meaningless if there’s no business, and profit is the lifeblood of a business. So measurement goals must shift from counting metrics such as social activities to monitoring how social engagements are impacting the business’ bottom line. Measurement practices must evolve to chart the entire customer lifecycle including the conversations that influence it.

Tracking and scoring the context, frequency, participants and tone of conversations that touch the customer lifecycle – and how the outcome on the business’ profit differs when the nature of those influencers change – is key.

We live in an era where our brains are almost literally connected to each other through technology. Decisions are considered and made by the collective. We’re currently measuring how that collective makes decision based on the amalgamation of individual experiences but the next frontier in social media measurement is to identify how the nature of influence impacts the bottom line.

Sam Fiorella is a globetrotting interactive marketing strategist who has earned his stripes over the past 20 years in senior management roles with corporate sales &marketing teams as well as consulting for more than 30 marketing agencies. Sam’s experience with over 1600 Interactive projects during the past 15 years spans the government, finance & insurance, manufacturing, national retail and travel/tourism sectors. Currently, Sam is the Chief Strategy Sensei at Sensei Marketing, where he is charged with strategic campaign guidance and marketing technology development that power the Sensei Customer Lifecycle Methodology. Sam is a respected blogger and popular keynote speaker on marketing, branding and social media communications having presented at more than 200 conferences in the past 2 years. Follow Sam on Twitter or Connect with him on LinkedIn.

Scott Briggs of Alterian will present at the Social Media Masters conference, produced by Social Media Club and Sensei Marketing in Toronto, Friday, October 7. Register with discount code smmsensei to receive a 30% discount off the full ticket price ($299.00) and an invitation to the tweetup the night before.

Posted in Social Media Marketing | No Comments »

Is the future of the web horizontal?

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

We recently worked with one of our larger Content Management customers to discuss what the web might look like in 2015. A big question, and a very good question.

Being in product marketing, I need to have an understanding of what’s happening in terms of developments in the web space. I took some time to update myself with a lot of research material I usually don’t find the time to read, and I browsed the web; skimming blogs, forums and what have you, to make sure I was up to speed on the very latest market developments, acronyms and analyst views.

One of the interesting things that struck me was the change materializing in the way web pages and user interactions are designed.

Driven by clever user interface designs from companies such as Apple, and the way touch screen driven Operating Systems and user interfaces of mobile devices work these days (think ‘swipe gestures’), UI’s are moving toward horizontal scrolling, rather than using the vertical scrolling method we’ve been using for several decades (actually, ever since the first text terminals were invented).

Horizontal scroll websites often lend themselves keenly to photography content sites but are not limited to image-based content or the portfolios of designers. There are websites out there that have been using horizontal layouts for quite some time, but mainstream adoption has so far never taken place.

As widescreen monitors also become bigger and bigger, this becomes a far more logical choice. On my own 24” monitor I have long ago moved the Windows taskbar form the bottom of the screen to the left hand side, as the amount of horizontal real estate is so much bigger.

Windows 8, the next version of Microsoft Windows, also introduces the horizontal scrolling mechanism as the new way of controlling your desktop. So clearly Windows has picked up on this trend as well.

We discussed this with our customer as one of the things to keep in mind for the years to come. And now, less than a week later I spotted the new BBC website, still in beta. Most of the time, it shows you the traditional “vertical” site, but every now and then it switches to use the new horizontal design. You might give it a try and perhaps you’re one of the lucky few to get a sneak preview. For those of you that are less fortunate, I have included a screenshot.

It would be interesting to get your view on this change in web design. Are you considering it? Have you seen interesting examples of sites already adopting it? And do you perceive it to be better and easier to use?

Tags: horizontal web, swipe UI, user interface
Posted in Web Content Management | No Comments »

10 Tips for Stretching Your Marketing Budget

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

When is the last time you felt confident in the health of the global economy? While there has been some marginal growth over the last year, today’s financial news points to a second economic decline; whether it’s the US debt ceiling crisis or the threat of a Greek default, all signs point to a double dip recession.

But don’t lose hope. Whether we’re on our way up or sliding back down, with careful thought and planning, you can cut costs without limiting your goals.

Below are ten tips for stretching your marketing budget in uncertain economic times.

1. Cut where you can – This is the first and most obvious step. But it is important not to cut arbitrarily. Doing so may lead to greater hardship in the long run. Instead, analyze past campaign performance and cut from the areas that were least successful.

2. Renegotiate contracts – Nothing is certain in life except death and taxes. It doesn’t hurt to attempt renegotiating vendor contracts, even if the expiration date isn’t near. If market prices are lower than when you initially signed, ask that the price be lowered to today’s rate. Chances are good that your vendor values a contract renewal more than the higher rate.

3. Share resources – Many organizations, especially within marketing departments, have moved to a shared services model. One of its benefits is greater accountability around resource management. Think about your own finances. If you pay for your water bill, you are more likely to turn off the water while brushing your teeth. But sharing resources doesn’t have to be all about pinching pennies. It can offer an opportunity to utilize services you can’t afford on your own.

4. Lean on PR – If your marketing team isn’t already working closely with the PR team, set up a meeting tomorrow. A partnership profits both parties. PR can benefit by utilizing marketing created content (although it may need edits to fit a media outlet). And marketing can ensure it gets the most out of PR by helping to identify the publications most likely read by potential buyers. Even adjusting the links in articles, press releases and boilerplates can help drive potential leads deeper into the sales funnel.

5. Ask for discounts – It’s easier to pay full price with money in your pocket. Likewise, when your bank account is low, it’s easier to walk away. Don’t be afraid to ask for deeper discounts. And if you have to say ‘no’ all together, you’ll simply have more money to put toward another budget item.

6. See where you can spend to save – Stretching budgets isn’t all about cutting. You may find that increasing your spend in one area allows you to reduce costs in another. For example, if you’ve had a strong return on investment with SEO and online advertising, increasing this budget may allow you to reduce spend on other lead generation efforts.

7. Expand roles – No one wants to be overworked, but most will welcome the opportunity to build the skills that will help them meet their career goals. Talk to your employees and find out what they want to be doing that they aren’t.

8. Go vintage – A fashion trend from two years ago is ‘old’, but a trend from twenty years ago is ‘vintage.’ Take a look back at those forgotten marketing campaigns to see what you can reuse. Pay particularly close attention to campaigns from before your tenure. A fresh pair of eyes can pull out the best features of a previous campaign and turn it into something new and exciting.

9. Barter – Tough times call for creative measures. Renegotiating contracts and asking for discounts aren’t the only way to save money with vendors. Where it’s feasible, don’t be afraid to ask for a barter arrangement. Just make sure to crunch the numbers to ensure you don’t lose out in the end.

10. Make better use of technology – From teleconferencing to digital asset management to workflow tools, sometimes we need to get in the habit of using something to see its benefit. And sometimes we just need a little help in learning how to use it. Spending a few hours reviewing help documentation, online tutorials or engaging in a user community can save exponentially more time.

How have you stretched your marketing budget? Please share your tips in the comments.

Tags: budget, double dip recession, economic recession, Marketing Budget, marketing spend
Posted in General Marketing | No Comments »

Social media and crisis management: Be aware of the risks, but don’t ignore the rewards

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

Alterian recently presented two research pieces on crisis communication – cloud outages and social media driven PR crises. The conclusion in both cases was clear; when it comes to your crisis plan, you need to be proactive, and your reaction must be lightning fast. The only way to do this is tap into all of the resources available to you.

Even though it may be scary that people can quickly and easily spread bad news and negative opinions about your company online, it is no reason to bury your head in the sand and hope that social media will just go away. Be mindful of the dangers, but don’t forget to harness the opportunities.

Social media now provides brands with a live barometer – a data source they can freely tap into – to help them stay in front of potential issues and identify problems before they erupt into a full-blown crisis. Companies that implement strategic listening programs are proactively (and successfully) monitoring issues like product failure, customer service problems and brand image challenges to minimize the damage these issues can pose.

Wilson Raj’s recently published eBook – The “How To” of Reputation Monitoring gives examples of some of the smart ways brands are incorporating social media into their crisis planning. He explains that brands need to ask the right questions, establish priorities based on the likelihood that an event will occur, and imagine scenarios and triggers for those potential crises.

The book outlines a four step approach to incorporating social media into reputation and crisis monitoring:

1. Listen (determine keywords, identify triggers for key events, establish your baseline)

2. Interpret (analyze and interpret social data)

3. Prepare & React

4. Monitor (establish KPIs and goals, use social data to measure the effectiveness of your crisis plan)

More and more companies are implementing monitoring programs to help them prepare for and deal with reputation events. However, many realize after a crisis has occurred, that they needed to be listening more closely to the right conversations to react quickly – and identify the issue before it gains momentum. When companies combine listening programs for crisis identification with listening programs for improved crisis communication strategy and optimization, the rewards truly transform corporate communications and risk management.

Tags: crisis management, eBook, reputation monitoring
Posted in Social Media Marketing | No Comments »

Disaster Heard ‘Round the World: The role of social media in a PR crisis

Monday, September 12th, 2011

As a PR professional, I understand there are a few unchanging rules when dealing with a crisis. Key among these are acknowledging the crisis quickly and responding honestly, offering the public as much information as possible. Now, in the age of social media when news can sweep the globe in a nanosecond, these rules become even more important.

But while too many companies fail to plan for crisis communications, even more are unprepared for that crisis to make its way to the social sphere. A recent study by PR agency Burson-Marstellar and market research and consulting firm Penn Schoen Berland, found that while 79% of business leaders expect to face a crisis within the next 12 months, only half understand their online audience and how to engage with them, despite recognizing the importance of digital media.

This worrying trend compelled us to take a closer look at just how big a role social media plays in a PR crisis and the effects a crisis can have on a brand’s reputation. Using our social media monitoring tool, SM2, our research team analyzed three infamous social media driven PR crises:

· Nestlé vs. Greenpeace

· Domino’s employees caught in the act

· United Airlines breaks guitars

We looked at each brand over a six month period, beginning three months before the crisis and tracking the three months following. We examined both volume of social media posts about the brands and the sentiment of each social media post before, during and after the crisis to determine the severity of the public’s reaction. By looking at the data for three months in advance of the crisis, we were also able to determine the average net sentiment for each brand and the time it took them to return to their pre-crisis standing.

Looking at these three incidents, we found that the more proactive the brand was in handling the crisis, the more quickly they were able to recover. While Nestlé offered very little explanation and tried to cover up the issue, they took 50% longer to return to their average pre-crisis sentiment. Domino’s, on the other hand responded quickly, acknowledged the issue, made an apology and offered a resolution, and they were the fastest to bounce back.

Check out the infographic below for the highlights of our findings.

Want to learn more about our research and methods? Join Steve True tomorrow, September 13 at 2:00pm CT, as he presents a webinar with a full analysis and deep-dive into the data.

Tags: crisis communication, infographic, PR crisis, public relations, social media crisis
Posted in Social Media Marketing | No Comments »