How to Bond With Customers Thanks To Digital Marketing: Pepsi’s Case Study

It might not be the newest social media marketing campaign, but it is working, and it is still on. But let’s face it: Pepsi with its Pepsi Refresh Project has made a great job.
Pepsi, thanks to its website http://www.refresheverything.com/ is offering the opportunity to visitors to submit on idea. Then the community votes for the ideas it prefers, and every month, the best ones are financed by Pepsi.



The concept has two great advantages:
It boosts Pepsi’s presence in social media. It helps the company to bond with its customers. Pepsi now counts 3 millions Fans on Facebook and 60 000 followers on Twitter.
Brand equity: Pepsi acts as a responsible brand, which helps the community. I am sure that it has been very powerful.

What do you think about it?

Foursquare For Retailers: Managing The Last Mile

I am a Foursquare evangelist. I love the service and I can clearly envision what kind of usage people might have, and what interest companies might have.
I read a very interesting article about Foursquare, and how it could potentially influence shoppers.

The idea is that Foursquare is the best tool to trigger the decision of a shopper to come into a store. Foursquare has a lot of feature which helps customers making a decision:

• Of course discounts
• Tips and to-dos
  

Mobile is the only device that has ever been empowered to do so. This is the reason why it is very interesting to see the rise of Foursquare, and to see how it will work. Also, what would be very interesting would be to get data from Foursquare. I don’t know if the company has a lot of them, but it would be very interesting for a company to know how the check in process happen, and also the search approach of customers while checking in.

What do you think about it?

Ebay Loyalty Reward Program: Bucks

Summer 2010 Ebay launched its loyalty reward program named bucks. The concept is simple, but has an interesting feature: You earn 2% of your purchases in dollars which you can use for your next purchase.

What is new is that you have 3 weeks to spend it. And this is what is interesting in terms of CRM. Indeed, it aims customers to come back, and to buy more often. Hence it is totally completing its customer relationship management goal.

Now it is not sure it will work: If customers tend to buy a product in more than three months on average, maybe they would be reluctant to actually pay attention to their money. I don’t actually now what is the average frequency of purchase on Eay.

What do you think about it?

Social Media vs Email: Ben & Jerry’s Case Study

Couple of weeks ago I visited the Foum E-Marking in Paris. As I have said in a previous post, I have been pretty deceived about the fair, as I did not see much innovation whereas the market is constantly evolving, toward more social media. @joelbirch said on Twitter it was both funny and scary, and I must agree.

I found this very interesting article on social media.

It is very interesting for 2 reasons:

• It explains the reasons why Ben & Jerry’s shifted from email to social media strategy.


• It is an example of a food company using social media, which remains rare.

Ben & Jerry’s decided to stop their emailing program, and to switch its effort onto social media.

Now Ben & Jerry’s count 1,3 million fans on Facebook. Nevertheless, some customers are not happy as they would rather receive offers via email than logging in Facebook.

In terms of customer relationship management, social media offers a great opportunity to bond with customers. But in this specific case, it is bad the fact that Ben & Jerry’s is ignoring a large part of its customers.

On the company’s side, there is one thing which needs to be seen: Emailing are pushed marketing campaign, while social media is pull: That means it does not exactly respond to the same problematic…


Now, does it mean that emailing is dead?
Some people are really thinking it might. In a rea with other media of communication like Facebook, Twitter, Instant messaging, it is difficult to picture the future of emailing. Now, of course, I know that a lot of people will say that over time no communication media disappeared, they tend to add up. But emailing might be considered as a part of microblogging activities (this is just a thought).

Emailing, on the company’s side has great strengths: It is easy to get data and measure the return on investment it might get.

Social media may also be a “push marketing” tool, as updates are getting inside fan’s data feed.

I believe that Ben & Jerry’s decision might be a little bit extreme, and emailing still has a bright future ahead of him, for at least couple of things. But it is very interesting to see how Ben & Jerry’s are using this new medium.

La Caisse D’Epargne: Nouveau positionnement, nouvelle identité

La Caisse d’Epargne vient récemment de lancer une nouvelle campagne de communication. J’ai d’ailleurs été invité à l’événement, il y a quelques semaines de cela, mais je n’ai malheureusement pas eu le temps de poster quelque chose à ce sujet (sniff).

C’est la raison pour laquelle j’ai décidé, une fois n’est pas coutume, de faire une série de trois articles afin d’exposer les grandes nouveautés que nous avons pu voir lors de cette événement.

Et l’événement est de taille. En effet, la Caisse d’Epargne avait basé depuis plusieurs dizaines d’années sa communication sur l’effigie de l’Ecureuil, animal attachant et symbolisant la mission d’épargne qu’avait la société. D’ailleurs, les différentes campagnes de la Caisse d’Epargne ont reçu de nombreux prix de publicité pour leur qualité.

Mais alors, pourquoi changer ?

• Parque qu’après plus de 10 ans de saga animalière, le temps du changement était venu. Il fallait retrouver du sang neuf alors qu’on avait fait le tour du sujet.
• La Caisse d’Epargne a changé : De nouvelles activités ont été rajoutées, notamment dans le btob, et ainsi, le discours de la saga animalière était devenu trop loin des attentes de ces nouveaux publics.
  

Objectif:

• Regarder avec un oeil neuf la Caisse d'Epargne
• Pouvoir segmenter la nouvelle identité en fonction des typologies de clients: Grands groupes, pros, particuliers, etc...
• Créer du silence du calme et de la sereinite pour faire passer le message.
  
  
  

De plus, la Caisse d'Epargne va aussi revoir sa stratégie dans le hors média, en s'impliquant dans le mécénat culturel, en misant plus sur la musique que sur le sport (domaine où elle était très présente).

Be Careful About Facebook Terms of Use For Your Marketing Campaigns

Setting Up marketing campaigns on Facebook is becoming more and more popular. The obvious advantage of the solution is that you can bond with your customers thanks to Facebook like never before. In terms of customer relationship management, that implies conversing with them, but also benefit from the fast spread potential of the platform.

But this medium remains for a lot of marketing departments a land to explore, and misuse is common. I was reading the great blog of Mickael Guillois, French expert in digital marketing, which was writing about the issues French retailer Kiabi experienced with its Fanpage.

Kiabi owned at this time 130 000 fans on its fan pages. Due to a marketing campaign based on a game which did not respect the terms of use of Facebook, Kiabi saw its page shut down by Facebook. Kiabi probably spent a lot of effort building this community, and losing all its followers due to a bad campaign is pretty disappointing.

Hence, Mickael, in order to avoid these kinds of trouble, gave us 3 great advices to prevent it to happen:

• Don’t use your wall to create a campaign/game. You should rather create a specific tab to display it.


• Specify clearly on this page that Facebook is not participating in the game.


• Respect the country’s legislation.
  
  Hope it will help you…
  

SEO Strategies In 2011

I have attended a conference about the new trends of SEO in 2011 during the E marketing Forum in Paris in January. Unfortunately I have not written the name of the speaker, but it was very interesting to see those trends. Indeed, even tough social media gets more and more important in search, Google still rules the Internet world, and its influence is constantly getting bigger by adding new features, like Google shop, or Android for mobile devices (both tablets and phones).

Here are the main ones I have got:

• SEO benchmarking: One of the main trend in managing SEO will be to look after your competition. Now that the market is getting mature, strategy will have a key role. Some companies may hence focus on flushing the keywords, in order to get a lot of traffic and drive sales, but some others are focusing on having a high return on investment. Depending on your competition’s strategy, you should adapt yours in order to be more efficient.
• Google Speedy: I did not know much about Google Speedy prior to the conference. Speedy aims to run faster search for Google. And it will change the way Google approach web pages, and therefore, it will have an impact on the way you will conceive your codes, to be well ranked. Speedy is at an early stage, but like always with Google, it should move fast.
• Google Preview: Google preview is a new feature of Google, which I actually use a lot, especially on my chrome navigator. It allows you type a keyword and instantly you can see propositions of keywords. It speeds up the way you search. And hence, it influences how searchers are looking for information. Therefore, the value of keywords will change, because it will be influenced by the new results Google Preview is going to provide.
  Google Products: Google products aim to ease the searching process of e-buyers, by providing a large outlook of which e-merchant propose what product.
• Devices: A lot of devices are now equipped with the Internet. Of course, the mobile Internet is going to rocket within the next few years, but also TVs and tablets are empowered with the Internet. And those new devices, and the way we interact with them is going to change the way we are surfing the Internet. And hence, we may see new results showing up, different from the ones we have right now. It may also change the query, with the need of more local information than right now. Maybe Google is going to integrate Foursquare results in its results, as it did with Twitter?
  
  What is sure is that SEO remains an art, and 2011 will see a lot of new things showing up.
  
  What do you think about it?
  

The Future of Advertizing Companies

I had a very interesting chat with the director of a French advertizing company, especially about all the new technologies which allow one company to create its own communication tools. Hence, anybody can create a website, an emailing campaign or even a brochure by its own, without asking for any advices to those companies.

Moreover, the results are most of the time high quality and low costs. Actually, it is this CEO which came to the conclusion that soon companies will no longer need advertising and/or communication companies.

I found couple of months ago this very funny movie which tells the story of the last advertising company, as if it was an en danger specie.



As a blogger, added to my entrepreneur mentality, I like to create things by my own, and I master all those tools which allows you, for free or for cheap, to design great communication tools. But I must disagree with this person. I don’t think that we will see the end of those agencies soon. Sure that those of them which are not able to manage the great shift which is occurring to the Internet sphere, on mobile phones, social networks, geolocalization, augmented reality, they will disappear without any question. But our world is ruled by communication. And more and more we’ll need to have experts to advice us on how to do.

I remember Henri Kaufman in one of his class used to say that it was important to have external advices instead of inside expertise, because those people which works on several different clients and different industries, may provide you with open minds, and new ways to see your business. It is very important sometimes to step aside, and seek for outside insights and advices, to move forward.

Hence, one of the key added values of those companies is the department of media planning, which helps define the new consumption trends, identify the strategy of competitions and so on. This department will become more and more important as the communication will become difficult as the number of communication channel is multiplying.

Therefore I don’t think advertising companies will die, if they succeed in thriving on social media and new communication tools. They should focus their expertise on communication in overall.

Also, one of the thing they should change, is the way their pricing method: They should be more focus oriented, now that communication channels metrics are getting sharper and sharper.

What do you think about it?

Apparition de cyvercollèges dans le Val de Marne

A partir de 2013, les 12 500 élèves du Val de Marne entrant en 6ème se verront remettre un ordinateur portable afin de pouvoir étudier. L'idée est d'utiliser l'ordinateur comme support essentiel et central de l'éducation de ces élèves. En effet, l'utilisation de l'ordinateur prend une place de plus en plus importante dans notre vie. Il est important de ne pas creuser la "fracture numérique", celle qui sépare les gens ayant un accès à l'informatique et ceux qui n'en ont pas.

Je trouve la démarche remarquable, car elle va aider les collégiens à utiliser au mieux l'ordinateur, qui reste le plus incroyable outil de connaissance que nous n'ayons jamais connu.

Et vous qu'en penses vous?

M-Commerce: Domino’s Pizza Iphone App Generates $1.3 million In Sales

M commerce remains a land that needs to be conquered. Now that smartphone sales are rocketing and the usage of mobile Internet is adopted by the mass market, now people are seeking for new ways to take advantage of this new main business trend. And one of the most promising one is the payment potential of mobile.

Not a lot of cases studies exist in mobile commerce sites which are actually profitable. But couple of days ago, I found this very interesting article. Domino's Pizza Iphone application generated $1.3 millions in sales!

The application, which was launched in September 2010 for the UK market, has been promoted on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and reached 400 000 downloads.

“The challenge was to create an app which made it easy and fast to order a pizza, but at the same time offered something more to engage users and reinforce the personality and key attributes of the Domino’s brand,” said James Millett, multimedia manager at Domino’s Pizza.

“Our Web site is already optimized for mobiles but we wanted to make it even quicker and easier for customers to get a piping hot pizza, wherever they are,” he said.

The applications lets users find the closest Domino’s locations and pizzas can be customized by pinching to resize the size of the pie and choosing from a variety of toppings.

Additionally, iPhone users can enter to win money off of their next order by popping their pizza in the oven and swiping or blowing away the steam to reveal a code.

While Domino’s is preparing the actual pizza, customers can keep tabs on its progress with the real-time pizza tracker (OK, in my opinion, this part might be a little bit too much...).

The application also includes a pizza slot machine that lets customers shake their phone and randomly choose from Domino’s 75 million combinations of base, sauce and toppings (it is a cool feature, but wouldn't it be awesome also if you could check what people are ordering at the same time on Twitter? Could turn the app a little bit more social!).

Here is a video showing you how the application actually works.

It is actually pretty new that Pizza makers are using the Internet to take orders. But Domino's Pizza went one step further with this new tool. And indeed, let's think about it, most of the time you order a pizza on your phone, and it would be pretty convenient to be able to pay the pizza right away, as you won't need to get crazy by seeking for money to give tips to the pizza guy...

It is also great for the company, which may now improve staff productivity as it does not need to deal with payments any longer, combined with the fact that the order is also automatically typed into the system.

Now this shows well how a m commerce website may work: It is improving the customer experience by improving the payment process. And what gives also value to the m commerce platform is that you may customize your product thanks to the same application. It reinforce my opinion that mobile marketing will help generate foot visits in store, and hence generate more business to traditional retail.

What do you think about it?

Ipad Success Story : Disney Delivered 1 Million Book Apps

A lot of hope is based on the Ipad format, in order to give a lift to newspapers and books
sales. The Ipad has all the features required to improve a lot reader experience.

And some companies already seem to take advantage of it. Disney recently announced it
sold 1 million book apps on Ipad, Iphone and Ipod Touch. Disney have 9 book applications
available on the Apple’s App Store, and all of them have been in the top 10 of paid book apps
since the Ipad was released in April 2010.

You may click here to get further information.

It isinteresting to see success on the Ipad. It seems that what brought success to Disney’s
book is that it fully used the potential of Ipad: "This app was such a delightful surprise, full
of color, audio, songs and movie clips! It's easy to follow with a great voice that reads to you,
easy to flip pages, and a true delight that really engages the reader and keeps you entertained.
There are lots of little extras, including coloring pages and songs with lyrics to read-a-long,
and you can touch some of the pictures on the page to get an audio clip from the movie.”

What do you think about it?

Quelques réactions sur l'application Ipad de la Caisse d'Epargne

J'utilise depuis quelques temps régulièrement l'application pour Ipad de la Caisse d'Epargne. Depuis un an, la Caisse d'Epargne (qui est par ailleurs ma banque de référence) a beaucoup évolué afin de se rapprocher de ses clients:

• Site mobile pour consulter ses comptes
• Application Iphone, puis Android
• Nouvelles campagnes de communication, avec une nouvelle charte, mais aussi l'abandon de la figure populaire de l'écurueil.
• La possibilité d'avoir un numéro de téléphone non surtaxé pour accéder à son agence (oui cela parait irréel, mais ce n'était pas le cas avant).

Et donc depuis quelques temps une application Ipad. Ce que je trouve super sur cette application, c'est le module gestion de budget. Je suis très friand de ce type d'outil, car, il faut bien l'avouer, j'aime gérer mon budget de manière très précise.

Maintenant, tout n'est pas parfait avec cette application, mais on est sur la bonne voie. Voici quelques points vraiment intéressant:

• Il est très facile de mettre des catégories aux différents achats. Par contre, j'ai l'impression que le nombre de catégories est limité, ce qui est dommage: Pourquoi devrait on limiter le nombre de catégories?
• La partie analyse reste un point faible, mais le graphique sous forme de camembert est plutôt bien fait, et permet une lecture facile des postes de coûts.
• Il est vrai que le fait que ce soit un écran tactile permet une interaction facile avec l'application.

Maintenant, je souhaitais quand même partager avec vous certains points d'améliorations.

• Concernant les catégories: Ne pas limiter le nombres de catégories, laisser à l'utilisateur la liberté d'en créer autant qu'il en a besoin. Par ailleurs, il faudrait permettre de créer des familles au dessus des catégories, pour rendre plus facile la partie analyse.
• Concernant l'analyse:
• Au lieu de privilégier les graphiques sous formes de camembert, qui permet de voir une situation fixe, il vaut mieux y avoir des graphiques de types "courbes", qui permet d'identifier l'évolution dans le temps.
• Il faudrait avoir aussi une partie analyse sous tableau, qui permet de voir les évolutions en % et en valeurs. Cela permet de voir si sur le mois on est dans les clous.

Bref, il y a vraiment du bon et un futur sympa pour cette application, mais encore pas mal de travail pour vraiment rendre l'application vraiment utile.

Foursquare Educates Brands

When you have such an innovating product as Foursquare, it is obvious that you will need a strong evangelist effort to make in order to convince brands to use it. Personnaly, I can clearly see the interest of Foursquare, especially to boost in store foot traffic. But for marketing and customer relationship managers who might not be as much into new technologies, Foursquare’s success may remain an unanswered question.

Foursquare has released a new business section on its website. Its goal is to explain how Foursquare uses and how brands may use it, with detailed examples.

I invite you to visit it here.

From registering your point of sales, to creating badges and following people, everything is explained.

I find the section very interesting, clearly understandable. The only thing I regret is that they could have added up a forum for people to ask questions.

What do you think about it?

Google's BigQuery: Promising

I have recently been introduced to Bigquery. It is a service proposed by Google, which allows companies to process large amount of data thanks to Google's wonderful skills. Google indeed is used on a daily basis to scan through an incredibly huge amount of data, in order to propose the best search results to its users. Hence, they are now using this expertise to the corporate world.

Here is a good video showing how it works, and the strengths of Bigquery:

Now there is something that bugs me about it: It is the privacy issue. How Google may assure the privacy of the data it will process?

Also there is another correlated question: How is Google making money out of it? It doesn't seem clear if the service is free or not. But Google is used to propose free services in order to get from users' data to propose keywords.

What do you think about it?

Cars Empowered With Social Media: The Future Is Near

I think I found what my next car will be. It is called the Mini Cooper Connected and it seems very promising. You will find here a video showing you out why.

The Mini Copper has a social media feed from Facebook, check your Twitter account, you may connect to Google maps to find places to visit... We may imagine a Foursquare feature which would propose you to check in in a glance.

This is a very cool way to think how the car will be in the future. Actually, it has been years that car manufacturers are thinking about bringing the Internet inside the car. But nobody has really brought those projects to life. It is actually interesting to watch this new concept. Indeed CEO of Renault Carlos Ghosn was at Leweb this year, and was discussing with Loic Lemeur about how to incorporate Internet in cars. And as you will see in this video, is why quite pessimistic about setting up a car empowered with Internet. In his opinion, for security reasons, car manufacturers should not equip cars with Internet because it could distract drivers. Of course I understand that security must be the top priority for a car...

I believe that in the end, we will all have the Internet in our cars, and this will be great. As Mini Cooper is part of the BMW group, I can't wait to see what these "connected features" will be in premium BMW models.

What do you think about it?

Netvibes Is Missing The Ipad Revolution

I am the happy owner of an Ipad since this christmas. To be honest with you, I am very happy about it. I did not quite expect such a great experience navigating online with this new device. I am especially enjoying reading online newspapers, either on their websites or on applications they have set. I read mainly Le Figaro (French), and El Pais (Spanish). But there was one application that I was really eager to check: Flipboard.

When Flipboard was released, it made a lot of buzz on the Internet. It was a really cool way to use Twitter, and as I use Twitter as one of my primary source of information for my blog, I expected a lot about it. And to be honest with you, I really like it. It is really cool, and really look like an actual newspaper. It is easy to check interesting articles, and to read them thanks to it. Actually, Flipboard became one of my main tool to read news. I use it every morning.

Here is a video showing out the strengths of Flipboard.

Now there was another service that I used to check daily to get information for my blog, and overal information: Netvibes. Netvibes has been around for years now, and has been one of the leader in the Internet technology for quite a while. There RSS reader and organizer was a great product. You may get all the information you want, and organize it the way you wanted it.

But lately, especially as Twitter has become so huge, I have left my Netvibes on the side. So now that I am checking out all these new applications newspapers have released and Flipboard. I was wondering if Netvibes has created an application. Therefore I asked the question on my Twitter account, and CEO of Netvibes Freddy Mini responded to me that they did not, but instead, had a netvibes HTML5 version which was cool to use on Ipad.

But as I checked it, I did not find anything interesting. This is a pitty, because I have tons of RSS feeds on my Netvibes, and as I have checked Paper.li creating a lot of buzz, as they try to recreate a Newspaper from who you follow on Twitter (I believe it is very poor right now), Netvibes would be the best placed to do so. Netvibes has tons of informations about the things you read, and they even know how you have ranged it, in which sections.

I imagine clearly what a Netvibes Ipad version inspired by both Paper.li and Flipboard would be.

I really hope something is going to show up, because so far I have no intention to visit my Netvibes page.

What do you think about it?

Do You Really Believe In Mobile Commerce?

Mobile handhelds are becoming the center of a new hype. Smartphones sales are skyrocketing, new technologies allow the mass market to use the Internet at a high speed, and no one can possibly doubt mobile will be the next trend to watch.

Now what we have learned with the Iphone success, is that people like to interact with their smartphone for three main activities:

• To be informed: Read articles on the web, download some newspapers applications
• Useful applications: Find a restaurant nearby, consult a bank account, prepare a shopping list.
• To have Fun: all the video games which exist now.

What about paying with their mobile phones? A lot of companies have already invented new ways to use mobile as a payment terminal for in store purchases.

I read not so long ago (it was before Christmas time), that 44% of British people were ready to buy Christmas gifts via their mobile phones.

"A new study by UK-based smart buying clubGlamoo suggests that 44% of Brits will use their mobile phone to buy and send gifts this Christmas.

Sampling 4000 people, the survey found that a third of respondents would use their daily commute to complete a shop for goods and services on their mobile, whilst 42% said they would take advantage of being a passenger in the car to complete their shop."

What is interesting to see is the advantage mobile commerce would deliver: Being able to order in any situation, which is not yet the case of the Internet. But I believe that the main challenge for mobile commerce will be to provide a nice interface which will help the customer to find the products he wants with ease.

What do you think about it?

Employees Play A Key Role In Customer Relationship Management

Customer relationship management is a complex art which encompasses several different activities, and several different media. And most of the time there is a fundamental part which is left on the side, whereas in my opinion it is probably the most important one: employees.

There are a lot of cases where CRM is approached by CEOs as a way to improve salary costs, by replacing human experience by a "robot". But it doesn't seem in my opinion a proper way.

Hence, I wanted to quote two very interesting quotes said by CEOs of companies which excel in customer relationship management:

• "You can't expect your employees to exceed the expectations of your customers if you don't exceed the employees' expectations of Management" Howard Schultz, Starbucks
• "Businesses often forget about the culture, and ultimately, they suffer for it because you can't deliver good service from unhappy employees". Tony Hsieh, Zappos.

These two statements place human resources and employees at the core of customer relationship management. Not database. Not top of the line direct marketing campaign. They believe that customer relationship management is about corporate culture and employees happiness. You can't pretend to feel for your customers while you don't even feel for the people you manage on a daily basis.

In the retail industry, whatever the company it is, employee turnover is very high. People switch from job very easily, which drives high cost for hiring new people and train them, but also inefficiency for the whole staffs, as they are often undermanned.

This is the reason why it is very important while creating a CRM strategy to take into consideration the human factor. CRM is not about taking the place of people, but actually being able to optimize employees time and knowledge to improve customer service, and in the end, customer satisfaction.

What do you think about it?