Loyalty Progams To Boost Word Of Mouth

There is a link between loyalty programs and the ability of one company to buzz. That is the result of a Colloquy study, which "Reveals Reward Program Members 70% More Likely to be Word-of-Mouth Champions than Non-Members".

Here are the key results of that study:

• Reward program members are 70% more likely to be WOM champions (defined as customers who are “actively recommending” a product, service or brand) than the general population;
• 55% of reward program members are self-described WOM champions;
• Only 32% of non-reward program members are self-described WOM champions;
• 68% of WOM champions in reward programs will recommend a program sponsor’s brand within a year;
• Actively participating reward program members are over three times more likely to be WOM champions;
• Reward program members who have redeemed for experiential rewards are 30% more likely to be WOM champions than those who have redeemed for discounts.

Top Five Reasons Consumers Talk, Blog, Email & Post Info on Their Favorite Brands

The COLLOQUY research also examined the motivations of WOM champions—asking why they engaged in WOM activity regarding their favorite products and brands and what categories of offers and information they were most likely to pass along to others within their networks. The top five motivations of WOM champions were:

— To tell manufacturers what I think..........	73%
— To get smart about products/services........	68%
— To be the first to discover new items.......	68%
— To get free product samples.................	63%
— To share my opinion with others.............	61%

Hence, word of mouth is driven by opinion leaders and loyal customers. Therefore, if one company owns a powerful loyalty program, which has a large customer data base, and active members, it will be more likely it could leverage it for buzz marketing purpose.

There is a common statement that social media would help companies to find new leads, because loyal customers will spread the word. This study actually demonstrate it.

Now, if a company own a great loyalty program, that doesn't imply its community management and/or social media strategy will be a success. Nevertheless, it owns a great competitive advantage to stand out of the competition.

Customer relationship management (CRM) aims to leverage existing customers to expand business, especially through cross selling and upselling, but thanks to new social media, it could also imply to get new prospects thanks to its own customers, as a referral marketing strategy would.

Very interesting results. Very inspiring.

Customer Loyalty Shifting From Brands To Retailers

Customer loyalty has always been a hot CRM topic. Thus, the main focus of a CRM strategy is to build a strong customer lifetime value, capturing its loyalty, in order to insure larger cashflow from this specific customer.

Brands have always been great in marketing, and retailers, kind of the followers. In the category management field, which aims for both the brands and retailers to collaborate to enhance departments performances, brands have always been sort of the provider of customer insight, which would ultimately lead to customer loyalty.

Now, based on years of studying people's shopping habits, Hartman Group's researchers predict consumer loyalty is shifting from products and brands to retailers, particularly those that offer shoppers an experience rather than just goods.

That is exactly what I was exposing you not so long ago, about customer experience marketing.

"People don't relate to brands in the same way they used to when there weren't that many products to choose from," said Hartman Senior Vice President Michelle Barry. "Capturing the attention of the consumer requires different tactics, getting a lot more intimate and experiential."

Customer experience aims to bond with customers, and as the retailer can be close to customer's daily life, it is the best placed to get valuable insight, and hence, create customer loyalty. Therefore, even though customer experience improvement effort might be difficult to estimate in term of return on investment, it is indeed a valuable asset, which will create customer loyalty and provide a great competitive advantage.

The Starbucks Example
Starbucks is the best example of how you could turn a classic business into a great customer experience that will drive high revenues. "Starbucks took a tired product category and transformed it into an entire world," he said. "Imagine if someone had walked into Folgers and said, 'We have a new business model for you: Open thousands of stores around the world based around the espresso bean.' It's hard to get somebody to wrap their head around what could be."

It also explains the reason why French retailers are so eager to develop private labels, to create differenciation with the competition.

Designing Your B2B CRM Strategy: 4 Customers Profile

Interesting article inspired by a Gartner study in the B2B CRM field. Here are 4 kind of profiles B2B websites should focus on to improve their ROI on the web.

The Influencer

The main goal of the influencer is to drive sales, but the final transaction does not necessarily end with an online sale. Promotions, test marketing, product information and tools such as loan calculators and quoting engines, are all part of the influencer's activities. The influencer also seeks to raise consumer awareness of the company or product. However, the end transaction is not necessarily on the Web, nor does it have to be with the company.

Consumer goods companies, for example, have sites that influence consumers to go to a reseller to pick up their products, avoiding channel conflicts, and pharmaceutical companies have marketing material online to coax consumers into asking their doctors for the product. For the influencer, online campaign management, email marketing, brand management, product marketing collateral and lead management are most important for influencing and increasing awareness to ultimately drive a sale. Influencer website examples include Toyota, P&G and Maytag.com.

The Facilitator

The main goal of the facilitator is to extend the relationship online, creating a multichannel environment. The facilitator might allow consumers to transact online, but that is only one tool in its arsenal for extending the relationship. The facilitator seeks to understand where the Web fits best in the overall relationship or buying process, and to optimize online functionality, ensuring compatibility and integration with the applications that are used in other channels. For example, an airline company uses a multi-channel relationship in which the Web facilitates the booking of flights, displaying frequent-flier mileage and publishing Web flight updates while its call center assists cancellations, seating arrangements and so on, and the airplane delivers the product, the actual flight. For the facilitator, customer analytics, online dialogue and multichannel integration are the most important technologies. Facilitator website examples include Bank of America, American Airlines and Fidelity.com.

The Seller

The seller creates an environment for transactions, driving business online. The seller, unlike the facilitator, doesn't mind what you buy, as long as you buy it from the seller, and preferably online. It is transaction-oriented, and usually includes high-volume products and multibrands. Like the influencer, it uses marketing to drive a sale, often relying on push marketing and promotions to get customers to buy online. E-commerce includes order management, catalogues, interactive selling tools, Web analytics, email marketing/email response management, and customer self-service, which are all important technologies in the seller's environment. Seller website examples include Amazon, Overstock and Newegg.com.

First, companies should determine which type of website they should be gravitating toward and whether it matches the company's overall value proposition. Second, they should identify which type of website they already have, and reconcile this with the type of website they want for future development. Finally, they need to audit current and future website technologies against the type of website and goal toward which they're gravitating. This will immensely help B2C companies with defining and selecting the technology and the business processes used to support it.

Customer Experience: Macy Tries To Bond With Customers

There are a lot of good examples of great customer experience marketing in the retail industry. Here is one of the newest I fond on the web, with Macy aiming to bond with its customers.

The "brow bar" in the newly reopened Macy's in Deerbrook Mall was a lively scene this week. . Over sounds of pop music, stylish black-clad estheticians were shaping the eyebrows of female customers seated on bar stools.
The brow bar seems to be the kind of thing that can create a bond between a customer and a store -- exactly what Macy's and other chains are trying to do at a time when the department store sector is struggling.

With the goal of tailoring all of its 800 stores to the needs of customers in their respective neighborhoods, Macy's is rolling out its "My Macy's" campaign.

The dramatically remodeled Deerbrook Macy's in Humble reflects some My Macy's initiatives, including a new cosmetics concept called Impulse and a women's shoe department that is 30 percent larger than before.

Macy's Deerbrook in Humble had its grand reopening Wednesday. The store had been shuttered almost 10 months after suffering heavy damage from Hurricane Ike. The three-level store is completely remodeled with a bright modern look.

In September, Macy's will reopen its remodeled Almeda Mall store, also ravaged by Ike. When the Almeda store reopens, Macy's will have 16 area locations.

A strategy like My Macy's is the "right idea, but it will all be in the execution," said Love Goel, chairman and CEO of GVG Capital.

Part of the My Macy's campaign will likely relate to the weather -- adjusting apparel assortments to a particular climate, said Steve Hoch, professor of marketing and director of the Baker Retailing Initiative at the Wharton School of Finance.

While department stores have been facing rough times, Goel thinks they will fare better over the next few years.

"Macy's and other surviving retailers have a tremendous opportunity in the short term," said Goel, who noted that other department store chains have either gone out of business or downsized significantly.

"If you're a 'last man standing' like a Macy's, you should benefit," he said. People still need to buy apparel and housewares, he said, although they are not spending as much.

In the long term, however, the department store sector faces major challenges as consumers spend less time at malls and more time at big box discount and specialty stores, Goel said.

The department store sector has been in decline for decades, Hoch said. For the first quarter ending May 2, same store sales at Macy's were down 9 percent.

Along with Macy's, other department stores are finding ways to localize their stores. At Dillard's, which has nine Houston area locations, "we've been tailoring our stores to the tastes and preferences of customers in a specific area, including Houston, for quite some time," said company spokeswoman Julie Bull. Such customizing includes keeping track of customers' size and color preferences at each store, she said.

The Deerbrook Macy's has a My Macy's concept in the cosmetics department called Impulse that affords the company the opportunity to bring in more up-and-coming brands, said Macy's spokeswoman Robin Reibel.

While the brow bar, which is adjacent to Impulse, predates the My Macy's initiative, it very much reflects the mission, Reibel said. The brow bar is run by Benefit, a San Francisco-based company. There is also a Benefit brow bar at a Galleria Macy's.

Macy's Deerbrook will continue to bring in more My Macy's elements, said Gary Hudgins, the company's division vice president.

In the women's apparel section, the store has already added Michael Kors, which the customers requested, and the men's department added Tommy Bahama, he said.

Macy's customer Laura Schauermann, a retired teacher, is impressed with the remodeled Deerbrook store. "It's exquisite," she said. "I love the layout with the wide aisles and color scheme."

Now, innovation seeks for customer experience, which leads to new concept stores. Here are more pictures about the new store.

Marketing And Packaging

I believe that packaging is a key medium for customer relationship management (CRM). In a slower economy, when marketing departments owns little money to spend on advertising, you need to be creative, and take every chance you can get to communicate, and create brand equity. As packaging is the first tangible brand asset a customer will touch, it is obviously very important to optomize it and turn it into a branding vehicle.

Packaging could be used in very different ways for branding purpose, but in this particular example, packages are used to bond with customers, and support good causes. Here is a short highlight of the article:

Cause marketing programs are taking on new significance in this economy, as brand owners strive to broadcast their corporate principles, create closer relationships with consumers and offer the idea of greater brand value.

In the current economy, people definitely “vote with their dollars,” says Sean Greenwood, Ben & Jerry’s grand poobah of PR (his actual title). Consumers may not be able to make financial donations to charities and other nonprofits as they have in the past, but they will make a conscious purchase, Greenwood says. “I don’t think that’s uncommon for people today.”

Whether you make it fancy or classy, make sure your packaging will provide to customers the right image of what your company is about.

Experience Marketing In The Retail Field

Experience marketing might actually be the definition of marketing for the retail industry. Customer experience is a key factor of success in the retail field. The product might be more complex that it seems in the retail industry. You are not offering a product, but more a service: finding the right product, at the right price, with the right advice.

There is actually two main component of experience marketing in the retail industry:

• The core, or the basic: Have a clean store, not much waiting line at the cashier, the right product displayed, available, and so on. This is probably the most important. Nevertheless, as competition is getting much harder, you can't rely on delivering the basics.
• The experience: The customer experience is a package that will encompass customer service, product range, access to information, and providing the little extra that will convince the customer to purchase at your store, and not the next block one.

Experience marketing implies to be creative, to find the new ideas, new services that will trigger the purchase, and also provide that famous "waow" effect, that will drive customer loyalty, and future purchases.

Experience marketing is probably a difficult art to master. Indeed, it is difficult to measure properly the effectiveness of the experience provided to a customer, and how much of it will drive the customer to buy. But the lack of it will ultimately turn stores obsolete.

Category Management To Provide High Quality Customer Experience

I have explained why retailers should focus on delivering a great customer experience. Customer experience is the key leverage of customer satisfaction and loyalty in the retail business, which also explains why I consider it is an art retailers should thrive on.

Now suppliers still have to take an important part in this effort. Category management has been designed for quite a while now and has always emphasis on marketing better the offer, to increase sales for both parties. Nevertheless, brands and retailers are still missing some marketing opportunities, which could raise from their collaboration.

Engaging shoppers in stores is more important than ever, but retailers and brands must team up or miss important perspectives their partners can provide, according to “Enabling the Shopping Process: In-Store Marketing for the Empowered Consumer” by Miami-based RSR Research. The report is based on a survey of 88 retailers and manufacturers this spring. It reveals that without working together, brands “get too promotional and miss the bigger picture of consumer engagement in the store, while retailers lack the more nuanced shopper insights that brands can provide.”

While creating targeted in-store offers and communications is a top priority, many retailers are too focused on optimization and offer-creation rather than promotion-delivery capability, noted Paula Rosenblum, RSR Research managing partner and co-author of the report.

Part of customer experience is indeed the collaboration between retailers and brands, that share a different part of customer knowledge.

I believe brands and retailers are missing great opportunities to get out of the promotional spins by improving customer experience and providing added value versus a competition centered on promotion making.

Social Media Metrics

It remains difficult so far to estimate social media metrics, as the topic has emerged recently, and that we have never seen anything comparable so far. I have already talked in the past about social media return on investment, inspired by the great work Safia Ouaissa on the topic. Now it is Christopher Carfi that explains us how to get metrics from social media efforts. People are working on this topic and we can see emerge clear tools and indicators to measure community management efficiency.

Online Community Metrics

View more documents from Christopher Carfi.

Facebook Evolution

It is interesting to see how Facebook has been evolving since its debut. I have been on Facebook since 2004, which was the very early stage of the social medium, as it was limited to college students. I was at this time a student at SUNY Oswego, part of an internatinal abroad program. Thus, in order to keep in contact with my international friends, it was important to be on Facebook, and that is the reason why I am still connected with them.

Facebook As A Network Management Tool
That was the first use of Facebook: Stay in contact with your college friends. You could in a glance know who was working where, organize events, and post pictures online. But Facebook has experienced major twists since then. It has evolved at the same pace than the Internet did.

Facebook Apps
That has been probably the major change in Facebook. In the early 2006, Facebook has decided to open its service to third party applications, which results in the creation of lots of different online games. Actually, at some point, it turned me down of Facebook: There were so many apps, Facebook personal pages looked like a mess. You had tons of applications that you could not even see what the person was actually doing. These facebook apps results of an effort to monetize the traffic generated, which was already huge at this time. But as we have seen recently with the launch of the new Facebook interface, things have once more changed.

Facebook And The Instant Web
Since then, Twitter has become the hottest hype on the web. Everybody is speaking about it, and instant web has become an important trend in social media. Knowing what your community is doing right now has become vital. And therefore Facebook adapted once more. They have removed all apps from the main personal page, to put it into a specific ones, and started creating status updates feed, as a "Friendfeed" would, in order to match with the new trend.

As a result, Facebook is evolving and isn't scared to see what are the new trends in the Internet to adapt their platform.

How To Use Social Score: Referral Marketing

I have talked this week about social score, which is one of the most important CRM concept that emerged for the web 2.0. Social score aims to identify the potential of one customer in regards of both his online community (in size and value) and activities (blog posts, number of tweets...)

But once you have identified its potential value, its ability to spread the word of mouth, you need to leverage your new abilities. Of course, you need to have set up a proper community management strategy, where you'll be able to interact with your customers, provide the appropriate response to their needs, but also survey what is said about your brand and products online.

Referral Marketing As A Community Management Tool
I believe referral marketing could be the best strategy to apply online. Indeed, you need to get a specific trigger, and to reward people that will bring you customers among their friends and community activities.

Referral marketing is commonly known in the real estate business, and helps agents to find new clients thanks to their existent network. Hence, referral marketing has developped a wide range of tips and techniques to trigger referrals at no cost. I think there is a lot to be learnt from it and to be adapted to community management.

The goal is to mix social score results (in order to identify the potential return on investment you could get on a specific customer) with referral marketing (that will enable you to reach new customers thanks to the one you already have).

And you what do you think about it? It will be interesting to speak with some already great experts of both worlds to see how they envision the concept.

Social Score: A New Marketing Concept

The concept of social score is emerging. New social media have changed interraction between people and hence, it implies a change in the way we consider customers values.

If in marketing an important concept was to reach early adopters, which influents the rest of customers, wouldn't it be great to know how much of an early adopter each of your customers are?

The social score aims to measure how influent someone is based on its social media activities. It could take into account:

• The number of services he uses (Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Gtalk among others)
• How often he uses (number of Tweets/day, time spent on Facebook, number of comments via Disqus)
• How implicated he is (does he post notes, or does he simply watch comments and status updates? Does he create events, groups, or tests?)
  
• Number of friends he owns
• How influent his friends are

On a customer relationship management point of view (CRM), we consider that a company own a customer equity, which is the sum of customer lifetime value. This customer equity is as important as the financial equity, as it is the base of future sales. Actually, this social score idea match perfectly with a CRM approach.

Now, thanks to social score, the customer equity concept must be revisited, to evaluate how your customers could spread your brand through social media.

To learn more about the topic (in French), it's here on the blog of Henri Kaufman.

Why I Like Customer Relationship Management VS CRM

You have probably noticed that on my blog, you'll find most of the time the term "customer relationship management" more often than crm. It might seem obvious that CRM are the initials of customer relationship management, but in fact, I like to dissociate both.

Gestion de la relation client
In French, we have two terms for customer relationship management. "Gestion de la relation client" litteraly customer relationship management, and CRM. CRM has in French a great connotation of IT, and are linked with CRM softwares. But Gestion de la relation client is a wider term that defines the whole customer relationship management strategy a company could have. It is the idea of the customer focused company, which has been organized to provide a great customer experience.

CRM VS Customer Relationship Management
In English, the difference might not seem that obvious, but I have noticed that most of the CRM blogs speak mainly of CRM softwares and CRM technologies. I'd rather focus on this blog about CRM strategy, and how it implicates different departments (such as sales, marketing, and IT), to have as ultimate goal customer satisfaction.

Don't get me wrong, CRM software have sort of the same kind of goal, but it is limited, as a CRM strategy implies branding and market research for instance.

Hence, I use both terms, but I wanted to make it clear that CRM must be understood as a whole enterprise strategy, and not only as defining a great softwared which would provide analytics to sales and marketing departments.

Vinci And Customer Relationship Management

This is a story that happened to me as I was looking for a parking lot. I was on my way to watch the basketball game France-Hungrary.

Of course, in this neighborhood of Paris, finding a parking spot a night game is a difficult task, and hence, I drove around the block many times to finally decide to get inside the Vinci parking. I get inside the parking and start driving around for about 10 minutes. As a matter of fact, there was no parking available in there. When I decide to get out of the parking, I had to p 2.5 euros, whereas I didn't even park, just for a minute!

Vinci's Park Problems
Vinci let me get into their parking whereas they couldn't deliver the service. They had no parking lot, that is fine, but they should alert about it. Also, I have to pay for a service that hasn't been provide. This is just a total ripp off. If I couldn't consume the product, I should be paid back.

On top of that, Vinci is proposing me a customer service phone number, to deal any kind of problems...

This is simply ridiculous. The company is not able to provide the service and require the customer to pay! This is obviously a complete ripp off. I am not used to use this blog for personal purpose, but I believe this has a complete link with the blog theme: customer relationship management.

This post is also a great way to see the community management strategy Vinci has established. Will they be able to get in contact with me to fix that problem (I have a pretty high reputation online now, and they shouldn't have no problems founding me)? Or will they ignore me on purpose, or simply will have no clue about this issue?

I'll keep you updated in case there is any kind of response.

Branding And SEM Don't Get Along Well

Branding is important for a company. It aims to give to stakeholders, customers and potential ones, a clear view of what the company offers, its position in the market and its values. Branding is a difficult exercise, especially for businesses that provides somehow the same kind of servies than its competitors. It is especially true in the business to business industry.

SEM is the art of buying keywords on search engines, in order to generate traffic on a website, and ultimately convert this traffic into customers. But sometimes, interests of both trades are hard to get along.

SEM takes into consideration web users semantic, and searching methods. If someone is looking for a video conferencing service, it will key "video conference". But branding aims to make a company and its product different. In that case, a company might establish itself as a video communication leader. Moreover, as brand specialist, they might consider the company is better off trying to buy keywords associated with the video communication terms than video conferencing words, which market is expensive and overcrowded.

SEM expert Ian Harris explains the problems he experiences to deal with branding consideration and SEO.

I believe the best solution is to brand yourself on the website as you like, but keep a search engine optimization strategy that would bring you the best results, taking into consideration web users terminologies. Also, with a microsite strategy or couple of landingscape, techniques that bring a high conversion rate most of the time with keywords campaigns, you could link both strategies without much problems.

Publicis Bought Razorfish

This is a great news. Global advertising company Publicis has purchased this week Razorfish, one of the finest web agency in the world. Previously owned by Microsoft, which didn't really want to get into the marketing and communication field, Razorfish has a great reputation, and works on all kind of Internet medium, from SEO to websites creation, but also, knows a lot about web 2.0 and social media.

I am glad and proud that Publicis, A French corporation, was able to make this smart move, which provides it a competitive advantage on other communication companies, as they have succeeded in diversifying its advertising offer on new media, meanwhile TV advertising is hit badly by crisis.

Very smart move, and looking forward how Publicis will leverage this new partnership to get even more into the Internet, but also in the US market.

Social Media To Provide A New 360 Customer Relationship Management

Social Media is a great new medium that has been emerging now for about 3 years. Marketers are still defining the use of it on the long term, but we can have a clear view that social media change dramatically the marketing approach of customers. Prior to social media, CRM was based on customizing a customer relationship management, based on company owned data. It was pretty difficult already, but the goal was to limit cost and have an appropriate message, upon customers needs.

But social media has open the picture and it is clear that it will have a great impact on both customer experience and service. Therefore, in a global customer relationship management approach, you could have different company's department that would use social media abilities to create this great online customer experience. I found that great article on line, which explains well how to use social media for a customer relationship strategy:

• SUPPORT DEPARTMENT: Strategic engagements in social media start therefor on the support side as we can see with companies like Comcast, Ford, Dell and many others.
• PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: A natural next step is to leverage the experience in the service and support departments to drive down product development cost, get early market feedback and in particular support during the product launch phase.
• LOGISTICS AND PROCUREMENT: Social media is probably the most effective and the least expensive early warning system for everybody involved in procurement, logistics and production planning challenges.
• SALES & MARKETING: With the experience from support, product development and logistics it is a natural to now leverage social media in sales and marketing. Why at last? Only happy customers become advocates, helper in the word of mouth campaign or any other function to help create buzz and become buzz drivers into a market. Frustrated customers do the other way around. So starting in marketing - while very counter intuitive - is probably the biggest mistake you can make when you engage in social media.

Of course such changes would drive a some major changes in business organization. Therefore, it is important to have a clear view on how companies are thinking about using social media to run their business. And that is also the reason why a community manager is important, as it could coordinate company's efforts.

Customer Relationship Starts Before Customer’s First Purchase

Customer relationship management (CRM) aims to manage customer experiences. This implies to take control over the whole relationship with a customer, from its first purchase to the next ones.

But the journey to provide a great customer relationship doesn’t start when the customer buys its first product. Indeed, if loyalty is engaged after the second purchase, the relationship a customer has with one company has already started prior that.

Customer’s decision making process
A customer has already established some contacts with the brands during his decision making process. Either he visited a website, or ask the opinion of some friends, but he already has a picture in mind of who you are. Even prior the decision making process.

I believe the decision making process is indeed not taking into consideration as much as it should. Analysing this key event is important, because it will probably determine how to market a product and adapt its communication.

Branding Is Key Prior To Purchase
Hence, your brand, the way you communicate on your customer service and experience, will help you to set up a particular customer relationship with customers. A company

Promoting Customer Service
Also, as customer relationship management is starting before the customer enter the retail, it could have a clear expectation of what the relationship will be based on. Indeed, most of companies now promote their customer service policy and strategy on their website. By doing so, it alerts the customer that it is entering into a clear relationship where he'll get in returns of his loyalty some rewards and advantages.

Some Potential Tools To Evaluate Pre-customer Relationship
I believe the topic of CRM before the first purchase hasn't really been developped so far. Actually, it is difficult to have clear measure about this step, as company's can't really get any data, but still, some tools could give a good outlook. For instance, branding surveys or focus group based on non customers could help you define what potential customers believe the relationship will be about.

Do you have any other ideas about the topic? Let's discuss about it.

Les marques nationales contre attaquent

La crise a profondément changer les stratégies de communication des enseignes de la grande distribution en France. Pouvoir d'achat en berne, moyens de communication revue à la baisse, et bien sûr changement profond dans les modes de consommation ont conduit les enseignes tels que Auchan, Carrefour ou Leclerc à revoir leurs messages publicitaires:

• Auchan communique sur leurs premiers prix: Ils les affiches sur les affiches, en parlent à la télévision, les incorporent dans leurs prospectus.
  
• Carrefour lance Carrefour Discount: L'enseigne ayant du mal à assoir son image prix, elle décide de lancer une nouvelle gamme de produits premiers prix, en lui assignant sa marque comme gage de qualité.
• Leclerc poursuit sa stratégie de comparaison de prix: Mais cette fois-ci, Leclerc va plus loin en mettant en avant le fait que ces premiers prix sont aussi moins cher que la concurrence dans des spots télévisées. Leclerc est le moins cher sur toutes les gammes de produits, grandes marques, MDD, et premiers prix, et le fait savoir.
• Intermarché invente le concept de Discount utile: les produits à bas prix sont sélectionnés en fonction des besoins du consommateur, et non en fonction de ceux qui sont le plus margés. Ainsi Intermarché a développé un concept qu'il explique sur les différents média (prospectus, télévision, radio etc...)

L'objectif de ces changements profonds de communication est bien sûr de proposer au consommateur des solutions par rapport à la période actuelle de crise, mais aussi pour partir à l'offensive des hard discounts, qui à l'heure d'aujourd'hui, gagnent des parts de marché.

Les marques nationales contre attaquent
Aujourd'hui, c'est donc les marques nationales qui se trouvent à mal, puisqu'ils avaient l'habitude d'être les rois de la communication en hypermarché. C'est pour cela qu'il y a quelques jours je viens de voir une affiche sur le Coca Cola Zero. Le texte (approximatif, car en voiture, je n'ai pas pu prendre l'affiche en photo): "qui mieux que Coca Cola Zero peut vous offrir du Coca Cola Zero?"

Et l'affiche renvoie sur un lien Internet: Les marques et vous. Ainsi les grandes marques nationales décident de se défendre et de mettre en avant son aspect qualitatif afin de pouvoir contrer l'offensive des MDD et autres premiers prix. De plus, certaines études aux Etats-Unis ont montré qu'avec la crise, les foyers vont moins au restaurant, mais ce rabattent sur des produits de marque pour avoir la même qualité.

Cette initiative montre bien que les grandes marques, plutôt individualiste dans l'esprit, montrent elles aussi des signes de faiblesse, et leurs problèmes actuelles. Voici l'édito du site.

"A quoi servent les marques ?

Une grande marque, c’est une marque de fabricant.

Elle affiche et engage la responsabilité du fabricant. Elle signe et authentifie son produit en rappelant qu'il a été fabriqué selon ses exigences et sous son contrôle. Elle assure un niveau de qualité.

Une grande marque, c’est aussi le signe d'une relation durable avec le consommateur : garantie, service après-vente, améliorations, innovations font partie de leur histoire depuis plus 150 ans.

Imaginiez-vous tout ce dont les marques sont capables ?

Une grande marque, c'est aussi un engagement : pour les consommateurs bien sûr, mais aussi pour la société dans son ensemble. En mettant leur nom au service de causes qui nous concernent, telles que l'écologie, l'innovation ou le développement durable, les marques participent directement à l'avancement de grands projets sociétaux.

L'objectif de ce nouveau portail est de mettre en lumière les initiatives, souvent méconnues, des marques qui vous entourent, et de vous faire découvrir leur face « cachée »..."

Dunkin Donuts Set Up An Iphone App For New Marketing Campaign

Dunikin Donuts set up a new marketing campaign. As the competition is getting tougher, with Starbucks being hit by the crisis and Mc Donald's entering the market with Mc Cafe, Dunkin Donuts created a new campaign, which invites customers to create Dunkin's next Donut.
This $10 million campaign has brought in the opinions of 130 000 participants.

Also part of the strategy the company launched a new Iphone app, enabling users to create shopping list with different co workers. That is actually very smart as it fits to customer's decision making process, since most of the times co workers of a company will share their orders.
To find out more, check here.

De la difference entre l’animateur de communauté et le manager de communauté

Le Monde consacre un article sur son site Internet sur le métier de Community Manager : « Sur le Net, des journalistes se muent en animateurs pour doper les audiences »

Ainsi, le journaliste explique que l’ »on parle de community manager. En français, on dit « animateur de communauté ».
Néanmoins le métier de manageur de communauté et d’animateur de communauté est bien différent. C’est comme comparé un télémarketeur avec un directeur marketing.

Dans l’article, on décrit des personnes ayant un rôle d’animateur de communauté à mi-temps, où il s’agit de modérer les interventions dans les communautés, de réagir si besoin. Il y a ainsi un réel rôle d’écoute et d’interaction avec la communauté.

Mais le réel poste de community manager, comme il va le devenir, est un rôle beaucoup plus évolué. Il implique de gérer une communauté, qui potentiellement peut compter des dizaines de milliers de personnes, sur des réseaux multiples (Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, sans parler des autres), il est important d’avoir une stratégie clair en tête.

Le poste de community manager possède un rôle clé dans une optique d’entreprise orientée client.

C’est pour cela que je considère qu’il est dangereux de confondre Community Manager, et Community animator, qui n’ont pas le même rôle.

Shareyourdiscount.com : A Mix between Web 2.0 and VRM

Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) is probably one of my favorite topic when approaching the future of customer relationship management (CRM).

New social media capabilities enable customers to interract like never before with companies, and hence somehow to inverse the relationship with them.

Shareyourdiscount.com is a pretty cool new website, that proposes you to (guess what) share your discount! You have the ability to provide a discount because of your job or network, you could help other people to use it, and eventually make a benefit out of it.

I am always thrilled when I find ingenious new discount concepts, and this one is pretty innovative. You are leveraging your community to get discount, and that is pretty powerful. How many times did you think about this friend that works for a car manufacturer and get great discounts on new cars?

Now I believe the biggest challenge of the website is to create the community which will allow users to share discounts. But I believe this is a great service, with a great future ahead.

And you, what do you think about it?

You May Comment On My Blog Now

Due to issues with my blog template, I have taken out my disqus feature to leave comments. I didn't notice I didn't put it back, but now the problem is fix. I hope I'll receive a lot of comments on both new and old messages. Sorry for the comments I might have deleted because of it, and hope you enjoy the new Disqus version.

Zappos.com

Here is a great presentation of Zappos.com, probably one of the most innovative company in terms of customer relationship management. Zappos is selling shoes, which has nothing revolutionary, but do it in a way to provide a high customer experience. That is this great customer service and ethic that has brough success to the company. The presentation give you some key on how they did it.

Zappos - Startup2Startup - 03-26-09

View more presentations from zappos.

Here is a good video too, found on the Altaide Valley website.

Amazon Acquires Zappos for $850 Million

Amazon has just acquired shoe online retail Zappos.com. Zappos could be considered as the most innovative and trendy online company of the past few years, for $850 million. They are selling shoes online, which is actually pretty common, but in such a manner that it makes them totally unique.

Indeed, Zappos has created such a corporate culture that it fashioned customer service. By providing the best to its customers, in terms of responsability, of fun, it ensures itself to provide a great customer experience.

Now Amazon would like to use the ideas and processes of Zappos to freshen its business and apply it to other departments of the company. I find that pretty cool for Zappos to be able to count on such a large online retailer, which could probably help them with growing sustainably.

But also, as Robert Scoble Tweeted, I am concerned about what made Zappos incredibly successful: Its corporate culture. I find that hard to believe to think that Amazon will be able to copy Zappos' culture. As a small business, with no large investors to please, Zappos could develop its own way, but Amazon is so huge that it is hard to believe such an organization could make Zappos' model work.

Anyways, I wish Zappos will benefit from it, and hope it will be very successful in the future.

Customer Experience Maturity Report: The State Of CRM Programs

Welcome fan of CRM (customer relationship management)! I mean, I believe that you are if you arrived right here, either you are a regular or a one time reader. I have talked a lot about CRM here. As the topic is quite large, I have talked a lot about CRM systems, strategies, and marketing implementation.

But I also believe that a strong CRM strategy must take care of a great customer experience. At some point, if you are able to provide a unique and remarkable experience to your customers, you'll be able to aquire their loyalty, without any kind of incentive from a loyalty program.

Though it is hard to make coexist a CRM strategy and a great customer experience. Thus, CRM is taking more and more into consideration the customer experience aspect.

The Customer Experience Maturity Monitor (CEMM), a qualitative and quantitative research study conducted by Peppers & Rogers Group, SAS Institute and Jubelirer Research, addresses these questions in its first report, "The State of Customer Experience Capabilities and Competencies." The research measured 58 variables in four categories: customer orientation; customer insight; customer interaction; and improvement. The premise is that a company must have more than the desire to manage the customer experience; they must have enterprise capabilities that leverage customer insight to better-manage customer interactions and continuously improve results. Importantly, for these capabilities to work, the company must have a customer orientation—a culture that focuses on the customer and builds trust.

Customer Interaction: Managing Strategies + Engaging Customers + Customer Orientation

Differentiating the customer experience for competitive advantage is about designing an experience for each customer that is based upon knowledge of that customer, delivering it across products and channels, and measuring individual outcomes to improve future interactions. Done well, CEM will guide investment to higher-potential customers, provide a richer experience that engenders loyalty and turn customers into advocates. Here's the deeper CEMM learning.

• Managing Strategies: Many companies use loyalty programs to differentiate and manage the customer experience. In the CEMM research study, 37 percent of respondents rated their capabilities as good or excellent when asked if: "Rewards and loyalty programs are used to encourage loyalty among high-value customers." However, only 18 percent rate their capabilities as good or excellent when asked if: "Individual 'treatment tracks' are created to manage the customer experience across products and channels." Ahhh….the truth revealed!

  While some companies have mature loyalty programs, many have no capabilities of differentiating the customer experience and still rely on brand advertising to shape customer perceptions. One respondent summed it up well when he said, "Most companies don't really have a customer experience strategy, but this is changing. Usually companies rely more on brand perceptions, but they are realizing the customer experience is the No. 1 influencer of brand perception, so they're paying more attention to customer experience."

• Engaging Customers: In the CEMM study, only 28 percent rate their company's performance as good or excellent at orchestrating outbound customer contact across products and channels. While this problem is easily solved with today's campaign management and marketing automation technologies, enterprise contact management capabilities remain illusive for most companies.

  Only 1 in 4 companies (25 percent) rate their capabilities good or excellent in the use of mathematical optimization to maximize the profitability of marketing campaigns. With the endless combination of products, channels and offers, marketing optimization technologies represents a clear opportunity to direct investment to higher-potential customers and improve decision making.

  For inbound interactions, 34 percent of respondents rate good or excellent their ability to use customer insight to guide pricing, service and product suggestions. Fewer still, at 19%, rate good or excellent their ability to calculate real-time best outcomes during customer sessions.

  Perhaps the biggest opportunity for improvement, for both outbound and inbound engagement, is behavior triggers. Only 22 percent of respondents rate good or excellent their ability to create triggers for systematic response to significant changes in customer behavior. Engaging customers when they have changed not only produces significantly higher response rates, but it also demonstrates to the customer that their relationship matters to your company.

• Customer Orientation: While capabilities to manage the customer experience lag, a customer orientation is emerging. In the CEMM survey, 76 percent agree that their company motivates employees to treat customers fairly. And 69 percent agree that their company takes the customer's point-of-view when making business decisions. Also encouraging, 69 percent agree that their company considers the impact that business decisions have on the future value of its customers.

This research shows that customer relationship management is evolving, taking more into consideration customer experience over data base management, which is actually is right way to drive a CRM strategy.

To get more information about the study, you may download here the White paper.

Jinni.com And Customer Relationship Management

I have found recently a brand new start up, jinni.com. The service helps you find some movies and TV shows that will match your tastes. The service is well designed, and help you find movies upon your description, other movies you like among other features.

You can try to get a beta invitation on the website. What I like about Jinni is that it has a great customer relationship management mindset.

• It provides a great service to customer, helping them to find the right product that will match their taste and needs.
• It will also provides on a company point of view some cross selling capabilities, which is the main purpose of a CRM strategy.
  
• It is a multi channel product. Jinni proposes you to get your movie either by buying them, renting them in the store or via a video on demand plateform.
  

Hence, I think this initiative is great and is actually a very efficient customer relationship management program. It encompasses both a great customer service, but also potential added sells for a company. You should think about how you could implement such a service to your business, it will be very powerful and a way of differenciation.



Here you'll see a great Jinni overview I have found on Youtube.

Customers Want Interraction And Prefer Video Game To Movies

Customers has been using for years now interactive media, especially the Internet. New social media like Facebook or Youtube, ambition to connect users with people they like. This is the future of entertainment. User are taking the power over big media corporation.

But social media is not the only medium that propose to people a high interaction level.

According to the latest survey, 53 per cent of individuals in the United States have been to the movies in the past 6 months, and 63 per cent (2 out of 3) have stayed at home choosing to rather play a video game. In addition, as far as to other forms of entertainment, 94 per cent of Americans reported to have listened to music, while other 6 per cent claimed not to have listened to any music in the past half a year.

"Video games account for one-third of the average monthly consumer spending in the United States for core entertainment content, including music, video and games," said Anita Frazier, games industry analyst for NPD. "While a portion of that share stems from the premium price of console games, we are also seeing an overall increase in the number of people participating in gaming year-over-year," she added.

This is the evidence people have changed they want to take part into the action. That is the main reason why we have seen the video game industry emerges as one of the most important entertaining kind nowadays.

Indeed as piracy is contaminating traditional artistic contain (video and music), video games are harder to pirate, but also provides a higer merging rate.

the average game player spent more that 38 dollars, on average, every month on "all types of gaming content" in the 3 months leading up to March this year. The report indicated that consumers spent approximately $160 in total per person, on a monthly basis, the majority of which being spend on TV (cable and/or satellite) as well as Internet access. Still, it is about 25 per cent of U.S. consumer monthly entertainment spending that has been snapped up by video gaming.

The video game industry explosion is a simple example of customers willing to take control over content, and to interact.

Travel Loyalty Program: 1-in-5 couldn’t vacation without travel loyalty points

Travel companies are expert in setting up loyalty programs. Indeed, I don't know no airlines company that doesn't own its loyalty program, which provides free miles to its customer upon its consumption.

But Colloquy is pointing out a great information:
"Twenty percent of Americans polled in a survey commissioned by the Wyndham Rewards loyalty program said they would be unable to take their next vacation without cashing in rewards points".

"Knowing that travelers are still taking vacations, but watching their overall spend more carefully, we wanted to find out exactly how important rewards points are to Americans," says Jill Noblett, Wyndham Hotel Group Senior Vice President of Loyalty and Direct Marketing. "This survey tells us reward points are rather significant."
According to the survey, 64 percent of Americans say rewards points are either "very important" or "extremely important" given the state of the economy. Twenty-nine percent responded "very important" and 35 percent responded "extremely important."
"We’ve noticed a significant, upward trend in our members using Wyndham Rewards points for free nights across the Wyndham Hotel Group’s 11 brands," says Noblett. "The increase in redeeming Wyndham Rewards points for airline miles and tickets has also grown this year compared to last year."

In this specific field, loyalty programs have become so important people couldn't live with it. Actually, loyalty program management is one of the biggest issue of airlines companies. With people saving free miles, these companies would have hard time dealing with every customers taking all their miles at once (it will hurt the cash flow big time).

In some ways, these CRM programs are efficient as they are retaining the customers which is eager to use its milage it earned.

7 Keys To Be A Good Marketer

My friend and marketing expert Henri Kaufman has recently received an award of the "Cercle du marketing direct" (somehow the French Direct Marketing Association), for his accomplishments. He took advantage of the event to provide us with a brand new video explaining us the 7 keys to be a good marketer.

If you are reading this blog, you are probably in the marketing field as I am, and you'll probably be interested in these explanations. Here are the translated tips.

1. You need to use your two brains: A good marketer must be creative and somekind of an artist, to create great and innovative ideas. But it also needs to be rational, and measure return on investment meanwhile handling budget and campaign costs. Customers' decision making process are complex and using both an emotional and a relational point of view. A marketer must be able to deal with both entities to provide the accurate message (which is pretty tricky somehow).
   
2. This is an all round job: Nowadays, marketers have a complete and balanced job. They have to deal with multiple projects, multi channel communication and multiple tools to measure return on investment. A good marketer therefore must be multi tasking and master all the aspects of the job.
   
3. Just Do It: That is my motto (well more Nike's one), but I believe this fit with this one. You must dare! Dare to do. Do not hesitate to try new things, to go beyond others would thing. Isn't it where your added value is? You need to go beyond the rules. You must have a wider vision than ordinary.
   
4. Don't let negative vibes overrule you: You can't let negative vibes stop your path. And trust me, they'll be a load of it. You must keep a positive mindset, and trust your ideas all the way in. Somehow, like an entrepreneur would.
   
5. Go beyond that first great idea: You must constantly seek for new ideas. The more you are working your ability to find ideas, the more you'll have. A great idea is good, but you should always look for new ideas. If you don't use it now, you might use them later.
   
6. No regrets: Do not regret the ideas you loved that was not accepted by your boss or your client. If you have tons of ideas, you should trust your skills to find other ones.
   
7. Be curious: Be curious to the world. You must explore new things. Customers are constantly changing, so does technology and media. Hence, you should always look for the new innovations, the new trends.

As a professional marketer, I try on a daily basis to apply these tips, and hope to do it the best.
If you are a French speaker, you should also watch the video.

Is Seesmic Dead?

Do you know about Seesmic? Seesmic is nowadays a desktop client which enables its users to combine their Facebook and Twitter accounts among others.

But Seesmic, prior to that, was a start up focusing on online video conversations. The idea was to create a community of people which could talk together thanks to videos. Loic Lemeur, the founder of this company had a lot of faith in this business. Actually, I have been pretty impressed by the development of the company. Nevertheless, the crisis hit up the Silicon Valley, and it seems that Loic Lemeur has been seeking another path for its company.

This article of the New York Times exposes the reasons why Seesmic has changed its goals. Mainly, it seems that the video conversations was hard to be adapted by the mass market. I have been since the beginning doubtful about the fact Seesmic could become as big as blogging for example for that matter. But I still believe the idea is great and should be considered not as a mainstream service, but maybe to transform the service to propose it for example to companies for focus group or other ways.

That would be a pitty if indeed Seesmic would be abandonned.

Un ancien dauphinois lance faisonsaffaire.com

J'ai trouvé sur le site webdeux.info, une interview intéressante de Franck David Colin, ancien dauphinois, qui vient de lancer son entreprise, faisonsaffaire.com.

C'est un concept que je trouve fort intéressant. Proposer une plateforme communautaire où investisseurs et entrepreneurs peuvent se rencontrer, et "faire affaire ensemble". De plus, je vous invite à jeter un oeil sur l'histoire de Franck David, et ses débuts en tant qu'entrepreneur.

Voici l'interview:

Pourrais-tu te présenter en quelques lignes ?
Je m’appelle Frank-David Colin, j’ai 29 ans, et voici mon histoire :
En 2004, 1 an après être sorti de l’Université Dauphine, j’ai créé une société qui a développé un système très innovant de gestion de contenu de site Internet. Après avoir constitué un portefeuille de clients, j’avais pour ambition de développer commercialement mon produit à grande échelle. Je ne pouvais pas le faire sans argent et n’avais pas la chance d’avoir dans mon entourage des personnes susceptibles de m’aider à financer ce développement (love-money). J’ai donc recherché des investisseurs, ou plus précisément des business angels. A 26 ans, sans carnet d’adresse ou piston, ça a été le parcours du combattant, voire « mission impossible ».
Par un hasard extraordinaire, j’ai été sollicité par un de mes clients pour dépanner une de ses relations qui avait besoin d’aide dans la synchronisation de son téléphone portable, chose qu’en tout geek que je suis, était tout à fait capable de faire ! Il se trouve que cette personne était un riche industriel américain ! Toujours focus sur ma recherche de business angel, tu imagines à quel point pour moi cette opportunité tombait du ciel ! A notre premier rendez-vous j’ai donc tout de suite saisie cette chance pour parler de mon projet et de ma recherche d’investisseur. Bingo ! Un premier rendez-vous était prévu pour parler de mon projet. 6 mois plus tard, après de multiples rendez-vous, nous étions sur la négociation de cette levée de fonds, quand une triste nouvelle est venue noircir cette belle aventure qui semblait commencer : mon investisseur était atteint d’une grave maladie et il en est décédé quelques mois plus tard…
J’ai été profondément attristé de perdre ce futur associé pour qui j’avais développé une véritable admiration. Parallèlement à cette tristesse, je me retrouvais à la case départ sans investisseur, sans carnet d’adresse, sans piston, avec plus de 6 mois d’énergie et d’espoir partis en fumée.
C’est dans ce désespoir et devant cette frustration de ne pas pouvoir rencontrer des investisseurs devant qui défendre mon projet que l’idée de le faire sur Internet est venue : FaisonsAffaire.com était né.

FaisonsAffaire.com c’est quoi exactement ?

FaisonsAffaire.com est une plate-forme de mise en relation d’entrepreneurs et d’investisseurs sur Internet. Combien d’entrepreneurs potentiels se sentent capable d’y arriver mais n’ont pas les moyens de financer leur projet ou n’ont pas encore le carnet d’adresse pour rencontrer les bonnes personnes? Faisonsaffaire.com est là pour changer la donne. Notre site offre la possibilité à ces entrepreneurs de présenter leur projet à de nombreux investisseurs et business angels et ainsi multiplier leurs chances de succès. La seule condition : avoir un projet sérieux, ambitieux, et cohérent.

Notre plate-forme a la particularité de prendre en considération les besoins des 2 mondes pour être réellement efficace. Par exemple, une problématique qui revient souvent côté entrepreneur est la réticence par rapport à la confidentialité. Notre site gère cette problématique en permettant à ces entrepreneurs de mettre leur projet en mode "confidentiel", limitant ainsi son accès qu’aux investisseurs qualifiés qui ont signé une clause de confidentialité.
Côté investisseurs, la problématique est différente. Les investisseurs sont souvent très pris par le temps et très sollicité. Nous sommes conscient qu’ils n’ont pas le temps de regarder 19 projets médiocres ou incomplets pour tomber sur le 20e qui sera intéressant, nous opérons ainsi un préfiltrage de tous les dossiers.

Depuis le lancement de la plate-forme, nous avons reçu plus de 2500 demandes d’inscription d’entrepreneurs (pour environ 100 projets en ligne) et nous comptons 615 investisseurs inscrits dont une centaine qualifiés.

Aujourd’hui nous recevons en moyenne entre 15 et 20 nouveaux dossiers d’entrepreneur chaque jours!! La machine FaisonsAffaire.com est en marche! Je suis porteur de projet. Que dois je faire ? Quels sont les avantages de FaisonsAffaire.com ? Est ce que FaisonsAffaires est restreint aux projets "technologiques" ?

Tout simplement t’inscrire en ligne. L’inscription est gratuite et même rapide quand on a son business plan à porté de main! Une fois inscrit, l’entrepreneur dispose d’un espace dans lequel il va présenter son projet.

Dans cette espace il y a une 3 zones, une zone pour présenter une vidéo de moins de 3 minutes de son pitch élévateur (elevator pitch). Il y a une zone avec des informations très résumées (titre du projet, accroche, mots clés, montant recherché, etc) et enfin une zone "Executive summary" divisée en 4 parties :
- Présentation de l’offre et du modèle économique,
- Marché et concurrence,
- Equipe,
- Partie chiffrée

Une fois que l’entrepreneur a complété son dossier il demande sa mise en ligne à travers son espace personnel. Nos équipes reçoivent alors le dossier et vont se prononcer sur la mise en ligne ou non du projet. Si le projet est validé, il devient accessible aux investisseurs potentiels.
Les investisseurs, eux, découvrent les projets de différentes manières. Soit en faisant une recherche dans notre base de projets, soit parce que les projets sont en Une sur le site, soit parce qu’ils ont activé le système d’alerte e-mail qui leur permet de recevoir les nouveaux projets par e-mail.

Une fois qu’un investisseur est séduit par un projet et souhaite rencontrer un entrepreneur, il lui suffit de cliquer sur le bouton "Entrer en relation" et il obtient immédiatement les coordonnées de l’entrepreneur. L’entrepreneur au même moment reçoit un e-mail avec les coordonnées de l’investisseur.
Nous nous rémunérons qu’en cas de succès de la levée de fonds (entre 3,5% et 6% du montant levé).

FaisonsAffaire.com n’est pas réservé qu’aux projets technologiques, mais est ouvert à tous les secteurs, aussi bien aux services, qu’au BTP, qu’au Web 2.0, etc

Je suis un investisseur. Que dois je faire ? Quels sont les avantages de ta plateforme ?
Pour être inscrit en tant qu’investisseur, c’est très simple, il suffit de s’inscrire en ligne, de répondre à un petit questionnaire et de nous faire parvenir une copie de pièce d’identité. C’est également gratuit! Pour devenir investisseur qualifié, il faut en plus nous faire parvenir un document de clause de confidentialité signé, et un justificatif de sa qualité d’investisseur :
- Soit une attestation de l’AMF (Autorité des Marchés Financiers)
- Soit une copie du document d’adhésion à un club de business angels agrée France Angels
- Soit une copie du document d’adhésion à l’AFIC (Association Française des Investisseurs en Capital) pour les fonds d’investissement et les sociétés de capital-investissement
Notre plateforme s’adresse aussi bien à des investisseurs business angels qu’à des personnes physiques intéressées par la loi TEPA de défiscalisation de l’ISF, ou qu’à des fonds d’investissement ou des VC. Evidemment, les sociétés ciblées par les uns ou par les autres ne sont pas vraiment les mêmes…

Avec qui travailles-tu au quotidien pour gérer ce service ?
Nous gérons en interne tout le développement technique de la plate-forme et nous travaillons avec des free lances sur les créations graphiques et esthétiques autour de notre marque. Nous avons 2 analystes de projet qui ont des profils différents (Ecole d’ingénieur pour l’un et école de commerce pour l’autre). Même si au sein de la société, nous avons tous un rôle principal bien défini, j’ai l’habitude d’impliquer tout le monde dans les réflexions stratégiques de la boîte. Et nous sommes tous amenés à faire des choses très différentes pour l’entreprise. C’est ça aussi la vie d’une startup!

Où en es-tu aujourd’hui dans le développement de ton service ?
FaisonsAffaire.com a un peu plus de 8 mois. Nous avons assez rapidement refondu le site en tenant compte des remarques que nous avons eu et des constats que nous avons fait au bout de quelques mois d’exploitation. Le site est donc dans sa version opérationnelle et réellement mûr depuis février 2009. Nous avons aujourd’hui une "machine" qui marche avec des processus rodés qui fonctionnent. Nous comptons aujourd’hui plusieurs dizaines de rencontres depuis le lancement, nos premiers deals signés, et une audience qui grimpe tous les mois!
Je peux te dire que quand tu lis le témoignage du premier entrepreneur qui a levé des fonds grâce à toi, ça fait chaud au coeur!
Nous avons la chance d’avoir une très belle couverture médiatique. Nous avons eu des articles dans toute la presse : Capital, Management, Challenge, Le Figaro, La Tribune, L’entreprise, Entreprendre, Investir, etc. Nous avons eu aussi un reportage sur M6 à l’émission 100% Mag alors que c’est une émission grand public.
Nous sommes aussi actuellement en demi-finale de la BFM Académie (allez voter pour nous!!). http://www.bfmradio.com/BFM-Academie/ListeCandidats.html

Quelles sont les prochaines évolutions prévue pour FaisonsAffaire?
Nous avons très récemment conclu un accord de partenariat avec la Financière Xerys. Dans cet accord, Xerys s’engage à investir une somme globale d’1 million d’euros répartie sur 3 dossiers de notre plate-forme dans les secteurs des telecoms, de la santé et des nouvelles technologies (Web inclus!). C’est une révolution dans le sens où pour la première fois, une plate-forme "verrouille" des investissements pour ses entrepreneurs inscrits. C’est la preuve aussi de l’image de crédibilité que nous véhiculons auprès des professionnels de l’investissement.
Il y a beaucoup d’autres évolutions prévues, je ne peux malheureusement pas tout dévoiler mais ce qui est sûr c’est que toutes ces évolutions vont dans le même sens : Démocratiser l’investissement et permettre à tous les bons entrepreneurs de trouver des fonds!

Voyage d’étude au salon de la DMA (Direct Marketing Association) San Diego - 18-21 octobre 2009

La semaine dernière, comme je l'ai expliqué la semaine dernière sur ce même blog, je me suis rendu au siège d'Ubifrance, pour la restitution du voyage d'étude du ecommerce aux Etats-Unis.

Je me permets de faire un peu de publicité pour un autre événement organisé par la mission économique de New York, dans le cadre de la conférence de la DMA à San Diego en octobre prochaine. La DMA est l'association américaine du marketing direct, et ses conférences sont souvent le lieu favoris pour le décriptage des nouvelles tendances du marketing (puisque la DMA parle énormément de marketing sur Internet, et que le marketing direct est bel et bien une des tendances de fond en terme de communication).

Organisée par Ubifrance, ce voyage est l'occasion de visiter le plus grand salon consacré à la communication et à la vente aux Etats-Unis qui rassemble plus de 12 000 visiteurs américains et internationaux pour plus de 500 exposants

Objectifs :
- DÉCOUVRIR les nouveaux défis de la communication, du marketing et de la vente aux Etats-Unis et à l’international.
- ANTICIPER le développement des applications pour l’E-commerce mais également les outils de communication du marketing digital, du mobile et des réseaux sociaux.
- RENCONTRER des partenaires ou des clients potentiels et faire connaître votre offre de service

Contacts :
Cécile Delettré, Chef du pôle Marketing et Distribution
Agathe Barbier, Chargée de Développement
www.ubifrance.fr

Un label pour réguler les pratiques des comparateurs de prix

Leclerc fait n'importe quoi avec son comparateur? Maintenant un label de confiance va être mis en place pour réguler et vérifier la qualité des comparateurs de prix sur Internet.

Bien sûr les comparateurs de prix sur Internet ont révolutionné la consommation. D'un coup de clic, l'internaute est capable de voir les offres des principaux sites marchands sur Internet et vérifier où il pourra trouver le produit qu'il veut au prix le plus bas (pourquoi acheter plus cher ailleurs).

Mais le système est tout de même pervers. En effet, les comparateurs de prix ont entrainé une lutte acharnée pour faire baisser les prix. Et il en résulte que beaucoup de e commerçant ont soit découpé leur prix pour ne pas tenir compte par exemple des frais de port pour baisser leur prix facial, mais aussi souvent baissé la qualité des prestations et du service client. Il est facile de vendre moins cher quand la livraison prend 3 mois à arriver et qu'il y a aucun moyen de prendre contact avec personnes...

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, la secrétaire en charge de la Prospective et du Développement de l’économie numérique, a présenté avec la FEVAD, la Fédération du e-commerce et de la vente à distance, un nouveau label de confiance spécialement destiné aux sites comparateurs, qui proposent de comparer les prix sur le Web des produits et services.

Ce label est avant tout destiné à rassurer les consommateurs internautes et à enfin clarifier les pratiques des sites comparateurs, à l’heure où les ventes en ligne ont progressé de 29% en 2008, pour atteindre les 20 milliards d’euros de chiffre d’affaires, selon les données dévoilées par la FEVAD.

Excellent initiative, qui permettra de définir un peu mieux les pratiques des comparateurs de prix, et de vraiment comparer les sites en fonction des services compris dans le prix exposé dans ce type de comparateur.

Mobile marketing Could Be Use For Any Kind Of B to C Business

Are you a frequent reader of my blog? If you are, you probably know how faithful I am in mobile marketing. I believe mobile are soon to become the greatest way to bond with your consumers. Most of customers own one, and it is well known it is the preferred tool people have on them 24/7. Now, some people are not so fan of mobile marketing, because they estimate it is so far used by a certain type of people, and hence, it is difficult to target people.

Of course, early adopters and technology savvy people use it and this is a great marketing segment. But I found this very interesting article on how to use mobile marketing in an overal marketing mix.

This article exposes many different examples on uses of mobile marketing, and by very different kind of actors:

• Audi in the car business, with its succesful campaign which reached 3.5 million downloads. for the Audi A4 Driving Challenge game.
• A Mexican Beer producer I have never heard of before, called Pacifico which introduced a rooster alarm clock app that crows.
• Even Kraft in the food business launched an app on Ipone:

What does It show? Mobile marketing shouldn't be considered as an elite marketing tool. Any kind of business could think about using those kind of marketing actions, because in fact, customers are already using these technologies.

Rencontre avec les experts du E-commerce & de la distribution à Boston & New York organisée par la mission économique de New York

Je me suis rendu ce matin au siège d'Ubifrance à Denfert Rochereau pour la restitution et un retour sur expérience du voyage d'étude E-commerce & de la distribution à Boston & New York que j'avais annoncé sur ce blog en son temps.

Cet événement a été organisé par le responsable du pôle distribution de la mission économique de New York, Cécile Delettré, qui fut en son temps mon chef de service lorsque je travaillais à Ubifrance dans le service marketing opérationnel.

L'événement réunissait certains des 25 participants à ce voyage d'étude, mais aussi des professionels du e-commerce, étant venus se renseigner sur le déroulement de la mission, du retour et la possibilité de participer aux prochains événements et voyages organisés par Ubifrance. J'en reparlerai d'ailleurs plus tard, dans de prochains billets.

Je fus ainsi agréablement surpris et enchanté de pouvoir rencontré Thierry Spencer, illustre blogger et expert en relation client, qui fit parti du voyage et qui a ravi le public de ces explications et de son retour sur expérience. D'ailleurs beaucoup de ces explications serviront de base à de prochains billets. De même Guillaume Weil, directeur de CRMmetrix, une entreprise spécialisé dans l'analyse de fréquentations de site Internet.

Cette mini conférence a débuté par un rappel de la feuille de route et du programme de cette mission, qui fut complète et qui compris la visite du salon de l'IRCE, le salon de la distribution sur Internet.

Puis nous avons eu le droit à différentes interventions nous présentant leurs principales découvertes. Ce fut fort intéressant encore une fois, puisque l'ensemble des thématiques (m-commerce, relation client, vidéo sur Internet ou encore paiement en ligne) ont été abordées.

Je pense aussi qu'il est fort intéressant qu'Ubifrance, dont la vocation est d'aider les entreprises françaises dans leurs efforts à l'exportation, d'organiser ce type de voyage, qui devient de plus en plus populaire.

Bientôt sur ce billet, des vidéos, et des informations sur les prochaines dates de voyage organisé, notamment dans le cadre du salon de la DMA en octobre à San Diego.

Socialcast

I wanted to talk to you about a very promising social media website I have found recently. Social media so far has rocketed on the mass market, but what about its applications in the business world?

Connecting different departments and employees to work on projects could indeed save time and create great synergies. The technology has shown its efficiency.

Socialcast aims to build an online business environment, using the web 2.0 technologies, to create a workspace. I haven’t really tried it yet, as I am not working on no project that would require me to interact with other people via this service, but so far it seems promising.

Another great advantage of the solution is that it is adapted to different format: you can integrate either on your Iphone, email account, desktop among others, or all at once!

I believe there is a lot to be done in terms of information systems.