CRM, Retail, Marketing Strategy and Beyond: March 2009

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

How To Use Web 2.0 For Grocery Retailers?

I'd like to share with you my thoughts I am working on a project for a grocery retailer. We all know that grocery retailers count among the biggest spenders in terms of advertising. They mainly use printed supports like mails, but also TV advertising (for branding purposes). However, they are struggling to innovate on the web.

We all know the great potential of web 2.0, in terms of community creation and communication. But success stories using web 2.0 most of the time are based on products that customers have a lot of affection with (cars, music and so on). Therefore I am wondering how a grocery retailer could use all these new web 2.0 tools to promote its business. Which message to use? How to get people involved.

I believe involving people might be the biggest issue. There are still some examples of tries, but I don't see clearly yet how to use all of that.

I'll try to share with you my thoughts, and define a model on how to use web 2.0 for grocery retailers.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Trophées SCOPS 2009

Lundi 6 avril seront décernés à l'université Paris Dauphine les trophées SCOPS. Cette soirée est l'occasion de récompenser les principales innovations commerciales de l'année ainsi que les campagnes marquantes de l'année. Cet événement est organisé par le master distribution et relation client de Paris Dauphine, formation que j'ai suivie, et reconnu comme la meilleure dans son domaine par LSA.

"Pourquoi avoir lancé en 2008 un observatoire de l'Innovation Commerciale ? Alors qu'il existe de nombreux outils de veille sur l’innovation produit ou sur les tendances publicitaires, les outils de veille sur l'innovation commerciale sont plus rares et souvent centrés sur un domaine précis (Rubans de la franchise, Mètres d'or de l'IFM, Trophées Casques d'Or ou Qualiweb...).

Face à cette situation, le Master Distribution et Relation client a décidé en 2007 de lancer un observatoire ayant pour mission de recenser les projets innovants en matière de commerce, au sens large : des concepts de vente aux programmes de fidélité, en passant par les opérations de collaboration entre industriels et distributeurs.

Dès 2009, notre objectif consiste à mener une analyse comparative (2008 vs. 2007), afin de suivre les évolutions et les tendances. Par ailleurs, si l’observatoire se limite pour l’instant à la France, il est destiné à s’étendre à l’Europe en 2010, avec l'aide des partenaires du Master."

Je me rendrai à cette événement, et vous invite à vous y inscrire si le sujet vous intéresse ici.

Basketball Star Is Using Twitter

How great do you think it would be if you could have your favorite player tweetting from the locker room to give you insights?

All star Gilbert Arenas was already a celebrity of the blogosphere thanks to its blog where he was speaking freely about the NBA. Now it is Forward Charlie Villanueva that is using Twitter.

Villanueva owns a Twitter account, and decided to tweet at half time of the game against Boston. He tells to the web he was going to have a big night. The Milwaukee Bucks ended up winning against Boston, and it created a great buzz in the NBA. This story created a great buzz in the sport business in the US.

I believe actually that it is great advertising for Twitter, because it shows out how Twitter could be used for commercial purposes. Indeed, do you imagine? You could have some insights of your players during the game, and get scoops before anybody. There is more and more interviews during the game, but there, you could go further and deeper in the process. Twitter would become a great add up for sport broadcasting companies like Espn.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Experiencing Problem With My Template

I am having problems with my templates. I am trying to fix the problem as fast as possible. I am sorry for the inconvenience.

Does The Internet Make You More Productive?

That is a common assumption that the Internet is making you more productive. The Internet allows you to access information quickly, stay connected with your partners and clients.

A survey conducted by the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future found a majority of US users thought the Internet had made them more productive.

Now, this study has been conducted on the audiences beliefs about how more efficient they became thanks to the Internet. But the fact is the Internet brought a new issue to companies: The information overload. I've found a great Gartner's podcast about this topic, explaining how problematic it could be. The more information available, the more you are willing to get it, and the slower the decision making process is.

A Nielsen Online survey found that US workers averaged 67 online sessions and spent approximately 89 hours online per month. They visited 131 different domains, viewing each site for a minute, on average.

Those 131 Websites can’t all be work related, can they?

Saturday, March 14, 2009

What A Bad CRM Program Could Cost You

Customer Relationship management programs are based on the fact you could reward your best customers in order to retain them and create loyalty.
I wanted to tell you a story that happened on Friday, March 6 while I was doing some grocery shopping. This will illustrate actually what a bad CRM offer could generate in terms of non sens financially if it is not properly prepared.

As any French person would, I was going to buy some bread for diner. It happened that I did not have cash, so I asked the cashier if it was OK for me to pay per card, even though it was only for dozens of cents (34 cents of euros). She said ok. You need to know that using my credit card, which is actually branded by the retail I was buying my bread at, they give me 10 cents any time I use the card.

They Give Me Money For My Baguette!

Then I pay my baguette, and she hands me some Catalina coupons. These are the coupons the cashier gives you with your ticket, printed with some discounts. The coupons was offering me 2 euros, which will be usable within the next month.

What does that mean? That basically mean that they gave me 2.10 - 0.34 = 1.76 euros for getting a baguette! It's 5 times the value I was supposed to pay! How bad a return on investment it is.

Watch Out Your Reward
Why did they give me this reward? Because I have bought with my branded card? Or do they give it to anybody?
What is for sure is that there is something wrong with the rewarding system. That creates non sense, and even for someone like me, who is loyal, this makes me wondering how good of a customer I am for the company.

I am pretty happy to have earned 2 euros, but the non sens of such a reward shows the rewarding system hasn't been made properly.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Google To Launch Behavioral Targeting Campaign

Google had already revolutionized the advertising market thanks to its keywords technique ten years ago. Now the Mountain View company is about to go a step forward in targeting possibilities by leveraging visitors' behavior to target marketing campaigns.

Google will begin showing ads based on their previous online activities in a form of advertising known as behavioral targeting,which has been embraced by most of its competitors but has drawn criticism from privacy advocates and some members of Congress.

Of course, this new technique is creating controversy, as most of the new ways of advertising based on private data. However, Google seems to be concerned by protecting users' privacy.

How It Will Work
Google will use a cookie, a small piece of text that resides inside a Web browser, to track users as they visit one of the hundreds of thousands of sites that show ads through its AdSense program. Google will assign those users to categories based on the content of the pages they visit. For example, a user may be pegged as a potential car buyer, sports enthusiast or expectant mother.

Google will then use that information to show people ads that are relevant to their interests, regardless of what sites they are visiting. An expectant mother may see an ad about baby products not only on a parenting site but also, for example, on a sports or fashion site that uses AdSense or on YouTube, which is owned by Google.

The program will first be tested with a few dozen advertisers but Google plans to expand it.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Voyage de découvert du ecommerce aux Etats-Unis

La mission économique de New York organise du 14 au 18 juin 2009 une visite à New York et Boston des acteurs du ecommerce aux Etats-Unis. Voici la description:

Les entreprises américaines sont très rapides à réagir pour adopter des solutions anti crise. Les stratégies actuelles le démontrent dans la distribution et le e-commerce avec des démarches innovantes à budget restreint. Pour les entreprises et les prestataires français, Ubifrance vous propose une mission pour découvrir les opportunités qui existent, connaître les nouvelles solutions, les tendances, anticiper et se préparer.

J’ai le plaisir de vous informer qu’UBIFRANCE organise du 14 au 18 Juin 2009 une rencontre avec les experts du E-commerce & de la distribution a Boston & New York.

Visitez Internet Retailer à Boston, le plus grand salon professionnel du E-commerce et du multicanal aux Etats-Unis, participez aux conférences

Rencontrez des partenaires potentiels, des distributeurs lors des événements de networking à Boston et New York

Gagnez du temps grâce à l’expérience et aux conseils pratiques des professionnels de chaque canal de distribution lors des ateliers d’information

Découvrez les innovations du commerce, les concepts stores à New-York

Nous pensons que cette mission peut vous être utile et à enrichir vos connaissances et échanger avec des intervenants qualifiés.

Tout est organisé pour vous à des conditions très avantageuses. Les séminaires ainsi que l’entrée au salon Internet Retailer (valeur 1100$), le transfert en train de Boston a New York, les rencontres professionnelles, les cocktails de Networking et le Guide du E-commerce et de la VAD sont inclus dans le tarif de la mission (1200 euros).

Seuls sont à ajouter les vols Paris Boston et New York Paris (697$ aller retour non modifiable / 829$ aller retour modifiable) / devis établi par Jetsetters Travel a ce jour.

et l’hébergement, 4 nuits à Boston et 1 nuit à New York - Marriott Courtyard à Boston (239 $/nuit) et Novotel à New York (249 $/nuit).

Vous pouvez vous inscrire ici.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

5 Selling Techniques To Sell In A Bad Economy

This post will probably interest you a lot, as it will gives you 5 great techniques to use in order to sell in a bad economy. You can find the complete article on the Neuromarketing blog.

Consumer behavior has been affected by the economical downturn, and hence changed from normal times. That is the reason why you should try to adapt your sales strategy:

"Minimize Buying Pain

Tightwads are characterized by an above normal sensitivity to buying pain. Research has characterized the pain of buying as being related to, among other things, the perceived fairness of the price and the immediate cash impact.

1. Make the price a bargain. Tightwads don’t like high prices, or prices that appear to be high for what they are buying. Sale prices may be more potent tools with this group. In a direct selling situation where the offer can be tailored to the individual, a price discount may help seal the deal. In most selling situations, though, discounting may not be a desirable option, or even a possibility. In these cases, it is possible that restating the price in different terms might help. An annual membership costing $120 might be described as “only $10 per month” or “only 33 cents per day.” In every case, you are trying to show the tightwad buyer how fair the price is.

2. Avoid repeated pain points. In Painful Sushi and Other Pricing Blunders, I talked about how per-item pricing (as in a sushi restaurant) creates a more painful buying situation than a one time, all-inclusive price (as in a seafood buffet). Since tightwads are more sensitive to paying pain, avoid drip-drip-drip pricing structures that punish the buyer every time he does something. Obviously, not all selling situations allow this - Wal-Mart can’t adopt “per cart” or “all you can buy” pricing. But many products and services, including internet service, cell phone service plans, health club memberships, physical products with options, etc., are possibilities for including a la carte items in a package price.

3. Create product bundles. This is closely related to the previous point. One effect of package pricing is to disguise individual pain points, as has been noted by neuroeconomics expert George Loewenstein. One example he cites is the bundling of car accessories, like leather seats, power features, and so on into a single “luxury package.” This avoids the multiple pain points of selecting separately priced items, and also disguises the individual prices. If the packaged items were sold individually, the consumer would have to make a specific decision on whether leather seats were worth an extra $1,000, a power moonroof $900 more, and so on. Even though the package may cost as much as, or even more than, the individual components priced separately, there’s less buying pain involved.

One good thing: if you can reduce the buying pain associated with your offer, you’ll almost certainly do better with the vast majority of your potential customers. All but the most extreme spendthrifts do feel some buying pain, and a less painful offer will help with more than tightwad customers.

Other Tightwad Techniques

4. Appeal to important needs. Tightwads are less likely to be seduced by the sex appeal of a product than other types of buyers. One of the experiments conducted by the CMU researchers was to present an offer of a $100 massage couched either in utilitarian terms (relief of back pain) vs. hedonic terms (a pleasurable experience). While tightwads were 26% less likely to buy the hedonic massage than the spendthrifts, they lagged by only 9% for the utilitarian massage. Most products combine a variety of characteristics, and the utilitarian ones may be most important to emphasize when selling to tightwads.

5. Watch Your Language! One rather startling finding in the CMU research was that changing the description of an overnight shipping charge on a free DVD offer from a “$5 fee” to a “small $5 fee” increased the response rate among tightwads by 20%! This is hardly inventive copywriting and didn’t involve any fancy neuromarketing, but the mere reminder that $5 was a small amount of money had an important effect on tightwads."

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Customer Experience Leads To Loyalty

Customer's loyalty facing the zapping generation
Customer relationship management (CRM) programs are facing big issues as they are struggling in maintaining customers' loyalty. We are in the zapping generation: customers are used to zap brands and products as they would change channels on TV. They don't have the same concept of loyalty as our parents used to. They are driven by the instantaneous interest, and therefore, it is difficult to create brand loyalty

Customer experience as a key to create loyalty
Bruce Temkin of Forrester published a report called Customer Experience Correlates To Loyalty. Here is the description:

"I just published a report called Customer Experience Correlates To Loyalty that examines the connection between customer experience and three components of loyalty:

Reluctance to switch business from a company
Willingness to buy another product from a company
Likelihood to recommend a company to a friend or colleague

The analysis is based on a survey of nearly 4,700 US consumers in October 2008. The results are compelling. Across all 12 industries we examined, there was at least a medium level of correlation between customer experience and loyalty; in most cases the correlation was much higher.

This chart shows the level of correlation between customer experience (as defined by Forrester’s 2008 Customer Experience Index) and the three elements of loyalty:

0902_industrycorrelations5_small

I also did the same analysis with consumer data from Q3 2007 on nine of these industries (we added airlines, hotels, and PC manufacturers this year). It turns out that the correlation between customer experience and loyalty has increased in every industry.

I wasn’t surprised to find the link between customer experience and loyalty; I’ve worked with — and studied — enough firms to know that there’s a strong correlation. But I wasn’t sure how the economic downturn had altered this relationship. So it was very interesting to find out that the connection has become stronger in the recession.

The bottom line: Don’t neglect customer experience during the downturn."

My opinion

Customer experience is probably one of the most important of the component of brand loyalty. I actually believe that customer relationship programs and reward strategies should also focus on how you could improve customer experience of your A clients.