Wednesday, March 28, 2007

eCRM Conclusion

Understanding customer expectations and segmentation (based on products, channels, and industry) is the right place to start. Already, 32 percent of online shoppers name customer service as the most important component in choosing an online retailer; 39 percent name price. At the very least, any company with a Web presence must guarantee that e-mail aliases shown on the Web site are monitored, and that e-mail queries sent through these aliases receive a prompt response. On the self-service side, offering at least a few static FAQ can improve the customer experience. Such basics are still beyond the current offerings of one- third of U.S. retailers based on a survey conducted by Talisma in June 2000. Out of more than 700 leading e-businesses surveyed, 33 percent do not respond to basic e-mail queries regarding their policies and companies.

Once the basics are in place, companies will be able to quickly expand their relationship capabilities in the direction of marketing and sales, using more advanced tools such as proactive and reactive chat, dynamic FAQ, and electronic campaigns. In this respect, eCRM is very similar to past eCRM initiatives focusing on improving other aspects of a business’ operations. eCRM is more of a process than an end state, and carefully selected incremental approaches yield the best returns.

Source: Talisma™ eCRM Suite Best Practices White Paper

eLoyalty Academic Journals

Here are some academic journals on eLoyalty:

Methodology and Investigation of an eLoyalty Metric, Consumer Bookmarking Behavior
Authors: Jamie Murphy & Charles F. Hofacker
Context: This paper discusses an indicator of a website appeal as well as the relationship between a firms and its consumers, using bookmarking facilitation. Uses comparisons and data/results from hospitality websites and a geneaology site.
Source: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue1/murphy_hofacker.html

The effect of acquisition channels on customer loyalty and cross-buying
Authors: Peter C. Verhoef, Bas Donkers
Context: Acquisition channels are important characteristics of a B2C relationship customer loyalty. It examines this through a financial organisation and finds that retention rates are highest amongst website and less against other forms of mediums such as radio, TV and direct mailings.
Source: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/110433892/ABSTRACT

Website Trust Academic Journals

Here are some academic journals on Website Trust:

Consumer Trust in an Internet Store: A Cross-Cultural Validation
Authors: Sirkka L. Javenpaa, Noam Tractinsky, Lauri Saarinen and Michael Vitale
Context: Trust has played an important part in stimulating customer purchases and that most of the speculation has been around US consumers from US sites. Customers from different countries have different views as to what makes a website trustworthy.
Source: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol5/issue2/jarvenpaa.html

Online peer and editorial recommendations, trust, and choice in virtual markets
Authors: Donnavieve Smith, Satya Menon, K. Sivakumar
Context: Customers that purchase items from the Internet take other things into consideration, and this paper examines that. Customers also take into consideration peer recommendations before editoral recommendations and website trust.
Source: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/110557813/ABSTRACT

Signaling the trustworthiness of small online retailers
Authors: Sijun Wang, Sharon E. Beatty, William Foxx
Context: Small online retailers have a major challenge against the big boys and that is consumer trust and proposes a new concept named "cue-based trust" on 5 different cues which are, seals of approval, return policy, awards from neutral sources, security disclosures, and privacy disclosures
Source: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/107583956/ABSTRACT

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

eCRM Academic Journals

Here are some academic journals on eCRM:

The Impact of Customer Relationship Management on Customer Loyalty: The Moderating Role of Web Site Characteristics
Authors: Assion Lawson-Body & Moez Limayem, July 2004
Context: This paper discusses the impact of characteristics of websites on the relationship between customer relationship management and customer loyalty in which the data has been comprised from 170 Canadian IT organisations. It showed that there is a strong correlation between CRM and customer loyalty and agrees that using the Internet to support CRM increases customer loyalty.
Source: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol9/issue4/lawson_body.html

Adaptive learning and proactive customer relationship management
Authors: Baohong Sun, Shibo Li, Catherine Zhou
Context: This paper discuss the CRM methods that firms can introduce in order to get profitable customers and introduces two key themes of "adaptive-learning" & "proactive" CRM decisions.
Source: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/113508002/ABSTRACT

When Customer Relationship Management meets Data Mining
Authors: Venkatesh Shankar and Russell S. Winer
Context: $5.7bn of CRM software applications were sold in 2005 and expected to rise to $11.2bn by 2010. CRM is closely related to data mining. Data mining is processing large volumes of data to find relationships and patterns, and generally useful information.By bringing together data mining and CRM, this creates powerful tools for CRM strategy creation.
Source: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/113507996/PDFSTART

Customer relationship management in financial services: towards information-enabled relationship marketing
Authors: Lynette Ryals, Adrian Payne
Context: CRM is becoming more and more important for business and this paper examines this for the financial services sector
Source: http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/content/a4h6xk6m7y8apubt/

Video Demonstration Of Neogia An eCRM Application

Neogia ERP/CRM Physical Inventory Process:



Neogia ERP/CRM : Purchase order approval workflow:



Neogia ERP/CRM : Sales order shipment splitting:

A Successful eCRM Consists Of:

5 C’s for Companies to attract Customers:

Enable Combine Customized Content, Community and Commerce

4 R’s for Providing Helpful Advice:

Provide Relevant ratings, reviews and recommendations

3 P’s of Choice for Consumers:

Consumers will select your product/service for its Personality, Profile, and Performance

Success Stories Of Implementing eCRM

The benefits of using eCRM are exemplified when the big phone giant Nokia hired an eCRM solution company called Salesforce to implement a eCRM system. SalesForce created a universal reporting system for Nokia’s Americas, APAC and EMEA divisions. As a result Nokia discovered that the eCRM system provided more consistency across different regions and functions. Improve collaboration and productivity between its sales departments. There was also better communication and reporting across global team and the eCRM enabled Nokia to better understand customer buying behaviour.

Source: http://www.salesforce.com/products/democenter-landing.jsp?d=70130000000CowK

Advantages and Disadvantages of eCRM

Advantages
  • Dynamic content. The contents of the knowledge base are limited only by what is thought will not be asked. Therefore, self help tools are often very robust, cover a wide range of topics, and must be constantly updated by adding new articles, and removing articles determined by user survey as incomplete, incorrect, or not relevant
  • Good coverage. Many topics can be covered and many users can use the tool.
  • Low cost. Relative to other electronic interaction channels, the cost of purchasing, implementing, and administering is low.

Disadvantages

  • Mixed resolution rate. Some questions, due to their nature, may not be answered.
  • No engagement. No human follows up or clarifies. What-you-see-is-what-you-get.
  • Impersonal. Does not easily recognize user or patterns of user. Source:

Source: http://www.crm2day.com/library/EpFkEyuEZuUJuzDoud.php

Marketing Features of eCRM

To use an effective eCRM for marketing scope, a suitable application is required to support Service and Sales modules and the following features:

Automated marketing process - it offers an adaptive rules engine covering different aspect of marketing such as: targets, opportunities, and orders, which can be used to streamline the creation, management, execution, and tracking of marketing processes in an organization.

Campaign management – its functionality allows automation of the flow of campaigns. Also it defines and plans the use of workflow, customer profiling and segmentation, personalization of content. Also offers facilities such as scheduling of events and mailing lists, response management, and analysis tools.

Graphic Workflow – this application captures the logic of the campaign and enables the user to define, schedule, run, and manage campaigns. Also it allows businesses to conduct a variety of campaigns such as loyalty programs, seasonal offers, sweepstakes, cross-sell, up-sell, product launches, partner and channel schemes, trade show registration, newsletters, and so forth.

Customer Profiling, Segmenting, and Targeting – A customers can be profiled, segmented, and targeted in base of its demographic and psychographic information available on the database. This information should allow the creation of static or dynamic mailing lists that are used in a complex and advanced query builder. While static lists are suited for targeting niche segments, dynamic lists are used to target segments that need frequent updating.

Scheduling Events and Mailing Lists -­­­­­ scheduling events using the wait function based on date and time elapsed is another valuable feature to look for in eCRM technology. It can also be used to schedule mailing lists to participate in campaigns at pre-determined intervals.

Source: http://www.crm2day.com/library/EpFkEyuEZuUJuzDoud.php

How does eCRM work?

eCRM uses the latest technologies such as VB, VB.NET, ASP.NET, Microsoft SQL Server and Web Services to communicate effectively with customers. eCRM systems enable customers to do business with the organisation the way the customer wants - any time, via any channel, in any language or currency—and to make customers feel that they are dealing with a single, unified organisation that recognises them every step of the way.

The eCRM system does this by creating a central repository for customer records and providing a portal on each employee’s computer system allowing access to customer information by any member of the organisation at any time.

Through this system, eCRM gives you the ability to know more about customers, products and performance results using real time information across your business.

Diagram of how eCRM works

Source: http://www.mmv.vic.gov.au/uploads/downloads/ICT_Projects/eCommerce
/ElectronicCustomerRelationshipManagement.pdf

Why Have Customers Become Soooo Important?

4 reasons why customers are not your average customers - customers are becoming the dictators!!!

1. Production Increasing Rapidly - customers have much more information at their fingertips and many more options for the products and service they buy


2. Price Comparison Sites - Don't put up with inflated prices, find the price you want to spend

3. Good and services qualities are higher due to technology improvements therefore lack of productdifferentiation, and harder for companies to differentiate their products.

4. Faster pace of life - out of the "norm" or "cocoon", customers are now unwhiling to accept rubbish services, thereforecustomers can always switch whenever they like.

Objectives of eCRM

Following are objectives of eCRM:
  • Reduce costs of marketing
  • Improve accuracy and relevancy of recommendations, customer satisfaction, conversion rate, i.e., Turn browsers into buyers. Increase customer retention, frequency, order size and customer response.
  • Provide competitiveness through differentiation
  • Increase profitability hence ROI

Why Bother With eCRM?

Because:

  • It costs six times more to acquire a new customer than keep an old one.
  • The odds of selling a product to a new customer are 15%, while the odds of selling it to an existing customer are 50%.
  • One dissatisfied customer typically tells eight to ten people about his or her experience.
  • 70% of complaining customers will do business with the company again if it quickly takes care of a service snafu.
  • More than 90% of existing companies do not have the necessary integration of sales and service processes and systems to support e-commerce.
  • A company can boost its profits 85% by increasing its annual customer retention by only 5%!

    Source: Sybase Customer Asset Management, www.sybase.com

What is eCRM (Electronic Customer Relationship Management)?

eCRM is the process of acquiring, retaining and growing profitable customers to establish a dialogue with your customers, to understand and anticipate their evolving individual needs and maximize the life-time value of this relationship.

The above diagram illustrates the cycle of activities by which an organisation analyses its customers, targets potential customers, targets potential customers makes them aware of its offerings, acquires those customers, managers interactions with them, delivers value to them, develops a relationship with them over time and resolves their issues when things go wrong.

Welcome....

....to our part of the Virtual Marketing blog named eCRM or Electronic Customer Relationship Management
Hope you find eCRM useful, enjoy!!

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

What is price?

The amount of money, or other goods, that you have to give up to buy a good or service.

http://www.mcwdn.org/ECONOMICS/EcoGlossary.htmlhttp://www.scottish-enterprise.com/publications/pricing-2.pdf

Online Pricing and Promotional Strategies

What online pricing strategies consists of.

http://www.awprofessional.com/articles/article.asp?p=167847&rl=1

Online retailers play pricing games


The different tactics the retailers use for pricing their goods to gain advantage over their rivals.


Is Shopping Online Really Cheaper

The Answer is Often, Yes!
Shopping online can save you money especially when you couple it with online savings codes, deals of the day, and free shipping offers.

http://couponing.about.com/od/bargainshop/a/onlinecheaper.htm

Buying and selling online

Benefits of selling online.

e-Commerce: from Fixed to Dynamic Pricing


This shows a graph on levels of fixed pricing and dynamic pricing.

Online journal :Price


This link portrays how the buyers' attitudes influence pricing behaviour of companies.


Online journal: Pricing of IT services

Online journal: Pricing of IT services

Why people shop online


One of the factors that people shopped online because of cheaper prices. Price was the second highest reason why people buy online. Allows them to compare multiple prices online.


Some services are free some are not on the web.

Google may charge for internet search. Currently its free to use but plans are in place for charging for some services.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=P8&targetRule=10&xml=%2Fconnected%2F2002%2F10%2F04%2Fecngoog.xml

Internet users could face charges to use the internet

The near feauture could see you being charged for sending emails. This will be a first, email coming at price. Will this deter users?

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1810786,00.html

Executive Wants to Charge for Web Speed

Internet service providers should be allowed to strike deals to give certain Web sites or services priority in reaching computer users, a controversial system that would significantly change how the Internet operates.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/30/AR2005113002109.html

ISP providers of broadband and how the prices compare of the service they are providing.




Here we are looking at price comparison on all broadband providers and what they have to offer.
Be-Lite provide the most or your money, with24mb per second at a price of £14.00 a month. With a 4/5 rating. If you compare it to Virgin-Media they only provide 2mb per second at £14.99, with a rating of 4/5.

http://www.ukoffer.com/broadband.php?source=adwords&gclid=CNab3PDq8YoCFQjilAodRE48kQ

When and how the internet is likely do decrease price competition?

Conventional wisdo

m seems to claim that, by lowering the cost of distribution and by making search easier for consumer, the introduction of the Internet is likely to intensify price competition.






http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0732-2399%281999%2918%3A4%3C485%3AWAHITI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-X&size=LARGE

Internet Cost Structures and Interconnection Agreements

What the costs are relating with the internet, looking at a few aspects. A breakdown of the all costs and structures involving with the internet.

http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/works/SrinCostSt.html

Cost to Advertise On A Website




Info on how to advertise and the costs involved in advertsing on the intertnet with companies such as Google and Yahoo.



The cost of getting connected



The issues peole face when trying to conncet to the internet.


“This is an injustice to the public with a subsequent stifling effect on innovation and creativity in British industry”.


Price comparison sites.

Online prices become transparent

Make it easier for the consumer to taxes, fees and extra charges. So there are no surprises.
http://news.cheapflights.co.uk/flights/2007/01/bmi_makes_onlin.html

Online Branding


Online branding is at an interesting point of development. Many organisations recognise the need for integrated marketing communications across offline and online channels. This makes it difficult to differentiate, both practically and theoretically, between online and offline branding. On the other hand, branding in online environments poses a sufficient range of challenges and opportunities that it is important to shine the spotlight on branding in digital environments, and to explore some of the potential impacts of online channels for branding strategy.


Insightful links

Online branding
Web 2.0
http://falkow.blogsite.com/public/blog/118587

Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a perceived second generation of web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.


Online Branding for eSuccess
http://www.goecart.com/online-branding.asp

Online or offline, branding plays an integral part behind its success. As in real life scenarios, your brand is your identity on the web and differentiates you from your competitors.

Online branding strategies
http://www.elliance.com/Solutions/brand-reach.asp


Internet marketing – learn about online branding and the concepts involved.
http://cob.isu.edu/mktg480/Slides/2004/Chap012.ppt


Branding definitely goes beyond the click
http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/2007/03/07/know-thy-market-beyond-the-click-through


Brand competition is furious!
http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2007/02/19/smallb3.html

Top 10 Types of Online Brand Abuse Identified

Cyveillance ranked these abuses based on their frequency and prevalence on the Internet:


1. Unauthorized use of logos and images.
2. Use of hidden and visible text.
3. Unauthorized use of a company's name or product in metatags.
4. Software, music and video piracy.
5. Unauthorized distribution or sale of consumer goods.
6. Framing.
7. Use of a company's name on a competitor's site.
8. Use of logos or images in a pornographic context.
9. Domain name abuse and parody sites.
10. Gripe sites and negative newsgroup postings.

Branding

Brand Building
http://www.buydomains.com/small-business/article.jsp?inc=branding.jsp&title=How+to+Build+Your+Brand+Online





Brand Blogs for Online Reputation Management
A focus on brand evangelists. Brand evangelists are customers that love you so much that they build web sites or blogs devoted to your product.
http://www.searchengineguide.com/laycock/006007.html

Not meeting demands!
Few brands develop popular websites and fewer still manage to engage consumers in the external online landscape.
http://www.brandchannel.com/brand_speak.asp?bs_id=37

Examples of branding from big players


Online branding success

Here are several factors that contribute to online branding success!

http://www.davechaffey.com/E-marketing-Insights/Customer-experience-management/Online-branding

Success factors for the online brand experience
Returning to the focus on the web site, Aaker and Joachimstahler (2000) have provided a useful summary of how a web site can become an effective brand-building tool. Their guidelines suggest five elements:

1. Create a positive experience, i.e. easy-to-use, delivers value, is interactive, personalised and timely.

2. Reflect and support the brand.

3. Look for synergy with other communications mediums (this could include as a response mechanism or to kick start campaigns through an online viral delivery).

4. Provide a home for the loyalist.

5. Differentiate with strong sub-branded content.

De Chernatony and Christodoulides (2004) also discuss the different elements of an online brand experience based on interviews with branding and online specialists. Many of the elements are straightforward and reflect previous consumer of research into what makes e-tail consumers loyal. The elements are:

Locating the brand
Speed of download
Site appearance
Navigation
Differential reward
Personal support
Physical delivery and returns


The authors do not place emphasis on particular elements of the online brand experience. I would observe that there are some ‘hygiene factors’ such as locating the brand, the speed of download, appearance and navigation which are essential for success and are perhaps relatively easy to achieve with the right budget. However, as in the offline world it is the differential reward or value added described in my previous WNIM article which is probably the most important success factor followed by quality of service as indicated by personal support and physical delivery and returns. These are often the top reasons why customers defect offline and research suggests that this is true online.

Widget Technology!

The future of online marketing a shift in strategy for online branding with the arrival of widget technology.
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/13547.asp



Widgets
http://www.tech-faq.com/widgets.shtml



Yahoo’s branded widgets
http://widgets.yahoo.com/

Branding Online to improve presence in the market

Companies that wish to embark on online media marketing...

http://www.adverblog.com/archives/cat_online_marketing.htm

Coke begins brand invasion on YouTube

Coca-Cola is online with one of the first YouTube co-marketing efforts. It's called Holiday Wishcast and it's a mini-site based on YouTube service which allows visitors to upload and share their video greetings. Among the users who have submitted content, we find the sweet Geriatric1927 who is already a star among YouTube fans.






Marketers look with interest Coca-Cola's initiative to exploit a new advertising space crowded with young users (read Contagious for example), while YouTube purists hope this is not the beginning of a brand invasion on the popular video sharing service. I don't want to sound pessimistic but, since in the end, someone has to pay the (bandwidth) bills, I'm not sure there's much we can do to stop the brand invasion...

As said Coke is not the first, but among the first brands which are launching campaigns through YouTube. New Media Age reports today that also Levi's has opened a channel for branded video content. It's called Levi's One To Watch Tour 2006 and it features exclusive video footage from upcoming (but already signed) bands like The Fratellis, The View and Forward Russia.

This should be the direct link to the Levi's channel on YouTube, but at the moment it doesn't work.

More online investment for Grolsch



Grolsch wants to invest more online

The beer brand Grolsch has decided to invest more in 2005 in new media communication. They will focus on online marketing and mobile channels to create an active relationship with their customers. As Nicola Young, head of relationship marketing at Coors (the brand owner) explains on New Media Age:

"TV ads are fantastic for general awareness but they're very passive. Online enables us to form a direct relationship with the consumer but at the same time gives the consumer control over the interaction."
Grolsch's UK web site currently features an advertainment approach, and aims to engage users with advergames and competitions (now it's giving away a week-end in A'dam).

Coors' agency is Leith, a firm voted Scottish Agency of the Year five years running. The agency has been recently sold to Cello, a newly incorporated marketing services group (read more about it on Scotsman.com).

What is important about online brands


The Internet runs on trust. Though it’s a collection of computers communicating throughout the world, at its heart the Internet is really people. And the cold, hard truth is that if you don’t have those people’s trust, you don’t have a business.

Why? Because you could be literally anywhere in the world, under any government or none, for one thing. There is no guarantee online that the person whose site you’re accessing is really who and where he says he is. And if you and your customer are not in the same country, he or she has no recourse if fraud occurs.

And fraud occurs all over the Internet. Though consumers are growing increasingly educated, they are still vulnerable to online thieves.

Their only assurance that you’re not some guy in Nigeria who’s out to take their money is your good name.

Brand Names and Trust
Even though they’ve been treated more as status symbols and fashion lately, brand names are really all about trust. Just like you know your friends reasonably well, you have some assurance that if you know the brand name of a product, you have some idea whether you should trust it or not. And if you can trust it, then you’re more likely to shop with that company than one you’ve never heard of before.

But online, your brand name can be your personal name, too. For instance, at eBay and Amazon, vendors selling products are rated on several scales, including quality of their products and overall customer satisfaction. These items accumulate into a sort of trust score – the more highly rated you are at either of these companies, the more likely the consumer can trust you.

If you don’t have some sort of brand name established, you’re at a disadvantage. How does anyone know they can trust you to deliver?

You only have one chance to do it right. There are so many companies out there offering the same things you offer that if you don’t please the customer the first time around, you’re likely to lose that customer to a competitor.

Online Brand Behaviour

Just a page or two about how functionality lies in the realm of behaviour.

Brand New World