CRM - January 2009 - (Page 19)

Insight The Marketing Line for ’09 Having already endured nearly two years of economic decline, a bleak forecast means marketers are in for a bumpy year B art van Ark, chief economist of The Conference Board, did little to cushion the blow when he spoke at a conference last November: “The United States is not falling over the cliff,” he said, “[but] 2009 is not going to be a pretty year.” Marketers have always struggled to quantify their efforts. “I haven’t met a marketer that ever felt their budget was sufficient,” says Mike Dickerson, general manager and senior vice president of eMarketing at business communications firm Premiere Global Services. As budgets tighten, though, marketers will have to dig deeper into analytics. “More marketers are brushing up on their algebra skills than ever before,” Dickerson says. The proliferation of touch points, especially online, is a concern. Marketingcommunications research firm Strategic Oxygen says that it now tracks 45 channels—up from 15 just a few years ago. And yet marketers are still expected to be targeted, personal, and relevant across each touch point. The availability of new online media does provide the opportunity to shift dollars from more-costly channels to cost-effective ones offering critical measurability: “Any marketing department that’s not able to define how the dollars spent are impacting the top and bottom line are sitting ducks,” says Phil Fernandez, chief executive officer of marketing automation firm Marketo. “They might as well paint a target on their back.” Now is the time to make the most of existing systems, Dickerson says, noting an uptick in demand among people trying to optimize software they already have. He recalls one analytics vendor estimating that only 15 percent of customers were actually maximizing the benefit of its tool. “It was like a dirty secret,” he says. Michael Gale, principal and founder of Strategic Oxygen, anticipates that marketers will see further budget cuts, but lower-cost options in social media will leave them “pleasantly surprised.” In fact, he says, we’ll see a dramatic departure from all traditional media. “Recessions force change,” he says. “[It] will cause the final shift away from share-of-voice mar- keting—shouting and hoping someone hears you—to share-of-content, share-ofinteraction, or share-of-dialogue.” User-generated content is maturing beyond mere ratings and reviews as more companies see strategic value in listening to customers, explains Sam Decker, chief marketing officer at Bazaarvoice, a provider of social-commerce solutions. “Seventy-five percent of the product feedback I receive is related to our workbench, inward-facing reports, analytics, alerts,” he says. “People want to start to use the content and the data to change buying decisions, merchandising decisions, email marketing, paid-search testing…. We see it more and more across multiple channels.”(See “The Feedback Funnel,”page 27, for more on collecting feedback.) With the help of online interactions, marketing is meeting its customers on a personal level and gaining organizational respect as it delivers valuable leads to sales. Whether 2009 will be the year the two finally come together, it’s hard to tell, but hopefuls say it may just be one of the few things to come out of this recession. “The aspirations going forward…will force sales and marketing to glue together better,” Gale says. “Groups don’t naturally work together unless put under enormous duress.” —Jessica Tsai CRM on As cloud computing seeps into CRM (see “30,000-Foot Views of the Cloud,” page 17, and “The Google-ization of CRM,” page 22), we looked at some tweets on the subject. Want to follow CRM magazine on Twitter? You can find us at www.twitter.com/destinationCRM. Tweet us directly by using @destinationCRM at the start of your message. NhatPham: will Salesforce or MS CRM give me a cloud copy to use? or will I decide to embrace Zoho CRM? bignerdscott: After a mega computer meltdown, I’m using Highrise CRM so all my data lives in the cloud. Paired with Prism, it’s awesome. thecryptic: methinks that CRM in the cloud won’t fly with enterprises, maybe small or SMBs willida: Cloud telephony--Both parties in a fog? :) My expectation--VOIP, video available, caller ID interfaced with CRM, speech-to-text tomlewisuk: Checking out hosted CRM solutions--the cloud based company dream continues! aargenz1: SaaS/Cloud are being proven with CRM and Email now, productivity apps making strides too salrasa: Social CRM, Cloud = the transformation experts keep predicting every 5 yrs. or so, “that soon, computing will not resemble what we now know” www.destinationCRM.com CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | JANUARY 2009 19 http://www.twitter.com/destinationCRM http://www.twitter.com/destinationCRM http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - January 2009

CRM - January 2009 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point The Shots Heard ’Round the World 30,000-Foot Views Of the Cloud Stuffing the Ballot Box— With Complaints The Marketing Line for ’09 CRM on Twitter Technology Helps Insurance Weather the Storm Required Reading The Google-ization of CRM The Feedback Funnel Email: What’s Inside? Shake Your Moneymakers Lead Sweet Lead Incentives at the Speed of Lightpath Sales Contentment for Content Management A Worthwhile Excursion Into Call Recording Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Connect Pint of View

CRM - January 2009

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