Social Media Landscape

Fred Cavazza has been for years one of the main Internet expert in France. He's providing us on his blog with a great analysis of the Social Media Landscape. As you can see it below, this is a very complex mapping as there is a lot of service/competition in the market. Thus, this is a good division by usage. It is good sometimes to see the bigger pictures to see how social media is evolving. Here is the article of Fred Herein.

Social Media Landscape (redux)

The large size version is here : Social Media Landscape (redux).

Four Main Usages

The various tools and services displayed on this landscape are listed bellow.

1. Expressing tools allow users to express themselves, discuss and aggregate their social life:

• Publicatin tools like blogs ( Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress), wikis ( Wikipedia, Wetpaint, Wikia), microblogs ( Twitter, Tumblr, Identica), citizen news ( Digg, Newsvine, AgoraVox) and livecast ( JustinTV, Ustream, BlogTV) ;
• Discussion tools like forums ( phpBB, Phorum) and video forum ( Seesmic), instant messengers ( Y! Messenger, Live Messenger, Meebo, eBuddy), comments services ( IntenseDebate, Cocomment, Disqus, BackType) and 3D chats ( IMVU, Habbo, WeeWorld, vSide) ;
• Aggregation tools ( FriendFeed, SocialThing, LifeSteam, Profilactic, Plurk...).

2. Sharing tools allow users to publish and share content:

• Content sharing for videos ( YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo), pictures ( FlickR, SmugMug, Picasa, Fotolog), music and playlists ( Last.fm, iLike, Deezer), links ( Delicious, Magnolia, Reddit) and documents ( Slideshare, Scrib, Slideo) ;
• Product sharing with recommendations platforms ( Crowdstorm, ThisNext, StyleHive), collaborative feedback platforms ( FeedBack 2.0, UserVoice, GetSatisfaction) or swaping platforms ( LibraryThing, Shelfari, SwapTree) ;
• Place sharing with tools based on local adresses ( BrighKite, Loopt, Whrrl, Moximity), on events ( Upcoming, Zvents, EventFul, Socializr) and on trips ( TripWolf, TripSay, Driftr, Dopplr).

3. Networking tools allow users to search, connect and interact with each other's:

• Search networks allowing users to find ex-classmates ( Classmates, MyYearBook, Alumni) or persons ( MyLife) ;
• Niche networks ( Boompa, Dogster, PatientsLikeMe, Footbo) ;
• BtoB networks ( LinkedIn, Plaxo, Xing, Viadeo) ;
• Mobile networks ( Groovr, MocoSpace, ItsMy, Zannel) ;
• Tools to build an online network ( Ning, KickApps, CrowdVine, CollectiveX).

4. Playing services that now integrate strong social features:

• Casual games portals ( Pogo, Cafe, Doof, Kongregate, PlayFirst, PopCap, BigFish, Prizee) ;
• Social games portals ( Zynga, SGN, ThreeRings, PlayFish, CasualCafe, ChallengeGames) ;
• MMORPGs ( World of Warcraft, EverQuest, Lord of the Rings Online, EVE Online, Lineage, Dofus, Runescape) ;
• MMOs ( Drift City, Kart Rider, Maple Story, Audition, Combat Arms, Quake Live) ;
• Casual MMOs ( Puzzle Pirates, Club Penguin, Neopets, Gaia Online, SmallWorlds, OurWorld).

From Social Networks to social Platform

At the center of this landscape we will find former social networks, which have evolved to progressively integrate more and more functionalities and morphed themselves into social platforms. The notion of 'platform' is particularly relevant since those network have the ability to host applications (mostly the one you find on the four main usages).

We can split social platforms into two groups: The First Generation which have been existing since more then 5 years and gather between 50 and 200 millions of users ( Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, Orkut, Skyrock, Hi5, Windows Live...) and The New Wave of social players which have a similar offering and a fast growing audience (between 20 and 50 millions users - Netlog, Imeem, Piczo, Lexode, Hyves, Buzznet, Xanga, Zorpia...).

I won't enter in the debate to foresight which platform will grow faster or which will appeal the most to youth audience but I anticipate a rough competition for Facebook which is stile experiencing cash flow problem by sticking to the advertising model while those new social players have integrated micro-transactions and premium membership in their business model.

Google and Yahoo! are still absent from the social scene (wait, maybe not...)

You will also notice in this landscape the discretion of Google and Yahoo! which are 'only' represented by services that did not managed to break through the social scene (while being strong references, Blogger, YouTube, FlickR cannot be considered has dominant social platforms). Let's be honest: MySpace and Facebook decently steal the spotlight from Google and Yahoo!.

Wait... maybe not if you consider Google as a being in a much more favorable situation with lower-level services like Gmail (one needs an email to register Facebook, right?) or Google Maps (can you count the number of social services relying on Google mapping tool?). Add to this there current cash situation and it leaves them plenty of time to sharpen their social strategy (Maybe by buying Twitter or FriendFeed, or booth!).

The same is true for Yahoo! which can rely on a massive user base (still outnumbering Facebook's one) and essential social bricks like Delicious, Yahoo! Pipes, MyBlogLog and the promising Fire Eagle.

Did I mention Microsoft? Yes, Microsoft, those guys behind Hotmail, MSN and Windows Live. Ignoring them would be a big mistake and Mark Z. was more than happy to welcome them in FB's capital.

From this pint of view, I expect a very thought battle around authentication services ( Facebook Connect, Google Accounts...) allowing social platforms to exist outside of their boundaries and to export their members' social graph. Big players like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft have to emphasis their legitimacy as historical web players to keep control over their users.

I strongly recommend you to pay attention to those different services (yes, there is a life outside Facebook) and I shall meet you next year for a third version!

Microsoft and Google Fight For Twitter's Search Engine

Microsoft and Google are becoming the best enemies lately. We all know that Google is way ahead in terms of advertising revenues from its search engine, which is driving Microsoft to seek for a partnership with Yahoo. Google got onto Microsoft's market when developing some Powerpoint and Word-like softwares. They even got into the mobile business, where Microsoft is also struggling to stay in the competition.

Now, Twitter, one of the most trendy social media, has recently launched a search engine to look through Tweets. However, Twitter engineers don't have the Google's nor Microsoft's expertise, and both companies are fighting to provide a new advanced search engine.

This article is even thinking about a bid for Twitter, but I don't think we are going towards this. I'd rather think that Google and Microsoft could develop specific search engines to help Twitter users find interesting tweets. Now if Google and Microsoft are working on a search engine, that could be pretty bad for Twitter. Indeed, one of the most blossoming business in the Internet is advertising coming through search engines. Google might get a huge potential business out of Twitter's hands if so. Since Twitter is still struggling to get a business model... Nevertheless, Microsoft could get back in the social media competition if it succeed in creating a great search engine for Twitter, because I don't see them getting near Google's one...

@the_gman, thanks for sharing the info!

Mobile Marketing: M Couponing To Become More Popular

Marketers are seeking for more efficient marketing techniques and it might benefit to marketing campaigns using mobile phones. Mobile marketing could benefit to customer relationship management (CRM) programs, because they could allow you to reach customers on one of their most personal device.
Advantages of M coupons
M couponing provides great analytics capabilities as you can measure numbers of contact reached, number of messages read, and number of coupons used (thanks to a track code). That sort of looks like emailing capacities. M coupons owns also the great advantage that the customer has it on his phone, meaning it has it on him at all time, allowing him to use it whenever he wants, and hence it doesn't need to be printed.




Juniper Research forecasts for 2010 an increase of the use of mobile coupons of 30%.

Some techniques still need to be improved to raise the advantages of the coupons, especially couponing while visiting the retail (thanks to geolocalisation). But their are some other concerns that can be raised by the use of mobile marketing. As mobile phone is so personnal, the intrusion issues will eventually appear. That is the reason why I believe mobile marketing hasn't been able to spring up yet as it was supposed to. The crisis turns marketer to seek for new medium with a high return on investment and limited budgets. Therefore, I think mobile coupons will get more comon for 2010.

Thoughts About Mobile Marketing

Work is still under progress about mobile marketing. Even though everybody is agree on the fact that marketing on mobile devices will probably one of the hottest trend in a near future, there is still room for innovation. Christopher Carfi exposes his view on the subject in this article.

Christopher is an expert in customer relationship management (CRM), and is pointing out interesting things. First of all, he's discussing about how marketers approach mobile marketing.

Here are couple of great examples of mobile marketing given by the article:
Lake Tahoe’s Heavenly Mountain resort is using mobile to provide its customers research information with up-to-the-minute webcams and video from the mountain, as well as condition, traffic, and pricing information (http://www.skiheavenly.com/mobile).

Domain registrar Network Solutions created a mobile shopping guide for holiday season “Black Friday” sales (http://www.bffeed.com).

Cable giant Comcast is using services such as Twitter, which has an inherent mobile component, to support customers using its “@comcastcares” presence (http://twitter.com/comcastcares).

Online community giant BlogHer has created mobile pocket guides for both connection and conversation for everything from politics to parenting to personal finance (http://tinyurl.com/bhpolitics).

Mobile marketing is still new and fresh, and there is a lot to be done with it. Great article.

Twitter Funny Video

Found on Loic Lemeur's blog. This is a very funny cartoon which criticizes Twitter. I believe this is refreshing to see that as there is a lot of buzz around Twitter, and no one seems to really be able to take advantage out of it. Enjoy it.

Facebook Reaches 200 million Users

Facebook has just reached 200 million users. This is a symbolic barrier and shows a little bit more the fascinating growth this social media experienced. Now Facebook has for the past year reshaped first to adapt to the social media evolution (with more feeds coming from different social media platform) and secondly to attract advertisers. They have also been structuring their business departments for that matters. If Facebook is still struggling to compete with Google in terms of adword campaigns, brands express much interest in how to leverage communities.

“Learn about real or perceived problems relating to your product or customer service—and unleash the wisdom of the user,” said Geoff Ramsey, eMarketer CEO. “By looking, listening and lounging, marketers can gain valuable insights concerning online and offline campaigns.”

L'IPAG classé 7ème école de commerce visé Bac+5

Le Point vient de sortir son palmarès 2009 des grandes écoles de commerce. L'Ipag, mon ancienne école de commerce avec Paris Dauphine où j'ai reçu un master 2, y a été classé 7ème. l’IPAG compte aussi parmi les 15 meilleures formations pour la finance et parmi les 10 meilleures formations en culture-communication.

Voici un florilège d'articles concernant l'Ipag et ses récents succès dans la presse.

Les Trophées SCOPS 2009

Lundi 6 avril avait lieu la remise des trophées SCOPS 2009. Cet événement est organisé par le master distribution et relation client de l'Université Paris Dauphine.

C'est la première fois que je me rends à cet événement, puisque l'année dernière je me trouvais aux Etats-Unis à cette période. C'est l'occasion de faire un tour d'horizon des innovations commerciales qui auront marquées l'année 2009.

Les innovations étaient classées par catégories, et pour chacune de celle-ci, le public, ainsi qu'un jury de professionnel et d'universitaire, étaient amenés à voter pour les différents projets.

Voici, en exclusivité, le palmarès de cette édition. Sachez d'ailleurs que certaines de ces idées feront l'objet d'une suite d'article ultérieurement.

Catégorie concepts:

• Hojo, la boutique consacrée aux séniors
• EDF, les boutiques Bleu Ciel
• Idmacif.fr, le distributeur automatique d'assurance auto en ligne
• Renault, le Showroom virtuel en 3D
• Comptior de l'Homme, une boutique dédiée à la beauté de l'homme
• Lecointre Paris, le street vending à la française

Vainqueur: Lecointre Paris

Catégorie services d'aide à la vente:

• Auchan, le Keyshopping
• Telfrance, le showroom Internet Plus belle la vie
• Castorama, le Coach Studio de La Défense
• Virgile, Maif: la géosécurisation
• SNCF, le TER e-service sur mobile
• BioStick: le dossier de santé sur clé USB

Vainqueur: BioStick

Catégorie opérations:

• Surfcouf et Finaref, opération Flashmob
• BNP Paribas, les retraits gagnants Gabi à tout prix
• Kia et Meetic, le Rallye Dating Picanto
• Boots, les espaces Sérum 7
• Géant Casino, le prospectus interactif
• Sarenza, la course en escarpins

Vainqueur: Géant Casino

Catégorie programmes de fidélisation

• Visa Renault, la Carte Bleue 4 en 1
• Point S, du côté des femmes
• Yves Rocher, la carte fidélité réinscriptible
• Les Mousquetaires, la carte banquaire tout en 1
• APC, les Butler Worn Out Series
• Amazon, le Programme Premium

Vainqueur: APC

Catégorie stratégies client

• SNCF, les trains de nuit iDNIGHT
• Orange, la visioconférence en ambulance
• Monoprix: le site marchand urbain
• My Major Company, les internautes producteurs d'artistes
• SFR, L'atelier dans la Blogophère
• LCL, l'option Systèm'Epargne

Vainqueur: My Major Company

Très bonne soirée, qui m'a permis de renouer contact avec d'anciens camarades de promo et professeurs, mes aussi de retrouver les nouveaux étudiants.

New Pepsi's logo creation

Have you ever thought about how global brands like Pepsi have created their logos? What are their signification. I found this pdf file on the Retail Art Blog. It shows you the work behind the creation of the new logo of Pepsi.

This document shows you the whole symbolic and story about the evolution of the packages of Pepsi's bottle, or the font used. What is great, it is to see the evolution and the path the logo is taking to keep the roots of the brand, and to innovate and stay in the move.

I have already talked in this blgo about the new packaging of Tropicana, and also how the New York Times defined its icon for the Iphone. For marketers this is fascinating.

Twitter For Coupons And Promotion

You know I am currently working on how to leverage web 2.0 tools for grocery retailers. I am thinking about the use of Twitter for such a purpose.

Twitter enables you to communicate quick and fast through the community. A lot of people have already tried to use it, but how to use it for prmotions?

Twitter For Flash Sales
We could imagine using Twitter for flash sales. Indeed, as an instant messaging system, you could reach people through Twitter to propose flash sales, whether online, or even maybe in store.

Twitter For Coupons And Discounts
You could post on Twitter some codes and links to get coupons, usable in stores.

Do you have any other ideas? Let's share

When Companies Fire Customers

As the financial crisis is still going on, a lot of companies are making radical decisions in order to stop the bleeding. Hence, a fundamental issue is raising among marketing and CRM departments.

Even though it is important to keep your customers loyal right now, there is still a part of your clientele that you might not want to keep. Indeed, these clients are costing more money to manage than they are spending. Therefore, it is very important to part with these people to focus on profitable customers.

Airlines Company
Airlines companies are champions in loyalty programs including free miles. I don't know any companies that don't have this system.
Actually, it is now becoming problematic, as customers pile up miles without taking it, which creates treasury issues: if tomorrow all customers of a company decide to take all their miles at the same date, it will probably go bankruptcy.

UK airlines companies have decided to close the account of customers that failed to collect any of their Airmiles over the past two years. "The loyalty program, which has eight million customers in the UK, has distributed 1.7 million letters to customers threatening to end their affiliation if they do not use their existing miles or fail to assemble any new ones."

American Express Offers $300 For Customers To Close Accounts
American Express offers $300 to its non profitable customers to close their accounts. That shows well that this profile of customers is really making the company losing money.
Ethic and Customer Relationship Management
Now, are those strategies ethical? The company is deciding to change its CRM approach, there is no doubt about that, but still, these people earned their miles/money.
I believe these facts are just evidences that this crisis is forcing companies to cut their budgets and expenses to remain viable, and it shows out well that customer relationship programs might become costly if not taken care properly.



Now you all know this pyramid. It shows that customer relationship management (CRM) programs are aiming to retain customers and help up selling. But when they fail, then you need to take actions...

A Great Example Of Twitter Use For Customer Service

Loic Lemeur is providing us in his blog with a great example on how companies could use Twitter for customer service purposes.

"A good case study: Robert Scoble yesterday saw me saying on Twitter that our web host for Seesmic, Servepath, went down for more than 5 minutes and took some of its customers sites down entirely. Robert follows me but probably also follows Rackspace his new employer. Robert took this opportunity to write a blog post and we got into a conversation on Twitter and his blog.
In a matter of minutes, representatives from both Servepath (our host) and Rackspace (Robert's company interested in getting our business) started to get in the conversation with many customers of both commenting at the same time. It was priceless information about their services but also competitive information for the companies themselves. All in public, that is very new.
I have insisted that I was not dissatisfied in general by Servepath but of course annoyed that we went down entirely for a significant time given the budget allocated to our hosting. Now Amazon went down a few times too and I take it Rackspace has its problems too, but this is not my point here.
Brands who are not listening will fail but listening is not enough. Very few of them actually start getting immediately in the conversation. I saw an article and that was explaining the popular shoe brand Crocs was going out of business and in a matter of minutes their community manager answered saying that as any business they were going through tough times but that they were safe."

Twitter is a great tool to listen to your customers. Especially since they havec added up the new search features. Of course, this is still applicable to Robert Scoble, and probably not to the average Joe yet, but customer relationship management (CRM tools) will probably enable the use of such techniques to a larger number of people. What is great is that have been looking for ways to use Twitter as a customer relationship management tool for about a year, and lately I have seen a bunch of new ideas on the topic emerging.

Seesmic Shows

I have always liked the Seesmic concept even though I don't really use it. Thanks to Loic Lemeur's blog I have been following the company's debuts thanks to its daily videos. I remember also he hired at some point French blogging celebrity Vinvin in order to develop content in Seesmic.



I believe the purpose was to propose on Seesmic a combination of both professional and amateur content.



In fact a part of Youtube's success has been based on the different online shows it can propose. The Internet has been able to become a true medium of content. Thanks to new technologies it is easy for an individual to create high quality video content.



Unfortunately, it didn't seem to work and I believe the project has gone in limbo.



Nevertheless I deeply believe that Seesmic could create a great way to develop professional content, especially based on the sport shows concept.



On the radio and TV there are a lot of talk shows where the audience can speak up and give their opinion about a topic. That sort of looks like the kind of interaction you could get on Seesmic. I think that it could be interesting to create that kind of show on Seesmic and then propose it on another public platform (itunes? Youtube? Emule? Espn.com??) To consume it.



On Seesmic's point of view that could have many interest. First it could be a great way to advertise the service. It could also help Seesmic to launch its advertising platform (as Robert Scoble says, and as previously shown on this blog, professional edited videos remain more attractive to Internet users).



I think this type of "professional content" concept should be seen more in details, but it should probably come from the users more than the company. Or maybe a TV channel like Espn would be interested in adding such a show.





Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Mitsukoshi Is Using Blogs For CRM Purposes

We all know blogs can become a powerful customer relationship management (CRM) tool when used properly. Many years ago, in 2006, Mitsukoshi, a Japanese department store, experimented the use of blogs for CRM purposes.

Mitsukoshi proposed to 50 of its best customers to open some blogs, and become the reporters of the store. The idea was to create some user based content, where customers talk about the news of the store.

The company provided to the participants some USB keys with RFID chips. The more they posted articles on the blogs the bigger the prize they received.

Was it a success? Did it develop a strong customer relationship? There is very few articles discussing about the results, and I would like to know what it was about. Anyways, this was an initiative taken at the early stage of the blogging boom. I believe this is a good example on how to use blogs for retails, as a CRM tool.

That will probably feed my thoughts on how to use web 2.0 for grocery retails.

Wall Mart 2.0

Is Wall Mart an adept of web 2.0? I am currently seeking for ways to use web 2.0 for a grocery retail, and as I am prospecting some experimentations, I was wondering what Wall Mart, the king of retail, did.

I didn't find much actually. The only true web 2.0 application Wall Mart has on his website is a feature to rank products. This is kind of deceiving actually. I believe that web 2.0 tools could still be used to enhance the customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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."

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:

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.

Top 10 mensuel des e-marchands américains sur base du taux de conversion

Janvier 2008

1.	L.L. Bean	mode, prêt-à-porter…	23,6%
2.	J.Jill	mode, prêt-à-porter…	19,8%
3.	Office Depot	matériel de bureau	17,8%
4.	ProFlowers	fleur	17,8%
5.	Drugstore.com	santé / beauté	17,3%
6.	Coldwater Creek	mode, prêt-à-porter…	15,6%
7.	Chadwick’s	mode, prêt-à-porter…	15,0%
8.	CDW	matériel et services IT	15,0%
9.	eBay	C2C	14,9%
10.	Bose	matériel son	14,9%

Moyenne du top 10 non pondérée

17,2%

Février 2008

1.	Snapfish	tirage photo online	17,4%
2.	Vistaprint	service d’impression online	16,8%
3.	ProFlowers	fleur	15,2%
4.	Lands End	mode, prêt-à-porter…	15,2%
5.	L.L. Bean	mode, prêt-à-porter…	14,7%
6.	Lane Bryant Catalog	mode, prêt-à-porter…	14,7%
7.	HSN.com	généraliste	14,6%
8.	1800flowers.com	fleur	14,2%
9.	eBay	C2C	14,0%
10.	Blair.com	mode, prêt-à-porter…	13,8%

Moyenne du top 10 non pondérée

15,1%

Mars 2008

1.	Office Depot	matériel de bureau	20,9%
2.	QVC	généraliste	19,0%
3.	Vistaprint	service d’impression online	18,3%
4.	Roamans	mode, prêt-à-porter…	18,1%
5.	Lands End	mode, prêt-à-porter…	16,2%
6.	eBay	C2C	15,7%
7.	1800flowers.com	fleur	15,5%
8.	Ebags.com	bagages	15,3%
9.	L.L. Bean	mode, prêt-à-porter…	14,6%
10.	Pottery Barn Kids	mode, prêt-à-porter…	14,2%

Moyenne du top 10 non pondérée

16,8%

Avril 2008

1.	ProFlowers	fleur	27,5%
2.	Office Depot	matériel de bureau	25,8%
3.	Lands End	mode, prêt-à-porter…	24,8%
4.	QVC	généraliste	19,4%
5.	CDW	matériel et services IT	19,1%
6.	HSN.com	généraliste	16,8%
7.	Vistaprint	service d’impression online	16,8%
8.	Oriental Trading Company	farces et attrapes	16,5%
9.	Williams-Sonoma	univers de la cuisine	15,6%
10.	eBay	C2C	14,8%

Moyenne du top 10 non pondérée

19,7%

Mai 2008

1.	ProFlowers	fleur	35,7%
2.	Office Depot	matériel de bureau	31,4%
3.	Blair.com	mode, prêt-à-porter…	23,8%
4.	FTD.com	fleur	21,3%
5.	QVC	généraliste	18,7%
6.	CDW	matériel et services IT	17,9%
7.	Lands End	mode, prêt-à-porter…	17,5%
8.	1800flowers.com	fleur	16,8%
9.	Drugstore.com	santé / beauté	16,2%
10.	HSN.com	généraliste	15,8%

Moyenne du top 10 non pondérée

21,5%

Juin 2008

1.	ProFlowers	fleur	28,4%
2.	Office Depot	matériel de bureau	25,6%
3.	FTD.com	fleur	24,3%
4.	1800flowers.com	fleur	20,3%
5.	Lane Bryant Catalog	mode, prêt-à-porter…	18,7%
6.	QVC	généraliste	17,5%
7.	Eddie Bauer	mode, prêt-à-porter…	16,8%
8.	Roamans	mode, prêt-à-porter…	16,1%
9.	Vistaprint	service d’impression online	15,2%
10.	eBay	C2C	14,9%

Moyenne du top 10 non pondérée

19,8%

Juillet 2008

1.	Office Depot	matériel de bureau	26,9%
2.	1800flowers.com	fleur	20,9%
3.	FTD.com	fleur	20,3%
4.	J.Jill	mode, prêt-à-porter…	19,4%
5.	ProFlowers	fleur	19,3%
6.	QVC	généraliste	18,2%
7.	L.L. Bean	mode, prêt-à-porter…	15,9%
8.	Children’s Place	mode, prêt-à-porter…	15,2%
9.	Blair.com	mode, prêt-à-porter…	14,9%
10.	Zales	bijoux, montres	14,6%

Moyenne du top 10 non pondérée

18,6%

Août 2008

1.	ProFlowers	fleur	41,5%
2.	1800flowers.com	fleur	20,8%
3.	Blair.com	mode, prêt-à-porter…	20,1%
4.	QVC	généraliste	20,1%
5.	Lane Bryant Catalog	mode, prêt-à-porter…	19,7%
6.	L.L. Bean	mode, prêt-à-porter…	19,7%
7.	Roamans	mode, prêt-à-porter…	18,8%
8.	The Sportsman’s Guide	nature, chasse et pêche	17,7%
9.	Office Depot	matériel de bureau	17,3%
10.	eBay	C2C	15,2%

Moyenne du top 10 non pondérée

21,1%

Septembre 2008

1.	1800flowers.com	fleur	25,2%
2.	Office Depot	matériel de bureau	24,8%
3.	ProFlowers	fleur	21,3%
4.	QVC	généraliste	20,3%
5.	Blair.com	mode, prêt-à-porter…	16,6%
6.	J.Crew	mode, prêt-à-porter…	16,3%
7.	Amazon	biens culturels, high tech, …	15,8%
8.	Vistaprint	service d’impression online	15,6%
9.	Ebags.com	baggage	14,7%
10.	L.L. Bean	mode, prêt-à-porter…	14,2%

Moyenne du top 10 non pondérée

18,5%

Octobre 2008

1.	Office Depot	matériel de bureau	28,2%
2.	ProFlowers	fleur	26,7%
3.	Roamans	mode, prêt-à-porter…	21,4%
4.	Blair.com	mode, prêt-à-porter…	21,1%
5.	Lands End	mode, prêt-à-porter…	20,7%
6.	Talbots.com	mode, prêt-à-porter…	20,6%
7.	QVC	généraliste	20,0%
8.	L.L. Bean	mode, prêt-à-porter…	17,1%
9.	Staples	matériel de bureau	16,1%
10.	eBay	C2C	14,3%

Moyenne du top 10 non pondérée

20,6%

Novembre 2008

1.	ProFlowers	fleur	30,6%
2.	Metrostyle	mode, prêt-à-porter…	23,6%
3.	QVC	généraliste	21,6%
4.	Office Depot	matériel de bureau	21,6%
5.	L.L. Bean	mode, prêt-à-porter…	21,5%
6.	Tickets.com	tickets spectacle, concert…	20,1%
7.	Blair.com	mode, prêt-à-porter…	18,9%
8.	Lands End	mode, prêt-à-porter…	18,4%
9.	1800flowers.com	fleur	17,8%
10.	The Sportsman’s Guide	nature, chasse et pêche	16,8%

Moyenne du top 10 non pondérée

21,1%

Décembre 2008

1.	ProFlowers	fleur	31,1%
2.	L.L. Bean	mode, prêt-à-porter…	25,7%
3.	Amazon	biens culturels, high tech, …	23,7%
4.	VitaCost	santé / beauté	23,0%
5.	Coldwater Creek	mode, prêt-à-porter…	22,4%
6.	QVC	généraliste	21,1%
7.	Roamans	mode, prêt-à-porter…	20,4%
8.	Office Depot	matériel de bureau	20,2%
9.	Lands End	mode, prêt-à-porter…	19,3%
10.	Victoria’s Secret	mode, prêt-à-porter…	19,2%

Moyenne du top 10 non pondérée

22,6%

source:http://www.blog-conversion.com/web-analytics/top-10-mensuel-des-e-marchands-americains-sur-base-du-taux-de-conversion-en-2007-et-2008/

Picnic en hypermarché

L'association "L'Appel et la pioche" organise des picnics dans des hypermarchés en France, en mangeant des produits du magasin où ils se trouvent, afin de dénoncer les marges abusives de la grande distribution.

Je trouve cela totalement déplacé. On reproche ainsi à une entreprise de faire des profits. Or sur ces profits, Auchan emploi. Je pense qu'il existe bien un problème en France, où l'on assimile marge et vol, bénéfices et honte. Est-il ainsi mal vu de bien gagner sa vie?
Pourquoi devrait-on se venger d'une entreprise qui fait des bénéfices? Parce qu'il est inavouable en cette période de crise de gagner de l'argent? On serait alors prêt de l'auto destruction.



Néanmoins, cette vidéo montre bien la mauvaise image que la grande distribution possède, puisque l'on voit des participants critiquer les marges abusives et le traitement des employés dans ces hypermarchés. D'ailleurs la remarque de certains par rapport au traitement des employés est très paradoxal, alors que France 2 à passer il y a quelques jours un reportage sur les salariés d'Auchan payé sur 14 ou 15 mois grâce à la participation.

Et vous, qu'en pensez vous?

Retail Loves Email

This crisis is affecting a lot marketing strategies. Indeed, one of the first move for corporation while they see the risk of stagnation is to cut marketing budgets, which drives marketing departments to reallocate their expenses.

In this cruse for better ROI, marketers seems to have found in the Internet the perfect place. Emarketing has 3 main specificities that makes it unique:

• Cheap: Internet marketing remains cheaper than TV advertising or some other kind of media. With couple of bucks you can reach a large number of people.
• Targeted: You can target your audience by their location, what they are looking for and/or who they are. You are not massively spreading a message hoping it will be received by the right person, which actually increases the ROI.
• Measurable: It is easy to analyze the results of a marketing campaign, wether it is via emails or search engine optimization. You know precisely how much money you spent, how many people received your message or saw your ad on the search engine, and how many people cliked on it.

Hence, online retails seem to affect especially emailing campaigns. That is what an emarketer study shows up.


Actually, this study made me think about something else. Indeed, traditional retails are experts in flyers and print mailing edition. They spend tons of money sending brochures from mailbox to mailbox in order to promote their discounts. But I don't understand why they haven't switched yet to emailings. That would probably gives a better idea of what their customer's really care about, and also limit their marketing budget. It would have a triple advantage:

• It will cut most of promotional costs. Advertising is one of the top budgets of marketing departments of retails.
  
• It will gives clearer data to improve their bid. Depending on what customers are interested in, you could find out what kind of promotions would be more profitable and makes people come to your store. You could do that by having an emailing feature allowing the customers to rank the offer, or to declare their interest in a specific section of the store for instance.
• It will improve the sustainable development image of the company. It will help these companies to better their green image, and be more respectful of their stakeholders.

What do you think about it? Do you have example of companies like Tesco in England, Wal mart in the US, or Carrefour in France that uses emailings to replace or complete their flyers campaign?

Facebook fails to acquire Twitter

Facebook and Twitter, two of the most hyped company on the web, have considered a deal last fall for about $500 million.
The Palo Alto's company was considering buying Twitter thanks to an exchange of stocks: instead of putting cash on the table to buy a company, you could use your stocks (if your company is worth more than the other one).

How Much Facebook Is Worth?
But one of the problem with all these 2.0 companies is that it is pretty hard to estimate its true worth. Indeed, you could probably value these companies by the audience they generate, and hence determine the advertising potential of it. But Facebook is still struggling to monetize its business model, especially while this economical downturn is cooling down investors and VCs. Facebook is still willing to pursue its strategy of expanding its audience and service range versus securing a business model and I believe that during this crisis investors are more eager to hear about immediate profits and cash flows.

Here is a summary of the scenario.
"Representatives of Twitter liked the sound of $500 million but balked when Facebook said its stock was worth $8 billion to $9 billion. Twitter's team knew that Facebook was letting employees sell stock on the secondary market at company valuations ranging from $2 billion to $4 billion. "We said it's not worth it," the person says. "Don't treat us like children."

At that point, Facebook offered Twitter around $100 million in cash, with the rest of the deal in stock. Facebook said it would come up with the $100 million by selling more of its stock to outside investors.

Twitter agreed on one condition: that the Facebook stock it received be valued at the price company shares garnered on the open market. Facebook blinked and the deal talks ended. "They wanted to buy us but there was not much conviction," the person says."

2.0 Companies Struggle During Crisis
The lack of objective evaluation of 2.0 companies is a big problem during crisis. Even though Facebook seems to be the most well equiped with its large number of users and detailed data, it is still having difficulties to leverage the full potential of the community.

However, Facebook seems on a better pace, as it is already generating revenues from its advertising program, whereas Twitter is still wondering how to monetize the service. It would be a great add up for Facebook to get Twitter, especially as they have launched a Twitter-like service not so long ago, which could benefit of Twitter's expertise. We could even imagine the two services to merge in case of an acquisition.

Facebook To Takeover Twitter?
This episode shows well the difficulties for web 2.0 to be financially healthy, especially during this crisis. These companies might be experts in developping communities and great advertising potential, but seems to struggle while trying to monetize it. Is Facebook going to takeover Twitter? It might actually the first big takeover of a web 2.0 company of another...

Recovery.gov: Obama's communication during crisis

I have dedicated an article about how important communication is during crisis. I have found on Mickael Guillois' blog the existence of the recovery.gov website.

Obama has created this specific website to give updates and news about the US government strategy to manage the crisis, especially on how to budget his politic. Here is the video of Obama you could find on the site, explaining the concept.



This was the point of my previous post: communication and transparency is important in order to manage the crisis. The lack of information drives most of the time biased information to go through. Obama has decided to communicate and explain its politic, and more especially, how the taxes will be used to fight the crisis.

This is a great example on how to communicate during the crisis, and also how skilled the new US presidents is with the Internet.

La radio de demain par Radio France

Radio France vient de lancer une campagne de communication réalisée par la Netscouade afin de promouvoir un site communautaire visant à définir la radio de demain. L'information a été relayé notamment par un spot télé (que je n'ai malheureusement pas trouvé sur Youtube, mais disponible sur le site web).

Ainsi, les auditeurs de Radio France peuvent se rendre sur le site web demainradiofrance.fr, et participer à l'avenir de la radio. Ceci est un excellent exemple de consommateurs participant au développement d'une entreprise.

Le site est clair et définit les trois niveaux d'implication du visiteur:

• Je m'informe: on propose des entretiens audios, des articles de personnalité. Les articles sont mis à jour régulièrement, de qualité, et axé sur la thématique de départ.
  
• Je débats: Différent forums ont été montés, autour de plusieurs thématiques. On peut voir que ces forums sont bien animé là encore.
  
• Je me prononce: de nouvelles idées issues des débats et des propositions sont proposées au vote.
  

Ces niveaux sont présentés dans l'ordre chronologique et non en terme d 'implication réel, car le vsiteur peut se prononcer sans participer au débat, et donc sans proposer ses idées.

Il existe aussi un Twitter, qui d'ailleurs est le premier résultat sur google pour "demain radio france", mais qui est décevant, puisque peut de followers. De plus, le twitter sert uniquement à poster les nouveaux articles du site web... Intérêt limité qui ne prend pas en compte les atouts et spécificités du média. Cela prouve encore une fois d'une part que le classement de Google n'est pas forcément basé sur la qualité et d'autre part le pouvoir de Twitter en terme de référencement...

Conclusion Une réalisation soignée, des visiteurs qui jouent le jeu, je pense que cette campagne doit être un succès. Reste à savoir de quelle manière Radio France va utiliser ces résultats pour faire évoluer sa radio.