CRM and Email Marketing

Since CRM (customer relationship management) is supposed to mean any one or any system that interacts with customers one would logically think that email marketing would be an integral part of any CRM solution.

But it isn’t.

Email marketing has been around as long as email itself has.  Yet most companies who do email marketing for customer retention (up selling and cross selling) or acquisition (acquiring new customers) do so blindly using third party lists or hobbled together lists.   Some may use Templates found on Microsoft’s template section of their website.  Others use a variety of software or internet based solutions — and there same to be a plethora of them out there.

Most companies seem to use the axiom:  throw enough mud on the wall and some of it is bound to stick when sending out corporate marketing emails.

No tracking of the ROI (return on investment).  No knowing if you are “ticking off” your best customers.  No knowing how many hit the SPAM filter.  No knowing how many people get multiple emails from you (annoying them).  Bad email marketing hurts every other aspect of CRM, and does more damage than good.

This is mass emailing.  My friend, Sundeep Kapur (other wise known as the Email Yogi) has been an email marketing guru since around 1999 and he has outlined “Seven Stages of eMarketing” in a  Whitepaper – available, with just a simple request.  The first is exactly what I outlined above:  mass marketing with the hope someone, somewhere will read it.

I don’t want to “give away” everything in Sundeep’s excellent paper, but suffice it to say that email CRM isn’t any different than CRM in general — know thy customer.  You must target your existing customers and potential customers by market segment (customer segmentation), by demographics, by buying history, etc.  None of this is rocket science, but it is all hard work — that results in qualified leads that generate new customers.

The more you can customize the email to the prospect the better.  And if you can make it FUN even better still!

Customer segmentation allows you to target your email messaging.

Once you’ve created an email offer, newsletter, etc. it is a good idea to set up two separate tests with similar, but not identical, offers.  The test audiences must be the same segmentation for this to work.  Try to make an offer that requires a response (buy in) before the scroll down point (above 400 pixels in height) and if this is the first email one of those should be an opt in to get more emails from you.

Design the email using HTML and a plain text file.  If you start getting fancy with CSS or flash — even Java — many email programs won’t read it properly.

When CRM and email marketing work together it is a beautiful thing.    Email marketing can also extend into social networking (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter) via RSS and SMS.

Sundeep works for my old boss, NCR — a leader in retail and hospitality solutions.   Software solutions vary based on your own corporate needs (and budget).  RWD uses Constant Contact.  The design of emails is pretty easy, but it isn’t your standard Windows “look and feel” so there is a learning curve and difficulty if you want to copy or paste from it into another program.   They do offer a free 60 day trial, so if you are new to email marketing take a look at them and try them out.

More mid-range companies might look at Gold Lasso.   The UI is also not the easiest to use, but they do have some analytics thrown into the mix.  Also good in the mid-range and even enterprise (big) company range is Responsys.  JupiterResearch awarded Responsys the highest combined score in “market suitability” and “overall business value” among all enterprise-oriented email service providers.  It also ranked high with Forrester and Gartner (in a niche category).  The Enterprise level also includes the market leader, Cheetahmail (now part of Experian).

Cheetahmail is the most entrenched, and it is very feature rich.  The UI (user interface) suffers from some of the same issues as Constant Contact and Gold Lasso.

In a future blog I’d like to delve into how well email marketing soltuions tie into legacy systems (the back end CRM, ERP and industry specific apps which hold the wealth of customer data) — both from a push and pull perspective.

The World is Upside Down

This blog spends a lot of pixels on the topic of CRM (Customer Relationship Management).  How can companies manage their customers.  How can we keep current customers loyal and retain them?  How can we find new customers who will be profitable and love us and stay with us?

Simple answer?

You can’t.

You don’t really manage customers anymore — if you ever did.  Perhaps the idea was always unreasonable.

Customers are people.  Newsflash.

People are unpredictable.  People are not, by nature, loyal.  If they were the divorce rate wouldn’t be at 50%.

People only care about what they care about NOW.  Today.  If you are selling Christmas trees to Jews they won’t care.  They don’t use them (well, some do but not many).

Customers buy what they WANT to buy and the key today is not in trying to manage your customers but in understanding who they are, what they want (or need) and making it easy for them to be in the right place at the right time with the right story.    Story is key here — because customers need to be able to find what they need when they need it.

And it needs to be simple.  Simple for customers to understand what your widget is.  Easy for them to understand why it matters to THEM (not you, they could care less about you) and then make it easy for them to get to the end result of what they want.   Intuitive (like a iPod, like a GUI (graphical user interface) versus a c: prompt).

The customer is now in charge of the world.  Realize it.  Embrace it.  So now more than ever is “know thy customer” and realize that while you need them, they don’t need you.  Unless you give them a reason to need you.

The Lazy Hazy CRM Days of Summer and the Holy Grail of Unified Communications

This is the first entry in awhile.  After my last blog the folks at IT Toolbox asked me to begin a blog for them on the topic of CRM.  “Making Cents and Sense of CRM” is focused on how CRM has gone from being the next great invention to improve corporate ROI since the invention of ERP (enterprise resource planning) into a mess of all kinds of applications that have nothing to do with one another (from sales force automation (SFA), to customer service, to business intelligence, to contact center. . .).  You name a solution and no doubt someone has called it “CRM.”

This mis-use of the term has caused the market to falter.   Why would people buy something when they either don’t know what it is supposed to do, or when it over promises and under delivers?

I think this is where the expression “duh” aptly fits.

So as I sit in Central Florida in 100 plus degree heat (farenheit) pondering how soon I can get back to the beach or at least the pool I’ve been focusing on the question of whether we need to “re-label” real CRM or whether we can save it with a hail Mary pass?

That “hail Mary” may be tying CRM with Unified Communications.  We’ve discussed this a little bit before — how the ability to provide accessibility to people where ever they are from a  “virtual” office phone or email address makes the ability to improve customer service. . .but let’s take a look at some “real world” examples.

Toshiba just announced their  Unified Communications Suite, Strata® CIX™.   ShorTel (a VoiP vendor) recently linked their UC to their call center quality assurance processes.   Why are vendors big and small suddenly jumping on the “CRM / UC” bandwagon?

Well, a survey by Computerworld Hong Kong showed that users are worn out from accessing multiple communications points (email, voicemail, cell phone, office phone, etc.) only to be bombarded by people that keep them from getting their work done, while getting to important things and people “too late.”   The survey found that 55% were using IM (instant messaging), 42% were using video conferencing, and 29% were using person to person tools that were created original for home use (like Yahoo! and Microsoft Messenger).

While hte survey shows that people need UC (and may even WANT UC) they still don’t understand what it is!

Forrester Research also conducted a survey and their’s showed that most small and large companies still are uncertain about the benefits of UC!  Forrester surveyed 2,187 North American companies and 55% (55%!) were confused about what it was, let alone its value to them!

Wow, here we are contemplating how to get CRM out of the mess of “what is it and why do I care?” when it has enormous potential to improve the bottom line, when unified communications perhaps has a faster ROI (probably less overall over time, but a huge, quick payback for UC) but no one knows exactly why!

Amazing!

Granted the economy is confused right now and some companies are in panic mode — but this makes both UC and CRM even more compelling given the ROI — especially with a shrinking workforce.  Yet 55% are confused about the VALUE of Unified Communications?

Wow, we are sure lousy communicators!

Ellen Daley, (the Forrester Research analyst who authored the report) said: “There’s been a 21% increase in UC pilots since 2007 but no increase in firms buying UC. A lot of people are talking about UC, a lot more are tipping their toe in; but at the same time they’re all saying they’re not sure about the value.”

Folks, we can’t throw technology at a problem and hope that fixes things!  UC and CRM both hold enormous potential for companies but ONLY if correctly applied to a specific business NEED.  Pilots alone are worthless if the pilot isn’t part of a business problem and specific success criteria applied to the pilot.

Far too many IT vendors sell to the TCM (telecommunications manager), or the CIO (Chief Information Officer) or some other technical manager.  Definitely we need to be talking to these folks, but the REAL buyers of UC and CRM are in Marketing and Sales.  These areas are outside of the comfort zone of man typical IT sales person.

UC and CRM vendors need to move up the totem pole and start cross selling into sales and marketing (and perhaps even the CFO and CEO).  If you don’t know how to get there and have a compelling story when you do — prepare to fail.  Sit by the beach or pool in these lazy, hazy days of summer and prepare to sit there during the blizzards of February (or in my case, Disney’s Blizzard Beach).

If you lack the ability to get outside of IT you’d better partner with someone who can.

Or we’ll attend the funeral of your awesome CRM or UC product — along (perhaps) with the whole field. See you at the beach!

The Contact Center, CRM and Unified Communications

In my last blog we discussed the impact of social networking on unified communications and concluded that while UC and social networking are all forms of communications one is “push” (in social networking you post and someone reads it at their own pace and discretion) whereas most of UC (unified communications) is “pull.”

In UC it is the recipient, the “end user” who determines who can reach them at what end point through a single point of access.  Boy that sounds verbose.  To put it more simply, in today’s world most people have an office phone, a cell phone, maybe a home land line phone, at least one email (usually two or more:  business and personal), some still carry pagers, and then we have Twitter and the social media platforms.  The promise of UC is that the end user defines where s/he “is” (maybe the cell phone) and all forms of communication are routed to that one source — even if they are sent to another (the office phone, email, etc.).

Perhaps the greatest thing about UC in this overloaded world is that the end user can actually decide WHO accesses their primary end point (in our example the cell phone) and who is “tier II” and goes directly to voice mail to be retrieved when time is available, or even “tier III” (unknown people, for example) who go to an admin or even get funneled to another department — for example, the call center.

You knew I’d eventually wrap back to the contact (call) center — after all the title of this blog is “The Contact Center, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and Unified Communications.

Most people don’t “see” the connection between the contact center and Unified Communications (UC), but is actually pretty obvious.  UC is best suited to people with lots of contacts and who may be away from their physical office a lot (think of lawyers, physicians, business executives who attend meetings off-site, sales types, Realtors, etc.).   Do we really want the “unknown” callers to go to some over loaded voice mail box where it may never receive attention due to work levels?

How about shipping that call to a $9 an hour CSR (customer service representative) who can identify the purpose and see if there is a potential sale there?  If not a sale, how about resolving a problem or at least determing the correct person to handle the purpose of the original call?  The result is a happier initial caller, better customer service, maybe a new sale AND OCR (one call resolution).

The contact center vendors are beginning to understand this obvious advantage.  Genesys (an Alcatael / Lucent company) — one of the two largest contact center vendors (the other being Avaya) — has announced UC Connect.  UC Connect promises integration and interoperability between the Genesys Customer Interaction Management (CIM) software platform and UC solutions from many of the major providers in the industry.  From what I can tell the only integration available currently is to IBM SameTime.

I haven’t seen it so can’t tell you how simple or complex (integration) this solution is — but Genesys claims it will provide connectivity to the Alcatel-Lucent’s MyInstant Communicator, IBM Sametime, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, and Siemens Openscape.   When?  How?  That remains to be seen.

Formerly with Siemens I’m very familiar with Openscape and love it.   If you are looking into UC be sure you take a look at Openscape — realizing that Siemens market share is far below Cisco and Avaya but knowing that feature / functionality is tops.  IBM integrated some of the Siemens’ Openscape code into Sametime — and initially Microsoft partnered with Siemens in their previous UC generation.  Great product, but again the caveat is Siemens market penetration, service coverage — so be sure you feel comfortable with your support and service  if you consider Openscape.

Avaya?  Cisco?  Genesys has taken the bull by the horn.  Granted you have to be a user of their contact center software, but they are one of the two market leaders in that field. . .

Genesys has raised the bar.  Cisco offers Cisco Unified Communications contact center system, proclaimed as “the Cisco IP solution for distributed contact center applications,” but it is a total Cisco (one vendor) solution not the open true UC offer now available from Genesys.   Stay tuned.

How do Twitter, Facebook and other Social Networks impact UC?

Unified Communications — the holy grail of both traditional networking companies (Cisco, Avaya, etc.) and some not so traditional network firms (Microsoft) has the lofty goal of bringing together your office phone, voice mail, home phone, cell phone, email and instant messaging into one point of contact.  You (as the end point) decide who can reach you at whatever access point you are at, through a central phone number or ID.  You can also identify who cannot get to you (for example that pesky sales rep goes automatically to voice mail, SPAM filter or admin).

Unified Communications puts the receiver in control of who can reach them and how they are reached.

Unified Communications, aka UC, has great possibilities to make time more productive — no more phone tag, no more voice mail hell of trying to reach someone for a deadline and failing.  It really is a time saver, can be a deal saver — and has the possibility of being an enormous money saver.  (You can have a central phone number but let many workers telecommute while still having the professional “front end” of your central business phone gateway).

UC is NOT UM (unified messaging) which centralized the voice and electronic mail together.  It is much, much more than that.  Yet not only has UM muddied for most what UC is and is not, now along comes social networking which has muddied it even more!

Twitter is a quick burst “push” technology that lets its users post what they are doing.  Others can follow these “tweets.”  Facebook and other social networks lets you keep up to date with your friends and LinkedIn lets you network with business associates you know, or whom you should know.

Let’s face it — UC and social networking are all forms of communications.

Do they dove tail somewhere in the middle?  Are they diametrically opposite?  Is one the death knell for the other?

They dovetail.

UC allows the recipient (end point) to determine who can reach him/her, how and when.

Social networks allow the sender (send point) to broadcast messages to individuals or groups.  There is no way to immediately reach the sender (even with a tweet or message on Facebook there is no way to determine when the sender will see it let alone respond to it).

So UC is the ying to social networking’s yang.  Opposite, yet complimentary.  One is casual and end points access it when they have the time and the need and the inclination.  It is a “pull” technology.

UC is more professional and allows the end point to be reached as needed (instantly) by those who should have that access as allowed by recipient.

I’m a user and huge fan of both technology camps.  UC keeps a busy person spinning many activities at once more in control — which in this world of constant demands is a refreshing technological advantage.  Unfortunately UC has been slow to catch fire — perhaps due to the economy or the inability of vendors to clear articulate its true value.  Given time UC is a natural winner.  It simply needs to be explained, cost justified and exploited.  As with everything:  what is the value to the customer?

Enormous.

The Irony of it All

My last blog posed the question:  “Is Microsoft the next Dinosaur?”  My point was that most companies have a lifecycle, just like products do and people do.

Microsoft may or may not be at the precipice of a decline — it is really up to Microsoft.  The thing I always admired about Bill Gates in the “early days” (and I was a UNIX fan since I worked for AT&T Computer Systems) was that he was always paranoid.  He knew the internet could eclipse the OS as far as the center of the IT universe and so out came Internet Explorer.  Microsoft tried to win the search engine war — and after repeated lack of success has what looks like a nice product in Bing.

But no sooner did I post my Blog and get lots of comments (most not so nice from Microsoft proponents) along comes PC World with an article that asks the very same question I asked: 

Is Microsoft Following GM’s Road Map?

Analysis: GM’s bankruptcy marks the end of an era. Is Microsoft repeating the automaker’s mistakes?

J. Peter Bruzzese, InfoWorld

// Jun 3, 2009 6:00 pm

“Microsoft has faced a few serious bumps over the last 10 years but came out fine. . .Knowing the work Microsoft developers put into their products, I believe they are the saving grace of the company — as long as they are allowed to hear the voice of the people. This is an area where I’ve seen a problem.”

I worked for AT&T at the hey day of Bell Labs.  We had the brightest, most awesome minds around — just like Microsoft does today.   Microsoft ca be its own best friend or its own worst enemy.  Only time will tell.

Is Microsoft the next Dinosaur?

Marketing used to be pretty easy — not simple mind you, but easy.  Marketing consisted of branding, public relations, advertising, trade shows and the like.  One could choose print media, radio, TV, billboards and such.

The company was in charge of the message.  Does anyone remember “The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit”?

Today the world is on its head.  My last post discussed the great new book, What Would Google Do.  That book focuses on the model of free core offers that are supported by the ancillary things the core touches.  Content is less important than how to tap into content.

And all of this stems from the explosion of information that came about with the Internet.

I started my career in the 1980s when AT&T spun off the “Baby Bells” giving up the gold mine of monopoly POTS (plain old telephone service) customers for the holy grail of “a computer is just a node on a network.”

That idea rang so true to me, who became a true believer in distributed computing and “information anywhere, any time, any place.”

Everyone else laughed.  This was the era of huge mainframe proprietary computers (the BUNCH were still around — Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC and Honeywell, although on the decline.  RCA had already exited computing.  DEC, Wang (no jokes please), Data General. . .these were the ‘mini” computer guys with 64 KB of RAM or LESS (yes, LESS) — names now gone as they either went out of business or were swallowed by others. . .

Microsoft is now on the edge.  It faces the same fate as the BUNCH and the minicomputer vendors if it doesn’t soon wake up and realize that they’ve been commoditized.   Software is almost a “thing of the past” just as minicomputers went the way of the buggy whip and the VCR.  Will anyone buy software on a CD or DVD much longer?  Why, when you can access SaaS (software as a service) online?

Why bog down your internet access device (computer seems so passe, doesn’t it?) with gigabites of software when it changes daily?  Why not just tap into a secure app that is FREE or nearly free?

Years ago I interviewed for a job at Microsoft and they asked me who their competitor was.  Fresh from Teradata and in a DBMS state of mind I said “Oracle?” The reply was:  “Google.”

Google?  Google???

But it only took me a second to realize they were right — he who owns the eye balls, owns the person.  Google may have begun “life” as a search engine, but now it is so much more — it is the gateway to the information highway.

Microsoft, I love you.  You’ve done amazing things –  Microsoft Dynamics, your unified communication platform rocks — but you need to realize that the world has changed.  Aside from being global, it is viral.  If you want to remain relevant start realizing what AT&T knew back in the 1980s — but failed to deliever.

A computer is nothing but a node on a network.

Stop focusing on delivering products for the computer.  Start thinking of the network.  Start thinking of the people as if they were on a vast buffet line (network) where they can pick and choose what they want.

Because that is today’s reality.  And it isn’t changing any time soon.

Surviving and Thriving: Marketing in a Recession

Every day there seems to be more bad news:  Circuit City is out of business, closing nearly 400 brick and mortar stores.  Home Depot is shutting down its high end Expo chain.  Even Microsoft and Apple are seeing tough times.

But every cloud has a silver lining.  There are ways to market your business successfully in a recession.   The key is “knowing your customer” aka customer business intelligence.  Who is buying?  Why?  What are they buying, and what are the cross-sell and up-sell opportunities there?

Which prospects fit a similar profile (demographics) of your high margin customers?

So identifying the market is (as always) the first step, but in these economic times it is even more critical that usual.  “Know thy customer!”

The next step is knowing what appeals to them and then selling to them in a cost efficient manner that meets their profile and your product line.  This may mean more targeted email campaigns with coupons, or eZines –  lower cost ways to reach your audience than traditional print advertising, or even “Google ads” and other online paid advertising.

You must know your “value proposition” as you go back to your base and target strategic new prospects.  In one sentence (elevator pitch) why do they need you NOW?  Can you save them money?  Can you make them money?  Can you help them sell more to their own customers?

This is a time of opportunity.  Yes, it is scary “out there” — but as competitors fall away or draw back they leave a vacuum which a saavy firm can fill.    Realize that marketing is an investment, not a luxury.   Like any investment you need to have a plan to invest wisely.

Just like the Dot.Bomb bubble burst we’ll survive, and we can thrive.  This too shall pass.

Happy 2009!

Times are tough.  Businesses large and small are shutting down or looking for government hand outs.   Will GM and the other auto manufacturers survive?   Are we facing a depression??  Job loss is rising and it seems that daily we see new layoffs reported.    It is even rumored that Microsoft may lay off up to 17% of its workforce.  Link.

I’m not picking on Microsoft, simply highlighting the situation that our economic down spiral is just that — when one thing goes bad it impacts another line of business. . . from the mom and pop restaurants who lose customers, and thus so do their suppliers to the big firms who are household names.

Yet I started this blog saying “Happy 2009″ and I really am optimistic.   As FDR said so many years ago “All we have to fear is fear itself.”

There have to be opportunities — and with the new Obama administration about to take over it seems there will be a number of attractive areas.   Obama has promised global Internet access — so the network providers have a golden opportunity to come out of this downturn quickly.  The new administration is also very pro “green” — so if look for environmentally friendly solutions in your field.   The other attractive markets?

Government itself as a customer (federal for now, as the local governments who rely heavily on property taxes are “hurting”) and health care.  Baby boomers are aging and putting more and more stress on health care.  Again, the new administration is very interested in universal health care.  Keep in mind that Hillary Clinton, slated to be our new Secretary of State, was in charge of the Clinton Administration’s health care vision about fifteen years ago.  Back then I was working closely with the Chairman and CFO at Adventist Health System Sunbelt, and the CFO was on Hillary’s committee.  A lot of the visions then (electronic patient records that are patient-centric, not owned by individual doctors) are part of the vision yet today.

Tom Daschle has been named as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the new administration.   In his book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, he  discusses price controls (meaning health care providers need to find a way to improve quality to reduce costs).    Daschle is a big fan of Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) which has a two tier approach — everyone has access to a base level of health care and you can pay for private access if you so desire.

Time will tell what the Obama administration will do, but the time to begin exploring how you can take advantage of the new opportunities is now.  Welcome to 2009!

Internet Marketing — at home at work and on your cell phone

July 2007 McKinsey published a report on how companies are marketing online.

The results are intriguing.

Although most savvy companies are using some form of online marketing (about 2/3rd per the report) online and offline marketing are often separate and non-communicative. Doesn’t that seem odd in light of the whole “clicks and mortar” concept of combining the power of the internet with good old fashioned outlets?

A major reason for the disconnect is the old “silos of information” problem we’re so familiar with. The systems that run traditional businesses don’t have the necessary capabilities for Wiki, Blogs, viral marketing, etc. Even with today’s sophisticated CRM software solutions that allow a prospective customer entry via the Internet, “click to chat”, call center, email, fax, etc. most companies haven’t implemented that technology — let alone the next step that ties the Internet itself to their back end ERP or industry specific applications (such as HIS in health-care, BSS in Telecom, etc.).

So many companies have sophisticated “front end” marketing for their Internet presence — SMS coupons to the cell phone for example — but the back end is a little chaotic and highly manual.

Today when most people think of Internet marketing (if they think of it at all) they picture email SPAM and banner adds that may be linked to previous sites they’ve visited.

Thought leaders have long been blogging (hey, you’re one of them — you are reading this!) and using SEO (search engine optimization) to try and get their websites higher up on the coveted search engines like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live Search, etc.

We’ve moved from purely informational websites and B2C or B2B (business to consumer and business to business) to massively multi-player game sites (like World of Warcraft or Disney’s ToonTown) and social networks (like FaceBook and MySpace).

Virtual worlds are the next phase past social networks. The are multi-dimensional sites where users can interact with each other in a cross between IM (instant messaging) and social networking.

Podcasts and ad hoc Webinars are another new marketing venue where the information is multimedia and folks can watch them online or download them. These can take the form of demos and infomercials and can be a very effective form of online advertising.

We’ve barely scratched the surface — how about Wikis (like Wikipedia where anyone can contribute content) or Widgets (if you have Vista you probably have widgets showing the time or the stock market) and web services that do the work of making it all seem like magic. . .

Everyone seems to agree that online marketing is important and here to stay. 83% (per the McKinsey report) are using it for service management and 44% for pricing. The real trick here is to decide which form of online marketing makes the most sense for your company. To do that you must decide what your goal is (driving sales, improved customer satisfaction, leads, etc.) and then examining not only the various forms we’ve discussed here but which best suits your business model.