By itself, mobile technology isn’t all that interesting...

By Mark Helfen

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By itself, mobile technology isn’t all that interesting.

But take data from applications, big data analytics, IT, the cloud, and social networks, and cross all the silo boundaries. Then mix with the unique capabilities of mobile devices - geographic knowledge and “at hand” immediacy – and you can delight customers and give employees the tools of efficiency.

In other words, you can create a right time experience.

Or so says Maribel Lopez, speaker at next Monday’s meeting of the SVForum Marketing and Social Media SIG. Her presentation is titled Right Experience, Right Results: Improve Profits, Engagement w/Mobile & Big Data.

We will be at our now usual place, the Citrix Startup Accelerator, at 6:30.

Lopez is Principal and Founder of Lopez Research and describes her role as an industry analyst. Her work is helping enterprises understand what technology changes mean for them, and providing guidance on deploying the changes and transforming their operations.

While she covers using technology to improve marketing, Lopez also has an operational focus on how the company’s internal function can be improved.  She has the interesting view that you should “treat employees as customers,” so that new technology not only can improve the customer experience, but also improve the employee experience. The objective is always to increase efficiency and profits.

To look at mobile just as advertising is too limiting, not to mention that people will quickly tire of having ads on their phone. But by using all of the available data and context and making mobile interaction a right time experience, and you can delight customers.

As an example, a mobile app could know from your Google mail account that you have a flight leaving at a specific time, know your current location, check the traffic patterns on the route you usually use, know how long it takes to get through airport security at the time you will arrive, and remind you exactly when it’s time to leave for the airport.

Using location based real time information combined with data from multiple sources, the mobile device provides compelling, appropriate and relevant information – a right time experience.

That doesn’t exist, yet.

Another idea is to improve company operations. If your business uses Salesforce.com, by using the phones GPS location automatically show the appropriate Salesforce information by connecting to the cloud when the rep walks into the customer office. This makes the rep’s job easier and more efficient. After the rep leaves, ask for a call report.

The idea is that mobile technology has the potential of delivering “the holy grail” of insight, but only when the technology boundaries are crossed to get a right time experience.

So come by Monday, and learn how you use right time experience to delight customers, delight your own employees, and maybe delight your business bottom line.

Security requires all to pre-register. Please do it on Meetup here. Thanks

 


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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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Your relationship with your customers may be the one competitive advantage that can’t be copied.

By Mark Helfen

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Your relationship with your customers may be the one competitive advantage that can’t be copied.

Or so says Linda Sharp, CEO of Religence, a “customer-focused performance management consulting firm specializing in Customer Relationship Intelligence” according to the company web site.

Sharp will be the speaker at the upcoming SVForum Marketing and Social Media SIG meeting, on June 10. The meeting will be held at our now regular location, the Citrix Startup Accelerator (map here.) The meeting is titled “The Money is in Retention. Start There. Harvest GOLD in the BIG Data Blizzard,” but after my conversation, I could shortcut that to “a better understanding of your customer relationships leads to more profits from you customers.”  As usual, meeting starts at 6:30.

Sharps method is to make measurement of customer relationships as close to a science as possible, creating a metric called “Relationship Value.” The atomic unit of the relationship is an interaction between you and your customer. An interaction can move the relationship forward or backward, but you will have no idea where things stand unless the information is tracked.

Tracking, managing, and improving your customer relationship value requires a person who has this as their primary responsibility, and Sharp recommends making relationship management a separate function and assigning someone the job – a customer relationship manager. This person makes tracking relationships a deliberate and proactive responsibility. 

The task is made easier by widespread adoption of social media, along with more traditional internet connections like email. Where customer interactions were once ephemeral, possibly not recorded at all, they now form a “blizzard” of stored information, just needing that relationship manager and big data techniques to analyze and characterize all of the now collected digital data.

“The behavior of profitable customers is very different than the behavior of customers who aren’t,” said Sharp. But unless you start measuring the interactions, it’s hard to separate out the two. You may not get a precise numerical answer, but even a relative measurement can be enough. And just asking the right question can affect the value of your customer to you.

The outcome is a better understanding of your customer relationship. Analyzing interaction data can help identify patterns of behavior. Some patterns can indicate a customer that is interested in a close relationship. A different pattern can be an early warning of problems in the relationship.

Sharp has an interesting view of how relationship management, and tracking relationship value, affects marketing getting their “rightful place at the management table”: In analyzing the competitive advantages of a business, control of resources is managed by finance. The businesses economy of scale is owned by operations. Technology advantage is owned by Information Technology. But if marketing owns the customer relationship – a competitive advantage that can’t be copied – they take a full seat at the table.

So come by Monday, and learn how customer relationship data can increase your customer retention and profitability. 





Please sign up at:

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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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Email is still the “linchpin” of your marketing strategy.

By Mark Helfen

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Email is still the “linchpin” of your marketing strategy.

Or so says Elyse Tager, West Coast Regional Development Director at
Constant Contact. Tager will be the speaker at the May 13 SVForum Marketing and Social Media SIG meeting. (Remember we are now at a new location -  Citrix Startup Accelerator at 4555 Great America Parkway.)

A key part of Tager’s business development role is delivering educational seminars – specifically helping entrepreneurs and small businesses develop an effective marketing program. Given the limited time and money available, efficiency and effectiveness with a limited budget is key.

Her thinking seems well plugged in to this small business reality. Constant Contact focuses on small and mid-sized companies, including non-profits. Enterprise sized companies aren’t their target.

“It’s no surprise, most small businesses don’t know how to market,” said Tager. People who are dentists, lawyers (or software developers) “didn’t wake up in the morning to be marketers.” They spend their time on their specialty, the thing that makes their business successful, and need tools to help develop a marketing program. 

If the basics of marketing aren’t difficult enough, new communication channels keep appearing. Some may be useful, some not. A marketer needs to “keep their radar open” to see how the environment is changing, while building an effective program.

Tager’s presentation will give a top level review of the growing number of options. From her perspective, mobile is “here yesterday” and should already be part of your marketing mix. Video, Pinterest, Instagram could all be useful. At the same time, you shouldn’t be “seduced” by all of the “crazy stuff” that is appearing.

“Were not all wearing Google Glasses.” Yet.

The old style of marketing – sending out messages to your customers, needs to be replaced. The new social tools need to engage customers and prospects in a two-way conversation.

Tager views email as the core of an engagement strategy – the linchpin. Combined with social tools, it forms a loop that “exponentially increases your reach and engagement.”  Social tools like Facebook are a way of attracting people, but email is under your control, and allows you to control communications. All of this counts on creating content that is compelling and interesting to your current and future customers.

So come by Monday, learn how your small business can develop and effective marketing program within your limits of time and money.

BTW, if you occasionally slip and refer to Constant Contact (the cloud based marketing company) as Constant Comment (the flavored tea) as I did once in my interview, you will be forgiven. Tager said this has happened to her a few times…

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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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Everything you’re doing today is wrong - come by the April Marketing and Social Media SIG and learn why

By Mark Helfen

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When it comes to your customers digital experience, “everything you’re doing today is wrong.”

Or so says Kelly Dempski, speaker at the Monday, April 8 SVForum Marketing and Social Media SIG .

NOTE – we are again at our new home, Citrix, the same as our March meeting, but a change from recent months:

Citrix Startup Accelerator
Map
4555 Great America Parkway 3rd Floor, Santa Clara
http://citrixstartupaccelerator.com/find-us/

Dempski is Managing Director for Accenture Technology Labs, Silicon Valley. He has one foot in the latest innovations in the valley, and the other in explaining the future to Fortune 50 companies who usually move at a different speed. His lab looks three years into the future, with the objective of both optimizing and enhancing change – from his perspective the more of his clients that adopt new technologies, the faster they will develop. He helps his client companies, buried in the avalanche of technology information, distinguish between what is just a “shiny object” and what is a valuable trend that needs action.

His talk is titled SLoPe (Social, Local & Personal) as the New SoLoMo. SoLoMo is a widely used acronym standing for Social, Local, and Mobile – a new way of relating to customers. Dempski chose his contrasting version to emphasize that it’s not mobile (the technology) that counts, its personalization – the unique connection with the individual that makes the difference.

The objective of SLoPe is to “craft more engaging, useful, and pleasant” digital experiences that are “deeply personal.” His presentation will “deconstruct” current practices, which focus on “social media mechanics” – the specific tool or platform like Facebook or Twitter, over connecting, communicating, personalizing and influencing consumers.

He has an interesting take on mobile. The point isn’t that devices are mobile. After all, your laptop is mobile. The idea is that handheld devices are always within a few feet, connected, powered on, and available for use. It’s less about the mechanics of a mobile device, and more about digital experience and engagement using a ubiquitous device that’s always at hand.

The digital world is limited by old design choices. Like the phone systems which still works with people dialing ten digits. The system of TV channels was designed in the 50s. If it was redone today, it would be entirely different. Businesses need to break out of the mold

Dempski’s viewpoint gives a unique bridge connecting the high speed innovation of the valley tempered by the reality of how fast large companies can move. You may view your small startup as moving at a light speed, but in the end you need to sell your products to someone, and large businesses can be good customers.

So come by Monday night, and learn why “everything you’re doing today is wrong” – at least in terms of digital interaction with your customers.





Please sign up at:

Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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Get ahead of 99% of social media and on-line marketers at next Mondays SVForum MarketingSIG.

By Mark Helfen

With some on-line education, you can be ahead of 99 percent of other marketers in effective social media and on-line marketing. Or so says Aaron Kahlow, CEO and Founder of the Online Marketing Institute and speaker at the March 11 SVForum MarketingSIG.

And SIG attendees can get their first week of education free.

NOTE – starting with the March meeting will be at a new location (again!)
Citrix Startup Accelerator
4555 Great America Parkway 3rd Floor, Santa Clara


Kahlow started out around 15 years ago in the back of a dental office as a digital ad agency, designing web pages and optimizing search results. The Institute is now a $10 million a year business that specializes in bridging the education gap between traditional marketing and newer models of social, video, and on-line. The sound of drilling is long gone.

At Monday’s presentation, he will talk about a philosophy of social marketing – how to think about your marketing strategy. His talk will include real-world, global stories of strategies that worked. Kahlow is big on analytics and attribution – having a clear understanding of which social channel actually brings in business, and using this data to guide future investment.

And to prove his belief an attribution, the stories will include links to original materials that were the basis of his examples.

While social means Facebook, Kahlow also emphasizes video. There is more time spent each day watching video than on Facebook, and a “good video strategy” is critical.

The Online Marketing Institute is a subscription based service with classes in social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing and many others. Kahlow described the courses as having “high value and high impact,” and agreed to give MarketingSIG attendees a free week of access.

OMI also offers certificates in a variety of social media marketing. These are recognized by major marketing associations - DMA and IAB were two examples named by Kahlow. By completing the certificate, you will “have a clear differentiation from other people” who do digital marketing, and will know more than 99 percent of them.

True to his social media nature, he invites connections, on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. Just search for his name.

So come by next Monday, and start your social media education.

Sign up on 


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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen


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