October 18, 2009
John Kottcamp
Uncategorized
#ForresterResearch, agency2.0, B2B marketing, CMO, Customer Experience, Customer Relationship Management, digital agency, Facebook, Groundswell, Integrated Digital Experience, integrated marketing, Integrated Marketing Communications, Interactive Marketing, LinkedIn, marketing2.0, Peter Burris, SDMA, social media, social networking, Twitter, web2.0
I had the opportunity to speak to the Forrester Research Technology Marketing Executive Council recently in conjunction with the Technology Forum in Chicago. The central theme of my talk was simply stated, as marketers, we need to start integrating social media into the rest of your marketing strategy and programs and stop treating Social Media as some magical new quasi religion.
I do not mean that there are not unique attributes of each of the various new channels, media and technologies that comprise social media; blogs, social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter that we must examine, learn how to use and take advantage of in creating dynamic and meaningful experiences for consumers and businesses alike.
What I do mean is that instead of starting off with the attitude of “I’ve got to get me some of that Social Media stuff,” and invariably jumping right into figuring out which technology you need to buy, install and staff up to support, marketers needs to go back to their overall marketing strategies and figure out how each of the facets of social media can be leveraged to support their strategies, not drive them.
At this Forrester Research event, I had the privilege of delivering my talk on the heels of a presentation by Peter Burris, a research director at Forrester and a really smart and articulate guy. Peter’s theme was based on his recently released piece, Turning Your B2B Web Site Into A Community Hub. His premise, which I completely agree with, is that you need to start looking at how you integrate social media into your corporate Web presence. It is also related to the presentation I did at the Integrated Marketing Communications conference in Kansas City (see my post entitled, It’s time to look beyond Websites and start looking at an Integrated Digital Experience).
I won’t go through my entire presentation here, I’ve uploaded it at SlideShare and I encourage you to take a look. http://www.slideshare.net/jkottcamp/marketing-and-social-media-tmec-oct09
August 21, 2009
John Kottcamp
Ascentium, SDMA
CRM, Closed Loop Marketing, Interactive Marketing, integrated marketing, Customer Experience, branded entertainment, marketing technology, Marketing Automation, Customer Relationship Management, Metrics, ROI, digital agency, microsoft, social media, marketing2.0, ecommerce, agency2.0, analytics, social networking, Groundswell, B2B marketing, SDMA, Ascentium
In addition to my role at Ascentium, I have been privileged to be elected president of the Seattle Direct Marketing Association, SDMA, and as we kick off our new 2009-2010 season of events I’d like to welcome back all our members, colleagues, friends and everyone that has an interest in the marketing profession.
We’re in the home stretch of summer. Our sub-baked brains are shifting from vacation to back to school, from playing hooky on a sunny Friday afternoon to getting the next proposal out the door. In other words, the fun’s over. But wait a second! Just because it’s no long 103 degrees outside, it doesn’t mean there’s nothing to look forward to. The SDMA is here and it’s time to kick off another great season of speakers, events, networking and the continuation of our exploration into the art and science of modern marketing.
Last year we debuted a new tagline for the SDMA, “thinking outside the mailbox” in recognition that direct marketing has evolved into integrated marketing. We’ve taken the expertise direct marketers have gained in the areas of targeting, segmentation, analytics and ROI and are applying it to email, online advertising, search and social media. We’re extending brands across multiple new channels like mobile, branded content and the Web. And all while remembering that traditional media and direct still make up the lion’s share of marketing budgets and are evolving just as much as the new media is coming on the scene.
This season, the SDMA is going to mix things up a bit. In response to our success last year in Bellevue, we’re going to host some events on the East side and some in Seattle. We’re going to experiment with different formats including thought leader interviews, competitor panels and bring you real-life case studies showing how companies are using new ideas as well as re-inventing established methods to produce tangible and measureable results for their businesses. For this year’s calendar, visit www.sdma.org/events
In addition to our monthly events, we are partnering with the PSAMA and the Social Media Club to produce the region’s premier marketing conference, MarketMix 2010, to be held on March 10, 2010, at the Bell Harbor Conference Center. Mark your calendars today.
If you haven’t checked us out in awhile, visit our website at www.sdma.org, our groups on Facebook and LinkedIn, or even better, join us for our season’s kick-off on Wednesday, September 9, 2009, 5:30-8:00p at The Bellevue Hyatt for our evening event, “Transforming your Marketing and Customer Relationships with Social Media – Real Tweets from Real Practioneers at Leading Northwest Firms,” with panelists from Alaska Airlines, REI, PCC and Comcast. To register, visit, www.sdma.org/events .
Looking forward to seeing you and having your participation in another great year for the SDMA and for the marketing profession in the Pacific Northwest.
On behalf of the entire SDMA board,
John P. Kottcamp, President
August 19, 2009
John Kottcamp
Ascentium, CMO, Interactive Agency, Marketing Strategy, microsoft
#ForresterResearch, agency2.0, Ascentium, avenuea/razorfish, Customer Relationship Management, digital agency, integrated marketing, marketing2.0, microsoft, Razorfish, web2.0
I was just reading Harley Manning’s post on the acquisition of Razorfish by Publicis. It’s a good read, check it out. I posted the following comment on Harley’s blog, but thought it appropriate to repreat it here.
While I fully agree with Harley that Razorfish was always an afterthought at Microsoft and never made sense as a strategic fit, I’m not sure I buy the idea that selling to Publicis is either good for Razorfish or good for its customers.
I don’t believe the fact that Digitas and Razorfish are different types of digital agencies matters nearly as much as that Publicis and Digital agencies in general, have continued to be almost like oil and water. The problem is not simply possessing enough creative juices, Publicis certainly has plenty, and it’s not just having the technical skills that Digitas brings to the table.
The problem is that the cultures and ultimately the business models of traditional advertising agencies and digital agencies continue to be fundamentally different. And as long as that difference exists, mergers of mega agencies will falter.
Now, if Digitas and Razorfish were to be combined and then spun off, there would be an incredible powerhouse. But in fact, there are already some agencies, including Sapient, and my own agency, Ascentium, that have been building up this balance between great creative and deep technology expertise for several years. So in that context, a merger between Digitas and Razorfish wouldn’t produce a new kind of agency, simply the biggest one of its kind.
But it doesn’t sound like it’s a merger between Digitas and Razorfish, it sounds like another attempt on the part of Publicis to integrate a digital agency into a traditional advertising world. And I predict the outcome will be no better than what we’ve already seen with Digitas. As a marketer, it’s a waste of great talent. As a competitor, it’s great news. Big isn’t always better.
July 25, 2009
John Kottcamp
Strategy, integrated marketing, CMO, Marketing Strategy, Closed Loop Marketing, customer lifetime value, Customer Engagment, Ascentium
CRM, Closed Loop Marketing, Interactive Marketing, integrated marketing, Customer Experience, Customer Relationship Management, ROI, Customer Lifecycle, marketing2.0, agency2.0, web2.0, analytics, CMO, B2B marketing, Ascentium, Market research, loyalty, Net Promoter Score, Web analytics, zoomerang, surveymonkey
I was thinking about loyalty the other day. I had just sat through a company presentation where we talked about the almost 2 years of experience we have with Net Promoter Score. In the same meeting we also talked about our new Web site and how we were going to start capturing visitor data via our Web analytics tools and then incorporate that data into our CRM system. And at the end of the meeting, the topic even began to cover the piloting of capturing social media data and putting that it into CRM. Wow, that’s a lot of data. But what’s the connection between loyalty and data.
In the past, I’ve written about two distinct ways that connect data and loyalty. First, by applying what I call Closed Loop Marketing, a company can create endless loops of communication between consumers and companies. By opting in, a company can track a Web site visitor’s behavior, match with data captured from offline interactions like events, retail transactions or customer service. Then if intelligence is applied to understand the needs and wants of the customer, a company can reach back out to the customer to advance to dialogue, drive incremental transactions or take care of service incidents, closing the communication loop and advancing the relationship and by extension increasing loyalty.
In other contexts, I’ve made arguments about how companies can begin to use a mix of behavioral data captured online, demographics from CRM systems and transactional data from line of business systems to enable predictive analytics that will optimize response rates, close rates and ROI in general.
But today I had an epiphany. The missing piece has been the role of market research. Traditionally we think of market research as focus groups, qualitative and quantitative research and endless cross-tabs slicing and dicing every possible sort of data. And more recently, market research has been turned upside down with the advent of online surveys like Zoomerang and SurveyMonkey. But what is still in its infancy is the pairing of market research analytic expertise with social media influence monitoring.
So what does it all mean? For over a decade we’ve been hearing about the 360° view of the customer. And this has for the most part meant getting more individual data about a customer to be able to sell them more. But what it lacks, besides the fact that virtually no one has achieved it, is that we need to stop talking about data and start talking about intelligence. Capturing transactional data from online and offline is valuable, but only if someone is looking at that data and gaining insight from it.
CRM is primarily a tool of sales people and sales people do not have the time, the background or the motivation to analyze data and turn it into insight. Campaign or brand managers are only interested in their slice of the customer and aren’t really the best choice to be the customer’s advocate.
My choice is to call upon the market researchers. Their skills lend themselves to be good listeners and good ones have the ability to synthesize and extract patterns, critical keys to gaining true understanding of behavior.
So to all of those fellow travelers in the market research space who are seeing their budgets being stripped, there traditional approaches being usurped by self-service tools online and are wondering where their next career move will take them. Start looking at yourselves as the customer advocate and make sure everything you are doing advances your understanding of customer behavior and that you are able to translate that for your businesses or your clients. That will be where you add the most value and this is the key to loyalty.
June 9, 2009
John Kottcamp
User-generated content, Marketing, Web 2.0, web marketing, Strategy, integrated marketing, community marketing, social networking, social media, microsoft, aQuantive, Interactive Agency, Marketing Strategy, Closed Loop Marketing, customer lifetime value, Customer Engagment, ecommerce, Ascentium
#ForresterResearch, agency2.0, Arc Worldwide, Ascentium, B2B marketing, Blast Radius, Cisco, CMO, Critical Mass, CRM, Customer Experience, Customer Relationship Management, Dell, digital agency, ecommerce, IBM Interactive, IconNicholson, iCrossing, imc2, integrated marketing, Interactive Marketing, marketing technology, marketing2.0, Metrics, microsoft, Molecular, OgilvyInteractive, Organic, R/GA, Random House, Razorfish, Resource Interactive, Rosetta, Sapient, SDMA, social media, T-Mobile, VML, web2.0, Whittmanhart
On Friday, Forrester Research published its Forrester Wave™, Interactive Marketing Agencies – Web Design Capabilities, Q2, 2009. Ascentium was covered for the first time along with other top digital agencies including Sapient, imc2, Razorfish, IconNicholson, IBM Interactive, Organic, Blast Radius, iCrossing, OgilvyInteractive, Resource Interactive, and Rosetta, Critical Mass, Molecular, R/GA, VML, Whittmanhart and Arc Worldwide.
In addition to just being favorably reviewed among such a great group an agencies, we take pride in that Ascentium scored the highest out of all the agencies in the category or customer satisfaction. We credit that in large part to emphasis we have given to growing customer loyalty and constantly measuring it with tools like Net Promoter Scores.
When I joined Ascentium almost four years ago, we were primarily a technology consulting firm with strong Web development skills and some good design talent, but we hadn’t yet made the commitment to become a true full service digital agency. But we got together as a team and agreed that the future was in leveraging technology to advance marketing and to move from advertising to engagement.
Three years and a roster of blue chip clients like Microsoft T-Mobile, Dell, Cisco and Random House, later. We have garnered the attention of the likes of Forrester Research and have grown from a local Seattle-based firm to an agency with offices across the country and internationally as well.
It’s been a privilege to be a part of this journey and to have helped nurture it along the way. It wasn’t always easy teaching technologists and marketers to not only get along, but to actually work synergistically, to create a new model for what Forrester has called, the agency of the future.
So congratulations to all the other agencies featured in the Wave, thanks to all the analysts at Forrester who have seen value in what we’ve created and well done to each and every employee I have the privilege of working with at Ascentium. Just wait for what we have in store for you next.
April 30, 2009
John Kottcamp
Ascentium, Blogroll, CMO, customer lifetime value, integrated marketing, Interactive Agency, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, social networking, Strategy, Web 2.0
#fmf09, Ascentium, business strategy, CMO, Customer Relationship Management, integrated marketing, layoffs, recession, recovery, social networking, web2.0
There’s been a definite upswing in the number of ex-colleagues who are reaching out to me via LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or via good old fashioned email lately. I’m glad to hear from them as I believe that is one of inherent values in social networking, re-connecting with people you have lost touch with over the years and multiple moves.
The problem is, the common thread of many of these re-connections is that they have been laid off or in some other fashion, find themselves actively looking for new career opportunities. And these are not the grade B people you knew, who while likeable enough, you knew were never going to be ready for the “big time”. Today, it is the A list just as likely to be out searching for something new. The economy has picked stripped the fat and is now eating into the meat and muscle itself.
Last week I attend Forrester’s Marketing Forum and the theme was that it was time to invest in the future. And that is what the smart companies are going to do. But there are still many, many companies who are afraid to invest, the risk is too high where sheer existence seems to hang by such a thin thread. But it seems such a shame to waste the brilliant talent that’s out there right now, filling their days searching Monster.com and cleaning out the basement.
So I’d like to propose that all those companies who are faced with declining revenues and uncertain futures, reach out to the very smart people who have been sidelined and figure out a way you can work together to map out a future that will serve everyone’s best interests and get the ball rolling again.
May 28, 2008
John Kottcamp
integrated marketing, Interactive Agency, Marketing, Strategy, Web 2.0, web marketing
CRM, Customer Lifecycle, Customer Relationship Management, Lifetime Customer Value, Metrics, ROI
I was busy preparing for a conversation with a client about the importance of building a solid strategy around how to get business value out of an upcoming CRM technology deployment when I ran across a couple of good articles from William Band at Forrester Research. In his piece entitled, “The Right CRM Metrics For Your Organization,” published last October, two key points are made; 1) “metrics enforce the discipline needed for CRM success and 2) Link CRM strategy, Tactics and metrics to business goals.”
Neither of these points are radical, new or very complicated. But what surprised me about them was that they were almost the same key learnings I walked away with from a global CRM initiative I was a part of back in the 90s. Does that mean we haven’t learned anything in the last decade or does it mean we were looking at the wrong metrics back then and did we understand what the business goals really were?
Over the years, I have talked about campaign metrics, customer lifecycle metrics, lifetime customer value, recency, frequency, RFM and of course the ubiquitous ROI. More recently I’ve looked at aligning sales and marketing as a goal of CRM in itself and that raises another whole list of metrics; lead score, lead conversion, entering pipeline stage, time to conversion, order value…. And if that wasn’t enough, add in the Customer Service metrics like issue resolution, customer satisfaction, churn…. Not to mention the call center’s own internal performance metrics like time on call, pick up rate, drop rate…. In the end it appears that there are almost countless metrics that need to be considered and as Mr. Band suggests, it should be done before the technology purchase.
So what’s my point? What was my aha moment when getting ready for my client. It was simply this. We have moved from tactical marketing, sales or service goals and raised them to business goals. But in the process what about customer goals? We have moved even more company centric at a time when the market is becoming more customer centric whether we like it or not.
Customer Relationship Management really refers to how companies can manage their customers. It is a very one-sided and natural way, to track the relationship between company and customer. In a Web2.0 or 3.0 or whatever .0 world we live in, our customers are taking control of the relationship itself and we need to establishing a new set of metrics that represent what is important for them.
We can start with customer rankings and ratings. Which one of us are tracking how our products are being rated on 1) our own Web site if we allow it 2) commerce sites like Amazon.com 3) the big black blogosphere and 4) and perhaps most importantly in communities, both online and offline? And if we do track this information, how many of us are using it alongside other metrics in our business dashboards?
We do countless surveys and research to see what is important for our customers. Let’s start measuring it as well. And not by the good old fashioned customer satisfaction surveys or even by net promoter scores. No let’s get down to the individual level not the aggregate and add key metric fields right into the CRM system so we can report on, analyze and perhaps even optimize our customer experience from their point of view, not ours. When we do, I think we may find some surprises
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