Inbound Interaction Management (IIM)

It’s no surprise that Direct Marketing response rates have dropped to a historic low with success rates in the low single digits. And further - that marketing organizations are becoming increasingly focused on Inbound Marketing (credit HubSpot for creating this term) which are a source of much higher response rates.

Given the pervasive nature of the Internet I think the balance of power has shifted toward the customer or prospect indefinitely – which means we will be in a period of Inbound Marketing for a very long time.

But with all this Inbound Marketing happening – who is looking at the higher order of Inbound Interactions across many different channels – call it Inbound Interaction Management (IIM).

Inbound Interaction Management could mean many things. First it can encompass how you respond to all that Inbound Marketing across your website and social outposts for your content – typically with a system for capturing all the touches that have happened and nurturing those in sales leads has a lot of promise. Next it could also take you into a more traditional space such as the contact center and field service teams – where CMOs already have tons of activity trying to provide superior customer service. So then the question becomes how to bridge the two so you can deliver the Right Offer in the Right Channel at the Right Time.

All this interaction is going to need to be managed and optimized – since some of the touch points have very low customer acquisition costs such as field service teams – who could easily be an extended arm of your Inbound Marketing efforts if they knew how to deliver the Right Offer at the Right Time. Same goes for your contact center – historically a cost center could now become a revenue producing center if you could get them the Right Offer at the Right Time to deliver to the customer.

I am becoming fascinated with the opportunity to meld Inbound Marketing with Inbound Contact Management especially for CMOs of B2B firms. There is a huge revenue producing role that marketers can play by taking all that highly trackable inbound marketing and combining it with existing contact management to create an Inbound Interaction Management system that learns to deliver the Right Offer in the Right Channel at the Right Time.

 

CMO Advice: What to look for when choosing a Social Media or Digital agency?

I had a chance before the holiday to interview Romi Mahajan, President of KKM Group, an Advisory company focused solely on Strategy and Marketing to get his advice on what CMO's should be looking for in an Agency. Here is his take ...

1) What do you think is the one most important factor when choosing an agency?

Romi: The single most important factor is the agency’s internal organizational principle. Are they siloed or do they coalesce around the business needs of their customers?

2) How can you gauge if your agency really "gets it"?

Romi: This is of course the 64,000 dollar question, but that said: Agencies that get it have the following characteristics: 1. active listening, 2. camaraderie across creative, operations, business, finance 3. Track record of irreverence.

3) Do you think smaller agencies have an advantage over larger ones? if so why?

Romi: Without overstating it, yes small agencies have SOME advantages over larger ones and some disadvantages. The agencies in the middle i.e. REAL Revenue of 40-100M like Ascentium are the ones best poised to do great customer work going forward. Reasons are: one needs the critical mass to bring a variegated service to one’s customers but in addition needs to be nimble enough to cluster around the customer in ways large agencies cannot do.

4) Any tips on how to optimize your spend with an agency?

Romi: The best tip here is to be absolutely clear on your goals and then NOT to quibble about small things. The quibbling and back and forth wastes time and money.

5) Do you think we will see more Social Agencies becoming Agency of Record?

Romi: As if being AOR is a good thing! I think we’ll see digital agencies as AOR’s for medium sized companies but, frankly, the AOR model has to die.

Who is Romi?

Romi Mahajan is President of KKM Group, an Advisory company focused solely on Strategy and Marketing in the Technology, Media, Agency, and Luxury Goods sectors. Prior to joining KKM, Romi was Chief Marketing Officer of Ascentium Corporation, a leading digital agency with 96M in Sales in 2008.

Prior to joining Ascentium, Mahajan spent over seven years at Microsoft Corporation where his last role was as Director of Technical Audience & Platform Marketing. Earlier in his career, Mahajan started two boutique consulting companies specializing in technology and finance joint ventures between U.S. and Asian companies.

A well-known speaker on the technology and media circuit, Mahajan serves on a variety of Advisory Boards and speaks at over a dozen industry events per year. In addition, he has been published prolifically in the Technology press.

Mahajan graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, at the age of 19 with a Bachelor’s degree in South Asian Studies. He also received a Master’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin.

 

CMO Challenges in Driving Data into Insights

A good friend and former colleague of mine Dan Neely, CEO of Networked Insights reminded me recently that there will be more data created in this year than in the previous 5000 years combined!

With all this data the question many CMOs wrestle with is – How to manage so much data from so many sources and separate systems to drive insights on how customers behave? With the goal being a seamless and consistent experience as customers and prospects pin pong across a variety of channels.

A recent Forrester report called The Intelligent Approach to Customer Intelligence does a good job outlining the challenges of creating data that can truly be used for driving strategic marketing decisions (what they call Strategic Intelligence).

But for most B2B marketers like myself – we tend to optimize by the channel of data that we have. For example I get: Social Media reports, Blog data reports, Website data reports, Campaign data reports, Launch result reports, Traditional Media reports, Lead reports and of course Budget reports to name just a few. With all these endless reports no wonder it ‘feels’ like we never can get any true customer insights – since all we can do is look down these channels and get a singular view of customer activity.

This doesn’t take into account some of the more forward looking ideas like tracking not just mentions of the brand online but Conversations as well as Facebook Insights reports and coming soon Mobile marketing reports!

I agree with the premise of Forrester’s article that we have to start heading toward Enterprise-wide customer data but its not a simple black and white path. And furthermore the path is unique to each company. Since each one of us has a different variety of reports coming a litany of systems like SAS, Aprimo, Webtrends, iCrossing, Radian6, Facebook, Vocus, Wordpress and where it isn’t automated then it’s just Excel.

To create data that can truly put you on the path to Strategic Intelligence has to become one of your New Year’s resolutions for 2010. If you have any insights on how best to get there please share them.

 

What to look for in a Social Media Marketer?

Now that we are beginning to feel the relief of the economic uncertainty that has been hanging around us for the past few months, I am beginning to hear a lot about the invention of some new roles inside organizations looking to get “social media”.

Typically this means hire someone who knows our “space” really well and someone who is an expert in social media.

Well it’s the latter part that is the hard part. Consider that in Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book The Outliers he goes into a discussion about Violinists and how long it takes them to become a master at their craft. So without spoiling the book for you – the bottom line was – it takes 10,000 hours to become a Master Violinist. This got me thinking about how it could apply to Social Media and how long it would take to become a Social Media Expert.

So if you practice Social Media on the job for a few hours a day, let’s say 3 hours a day learning more about social media and 2 hours a day practicing social media times 5 days a week that means you could become a social media master in 7.6 years. Throw in the weekends and that drops to 5.5 years! But wait, social media hasn’t been around that long!

So since you can’t hire an expert, what qualities would make for a good social media marketer? Here are 4 macro competences to look for:

1) Story telling – in social media you need to tell good stories, stories that people will be attracted to, identify with and want to share. Story telling is key!

2) Packaging – they need to be able to package the stories up and be able to make them shareable this means the content can be found in a variety of media forms not just one.

3) Reach – they need to know how to reach people with their content, the more forms the better. So that means they need to be fluent in many social media sites.

4) Measure – and finally the hardest part for most people is the measurement of the effectiveness of the media and the efficiency of the story being spread in those media.

 

5 Tricks to B2B Marketing Socially

Whenever I ask members of sales team from around the globe what they need – the answer never changes – more case studies. Its not to say that we don’t respond but for whatever reason it takes a village to get a single case study done.

The reason the sales team loves case studies is it gives them evidence. Evidence for them to start a conversation around your solution and gauge whether there is a need with the potential buyer they are talking to.

Then how do B2B Marketers use that content with Social Media to do the same - here are 5 tricks to Marketing B2B content socially ...

1) Tell good Stories - You have a new kind of marketing evolving now – a marketing that is driven by good stories. I think Story Telling is going to be a huge component of the marketers tool kit going forward since the web and social media adore good stories.

2) Make them Sticky - But not just any stories – for example boring stories of an ERP implementation aren’t going to go viral any time soon. But stories that are “sticky” will – but even if you cant have a really sticky story you can at least write about what people care about and in a way in which they will care – ex 7 Ways Facebook will Change your Life was downloaded 10,000 times in the course of a month because it’s a sticky story.

3) Think Friction Free - Think about the friction involved in the packaging of your content and find a way to remove friction from the process. Typical friction-laden processes and long registration forms are usually the culprit so think about circumventing them by uploading to sites like SlideShare give you an easy way to access an audience that can engage with your content.

4) Launch them with all available media - Think about how to maximize your reach into every available channel or media. Find a way to take the core idea and distribute into every possible niche of consumer attention – get creative and leverage that story to maximize the mileage you can get from it.

5) Measure Reach, Efficiency and Value - If you are going to go through the trouble of putting your content out there – why not gauge the effectiveness of the content by measuring how many people you reach, how efficient that reach was (did they click through to learn more, did it drive website visits up, did they register for more information on your site) and finally what value did that bring – a newly minted lead in your database is worth something and it gives you a stream of leads to nurture to the point that you can hand them to your sales team as a sales ready lead that they can close!

 

The Tipping Point and your Contact Center

Back in the year 2000, Malcolm Gladwell published his landmark book called The Tipping Point. And little did he know 9 years later he would have set the stage for how many Contact Centers handle Social Media?

Let me explain …

Many of the most Socially advanced Contact Centers today are using tools to listen in on Conversations. Conversations that are happening about their brand, conversations that are happening about their competition, and of course conversations that revolve around Customer Support! Customer Support makes for an easy anchor of any good Social Media strategy so it stands to reason that Customer Support would play a leading role when it comes to listening in on Conversations.

But today’s listening and analytical technology for social conversations are still in their infancy. So many Contact Center managers find themselves using their listening tools to find Support opportunities and then manually “cutting and pasting” them into email to send to the agent that can best handle the inquiry.

In his book, Gladwell describes "agents of change" like the Connectors who are the people who "link us up with the world”. He characterizes these individuals as having social networks of over one hundred people. And the Mavens who are "information specialists", or "people we rely upon to connect us with new information." They accumulate knowledge, especially about the marketplace, and know how to share it with others.

So in effect the Contact Center Manager acts as the Social Agent of Change, more specifically in the role as the “Connector” linking up the worlds social requests to the best qualified Agent who then plays the role of the “Maven” or information specialist.

While this is a great role for the Contact Center to play it has 2 distinct pitfalls. First is this approach while admirable is just not scaleable. Too much manual intervention and we need to evolve the analytical tools take the place of the “Connector” role. Second we are going to need to get to a place where all this is trackable and measurable rather than unstructured workloads.

 

Some Weeks are Hard to Top!

Last week was the perfect storm of 3 major life moments all coming together in one week to form the perfect trifecta. It’s a week that is going to be hard to top in Dunay history but don’t put it past me to try!

It all started Friday, Oct 23rd when my wife came into the house and said “oh yeah, I think your books have arrived – I saw a whole bunch of boxes out by the garage”. Little did she know in that moment I became a published author! I spent the weekend packing up copies of Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley) and sending them to family, friends, long time mentors but most importantly to influencers who I would love to have review the book.

Monday, Oct 26th rolled around and I was privy to some huge news that was going to be announced – no it wasn’t just my son's 11th birthday – but BtoB Magazine (a Crain’s publication) voted me onto their list of Top 25 Marketers of the Year 2009! I could barely wait to see it in print or have it go live on their website so I could share it with everyone. It’s one of those serious industry honors and one that I have been hoping, praying and striving to achieve.

And to top it all off, Friday Oct 30th I got to appear on my favorite web TV show – HubSpot TV live from Boston. I have been a long time fan of HubSpot TV and I have seen every episode. So when Mike Volpe offered to have me on as a guest around the time of my book launch - I jumped at it. My only reservation was that it was so close to Halloween that they might want me to appear in costume. But when I got there and saw the entire staff of HubSpot dressed in costume, I knew it was time to just go for it. So I ended up appearing as Hulk Hogan – which if I must say – I thought I looked pretty good as the Hulk!

I want to point out that none of this would have been possible without the unending support of my wife and family, close friends, and many of you along the way keeping me inspired to achieve new heights. This blog has been the single most important thing I have ever done and has opened doors to meeting new people, writing books (hint another one may be in the works) and learning more about a topic that I am so passionate about. And to that end I am feeling a renewed sense of energy around my blog, so look for more learnings each week as I report back in real time what I have learned.

I have to thank (again) my inspiration for this blog – Keith Ferrazzi. In February 2006 while on holiday in Costa Rica I read Never Eat Alone. And while the point of his book was about how to network more effectively, on pages 100-101 he covers the topic of sharing your passions via a blog. I made up my mind that day that when I got home I would do what I had been contemplating for a while and start this blog. Little did Keith know it but he changed the course of my life with just a few keystrokes.